Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: Jayhawk on February 15, 2010, 11:46:58 PM

Title: My Skinning Question(s).
Post by: Jayhawk on February 15, 2010, 11:46:58 PM
Well rather than create a new thread for every question I have, I might try and group some of my questions in here to keep things together. 

Here's my question, I'm trying to preview my work in offline mode.  When I go to "my edit" in the hanger, the skin is all black like it went to default black.  The bmp file shows up fine in the working folder though.  One thing I noticed was my file was saving as a 32 bit bmp, not an 8.  When I go to advanced options while saving, I only have the option of saving at 16, 24, or 32 bit.  Of course I don't know if that's even the problem.

Thanks
Title: Re: My Skinning Question(s).
Post by: Krusty on February 16, 2010, 02:27:59 PM
That's the problem. Aces High can only display 8-bit. You need to index the file (down to 256 colors, or 8-bit) when you export. Do NOT save the working file after you reduce to 8-bit!!! Save right before doing this, then reload after, or use your history/undo commands to revert to before you reduced it to 8-bit!

Or use the "bright" plugin, which should do the same thing but leave the working file intact.
Title: Re: My Skinning Question(s).
Post by: Jayhawk on February 16, 2010, 04:59:08 PM
I should have noted I was using GIMP, not photoshop. I thought "Bright" was just for Photoshop (am I right?) so I began looking for a comparable GIMP plug-in.  I was seconds away from posting on the GIMP forums asking about it when I re-read your post again...

Quote
index


Ah!!

So (after saving original and playing around with a duplicate copy), I went to "Image > Mode > Indexed" and converted to 256 colors, then saved as a bmp.

voilą!

Thank you Krusty
Title: Re: My Skinning Question(s).
Post by: Krusty on February 16, 2010, 05:11:08 PM
bright has a stand-alone program (an exe or .bat, something) that you can run, but there's a chance GIMP will run plugins too. Worth checking out.

The thing about indexing is that the colors are reduced. You often need to enable the dithering option (I haven't looked into GIMP's options screen any time recently, so look around a bit) and see if there's a "preserve original colors" or some quality-related checkbox. Fast dithering usually looks like crap with lots of dots on the screen. That's why folks like bright, because it does a better job smoothing colors together to get newer shades.
Title: Re: My Skinning Question(s).
Post by: Jayhawk on February 16, 2010, 05:17:12 PM
Here is the indexing color conversion

(http://i666.photobucket.com/albums/vv23/Jayhawk1/gimpindexed.jpg)
Title: Re: My Skinning Question(s).
Post by: Krusty on February 16, 2010, 05:25:40 PM
Ah...

Well, that's all beyond me. I don't know the difference. I'm more of a Photoshop guy, and just play with GIMP for comparison. I'd try a few out, then zoom in (200% or 300%) and see what it did to the actual pixels. Look around where colors mix or blend, or where details/weathering are present, and then undo it and try the next option on the list. I'd start with the "reduced color bleeding" and then maybe "positioned," but that's totally wild guessing.
Title: Re: My Skinning Question(s).
Post by: Jayhawk on February 16, 2010, 05:30:40 PM
Yeah, that step is still in the future, I'm getting the leg work done now.  But I will try out different ones when it really matters.

As for what option to pick, that was my guess as well, I back-up and save copies so I'll find which works best when I'm there.