any type of tutorial on glowskins?

[ScarleTomato]

preferably using gimp? I'm having the hardest time trying to make a teamcolor mask for the ground terrain of the recy.

I'm trying to add a glowskin for ibextf03  (AKA the ground with the big logo in front of the isdf recycler). If i save it as ibextfc3 it shows that the transparency does work with the sky showing through the unmasked parts while the recy is building. But if i save it as ibextfa3 it just goes solid white after it gets built.

I'm working in 1.3pb5.1 and converting to .dxtbz2 before i test

[General BlackDragon]

iirc, the "a" teamcolor/glow skins are based on alpha layer. So, if you make a part of the 'a0' skin only a alpha of white/black, then those parts should glow more. Just look at the .pic files of existing teamcolors to see. ZA's teamcolor pack.

[ScarleTomato]

Just look at the .pic files of existing teamcolors to see. ZA's teamcolor pack.

Thats basically what inspired me to continue on with the buildings. I can recreate a glowskin for the scout from the pic in smtex.pak just fine. But the buildings seem to have different rules or something.

[TheJamsh]

You realise that the Addon pack has a full set of teamcolor skins for ALL ISDF AND Scion objects? We took care of that long ago Feel free to nick those when they come out (.pics released also).

Oh BTW to save you the trouble, any of the terrain plates dont teamcolors anyway (they dont have a c0 skin). A texture will only have a teamcolor applied if a c0 skin is present, and the glowskin then sits over the top (regardless of the c0 prescence).

[ScarleTomato]

The addon pack isnt coming out anytime soon. And I kinda want to know how to do it myself so I can use it on my own objects. I'm trying it out on the stock units as a control group of sorts.

Is there a format I can use besides pic and dxtbz2? I dont have a program that can modify pic images and its kind of a pain to convert to dxtbz2 every time i want to see what a change looks like in game.

I've tried PNG and TGA but all i get is white.

[TheJamsh]

Okay fair enough, i would ask though that you keep them to yourself though, dont want any issues when the AP does come out.

Its VERY easy to do. All you have to do is apply an alpha channel to the texture (gimp > layer > transparency > add alpha channel) They you use box selector to select the parts you WANT to remain coloured, and delete them. The just save. The parts where you want the colour to show through should be alphad, everything else should be as normal.

I would advise going against select>bycolour where possible, its faster, but FAR less accurate and occasionally you catch bits you dont want to.

As for the .pic's thing, those are the BEST formats for BZ2. a VERY easy converter that i always use is XnView (get the latest one, not bzscraps version). You can do batch converts to. The reason you get white is because all of the stock models point to .pic's. BZ2 automaticaly subsadises for dxtbz2 if one isnt present, but only dxtbz2.

If you change the models, you can use .png or .tga

[General BlackDragon]

It couldn't cause issues, textures dont cause bad assets.

And ZA's Teamcolors for 1.3 are already released you know...



But yah, the white parts in the alpha layer show up brighter then the normal parts. Basically, take a texture, add an alpha layer to it, and then brighten/darken the spots where u want it to be brighter/darker. name it as textureyouwantalphafor_a0 and it'll be used. I dont think you even have to add the glowskin line in the odf if the texture names match an existing texture.

[TheJamsh]

minus the _ . ZA's teamcolors are incomplete, and only cover a few of the ISDF units. (and very few people use them for that reason). AHadley, myself and Nielk1 put some time in in GIMP and got them all working. (Also added a few c0's in the process).

While textures dont cause BA, it would be annoying to keep getting "why do my TC's look different to others"

[General BlackDragon]

Odd, I thought ZA did all isdf. Meh

[ScarleTomato]

OK cool I appreciate the help. I found my error. For some reason the game doesn't like the dxtbz2 conversions for the terrain but it will use them for the units. If i use xnview to save it back as a pic it works.

I even tried renaming the working ivscouta0.dxtbz2 to ibextfa3.dxtbz2 in the hopes of getting something but it still just whites it out.

[General BlackDragon]

ah, i dunno if .dxtbz2 saves alpha channels right all the time. i remember something about it being posted a while back 

[Nielk1]

I used Photoshop thankyouverymuch.

[mrtwosheds]

This is the same issue someone else had when trying to add glow skins to Stock unit materials.
You will probably want to add both .pic and dxtbz2 of your new a0 texture.
You may also effect other game objects that use that material, but this may not become apparent until you make a new bz2 installation with your patch.

[AHadley]

I wrote up a tutorial for you to help finish them, Jamsh... have you still got it? Probably kicking around in Recieved files somewhere.

[TheJamsh]

Nope i don't have it, but i dont remember being sent one . Wouldn't have needed it anyway. Its dead easy, just time-consuming.