Silhouettes - how to do them?

[Kuniworth]

Hey guys, anyone know how to do this if you got a unit and all. But how do you make those?

[J P Wagner]

I can't figure out a way to do this...I'm living with the fact that my Armored Trains have the ghost of rockets past attached to them...

[Hubert Cater]

I believe some of the higher end graphics program provide a function that allows you to trace an object thus providing you with the desired outline... otherwise you can always do it the old fashioned way which is just trace the unit 1 pixel at a time and then erase the inside and surrounding area with "white" pixels.

Note, make sure the "white" pixels are all RGB (255,255,255), i.e. pure white.

After that copying and pasting it into the correct unit silhouettes slot should do the trick.

[ChrisND]

I have a pretty fancy graphics program and sound editing program. If you need any work like that done, feel free to send it to me with a note of what you need done. Working on this Fortress America mod has honed my bitmaps skills, since I've had to re-do almost every graphic in the game.

[Kuniworth]

Originally posted by Normal Dude:

I have a pretty fancy graphics program and sound editing program. If you need any work like that done, feel free to send it to me with a note of what you need done. Working on this Fortress America mod has honed my bitmaps skills, since I've had to re-do almost every graphic in the game.

cool, I will certainly go for that offer. I need those silhuettes for both resources and units. I will get back to you soon.

[Kuniworth]

Normal Dude, what image editing program do you use?

[Kuniworth]

never mind I found it out myself.

[ChrisND]

Folks, here is a way to make outlines; it may not be the best way, but it works for me.

Select the bitmap you wish to make an outline of. Next, use the "magic wand" or "smart select" or whatever your program calls it to select the white background portion; this is a tool that does a select-all ONLY of identical colors, and by picking the white background you effectively outline the sprite(s). Next, add a border of the desired color and thickness, you will have to experiment to get it right.

If your program uses layers, you can then isolate the outlines and save them. Otherwise, your next step is to white-out the sprite within the outlines.

[Bill101]

Which file do you edit the silhouettes in? I'm being driven mad by this as I've changed my silhuoettes in the following files in the bitmaps folder for my campaign, and localisation is at 1.

unit_silhouettes_sprites_3d.bmp

unit_silhouettes_sprites_3d_mirrored.bmp

My new graphics work fine, but not the silhouettes as despite having changed them I'm still getting the silhouettes that were associated with the units that previously occupied these slots.

If not there, where else?

What is confusing me is that when I click on the unit's HQ they highlight ok:

But when I go to attack them with an enemy airfleet, the old silhouettes suddenly appear:

I've been pulling my hair out trying to work out what I'm doing wrong, so if someone could put me out of my misery and tell me what I'm doing wrong I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks

[Kuniworth]

Have you changed the mirrored silhouettes?

[Moonslayer]

@Bill_101: Have you changed ALL the silhouettes? There are several copies in differing colours to denote different things. From personal experience I know how easy it is to miss out on a colour or two

[Bill101]

Yes, if you mean this file:

unit_silhouettes_sprites_3d_mirrored.bmp

Both that and the non-mirrored one have been changed, I get the same problem whichever way the unit is facing.

I put both files in the bitmap directory where the unit graphics are.

[Moonslayer]

This is what I do with paint shop pro for unit silhouettes. It's a fairly pain-free method.

1) I make a copy of my unit_sprites_3d file (VERY important )

2) Paint over the sprite's shadows in 255/255/255 white.

3) Click 'colors' --> 'adjust' --> 'gamma correction' and lower the gamma (to 0.01) so that all graphics colours turn to black (almost all anyway). This helps with the contrast for the next step. Handily this will not affect the background colour.

4) Now click 'Image' --> 'edge filters' --> 'find edges'. Your sprites will be surrounded by a layer of white pixels whilst the rest of the page will be black.

5) Now use the 'flood fill' tool and turn up the tolerance to 199. Select 'solid color' on the tool's drop down menu and fill the white outline with your chosen silhouette colour.

6) Flood fill the rest of the image and background with 255/255/255 and save as unit_silhouettes_sprites_3d.

Voila!

This works for me as I only have freebie graphics tools d/l from the 'net

Good luck.

[Retributar]

Moonslayer

Your explanation, as well as explanation's from other forum member's should be stored in a separate discussion page so that anyone else who has difficulty or runs into a problem in MOD creation can reference suggestion's such as your's to effect positive result's in their work!.

[Bill101]

Thanks for the tips Moonslayer, which will come in handy when I make some original bitmaps but my problem was slightly different. I've finally worked it out now, I was changing images in the right file, but not the right ones. Let's hope fathoming it out didn't give me too many more grey hairs!

[Moonslayer]

No worries... best of luck with the modding