[VonBarb.]

Could one of you expert map makers give me a few tips on how to edit these bad boys ?

I find it hard to differentiate the different scales of grey, so is there an easy way to change these colours to, say rainbow colours to ease identification ?
Those shades of grey are destroying my eyes

I am using GIMP 2.4

Thanks

Nico

[fly_zo]

don't believe so .... hard to get proper grayscale afterward


he,he i usually look at monitor at sharpest angle .... helps me spotting different shades , but back hurts like hell :wink:


i see you've dived into rabbit hole ..... now you're hooked

:wink:


btw, make sure that you're using layers ..... and not paint directly on tga ( that way you can place temp layer beneath working one .... color it and set transparency , it will help your eyes )
Z

[VonBarb.]

Hooked ? yeah, pretty much... To think I found editing load.inis 'addictive'...

Pity about the colour changes.I thought I'd read somewhere that Canon used a similar method ?
I foresee an increase in aspirin consumption over the next few days

Cheers

Nico

[|ZUTI|]

Well, this is what i do with gimp (or did, having nightmares afterwards, it was never good enough ):

select a grayscale that i wanted to change/edit, noted it's value and covered it with much brighter colour. I changed all values that i wanted to alter and edit them. Once i was done i just repainted it back (but i made a copy of brighter colours, just in case i wanted to change it further (as i always did :\). Not an automatic thing but hey, you have to be in pain just so you know that you're alive

And i think that there is colour switcher? So that you can select a RGB value and also select new RGB value to replace old one? Not sure where though as i was too lazy to look for it :\

[dunkelgrun]

I tend not to worry too much about what I'm overwriting - just paint my new texture colour on where I think I want it to be. I then go into the unlocked FMB and tickle it up until I get what I want. Mind you, once there's roads and railways on the map_T then it's a whole different ballgame.

:cheers:

[lowfighter]

Noob, you can always increase the brightness of your monitor while you're painting it :lol:

he,he i usually look at monitor at sharpest angle .... helps me spotting different shades , but back hurts like hell :wink:

[fly_zo]

Noob, you can always increase the brightness of your monitor while you're painting it :lol:

he,he i usually look at monitor at sharpest angle .... helps me spotting different shades , but back hurts like hell :wink:

he he .... got me there :oops:

Z

[GilB57]

Hmmm, I think it would be too hard to work within the grayscale picture... (I didn't 8) )

In fact, as CanonUK, I work in color !!! (a lot easier )

I convert my image into indexed color map (this work in Photoshop - the one I know well). Then, as the 32 darkest colors are the more important, I change each of them :
The 4 first ones are lowland >>> I convert them into 4 greens from lighter to darker ones.
The 4 next are midland >>> I convert them into 4 brownish greens the same way.
The 4 next are mount >>> I convert them into 4 browns..
.... etc (take the colors you want, as long as its evocating for you (and easy to recognize : my city texs are all reds and countries orange...)

I save my indexed color ramp (very important for the other map_T files I'll have to work on).

Anyway, I can view a lot more clearly where terrain types are)

I paint my map that way (no anti-aliased tool) ...

I don't mind about roads & rail because this will be added only at the end (in grayscale using GIMP because PShop is not good with additive layers !)

When its done (in fact, a lot of tests all along the work), I convert it in grayscale INDEXED color map.
I save it (useless to test it within il2 now because it doesn't like indexed color mpa for map_T file).
I open my file in GIMP and convert it from indexed to grayscale, & save it as tga (very important : NO RLE COMPRESSION) .
Now it's ready to look into the game FMB.

Hope this helps :wink:

[VonBarb.]

Well, guess I'll have to try my best the painful way then...

Maybe using the unlocked FMB could help... I'm having a hard time positioning small details and it might be better if I could do it 'live'. I did try to unlock the FMB the way the readme said I should, but it gave me CTDs at 70% loading. Anybody else got that problem ? What did I do wrong ?

Cheers

Nico

[VonBarb.]

Erm, found what I had done wrong... :roll:

Now I get CTDs when trying to load a map, I get an error message telling me there's some sort of problem with OpenGLPBuffer or something, and that some memory cannot be read (?)
What is that all about lol ?

Cheers

Nico

[fly_zo]

there is limitation with size of actors.static file of loaded map .... try one of not so populated maps ( just to see how it works ... or if it works)

For large maps , replace actors.static with blank one when loading in unlockedFMB .... Act tool ( basic map tools pack)

Z

[VonBarb.]

Thanks, I'll try that. This means I'll have to create a temporary blank static while I modify the map, is that correct ?

I've managed to use unlocked FMB on Moscow, Ardennes, a couple of the online maps, but Kuban, Kurland, NWEurope - the maps that interest me - won't load.

back to the workshop

Cheers

Nico

[VonBarb.]

Pardon my noobness, but how do I use the actors.static tool ? :oops:

Cheers

Nico

[VonBarb.]

OK, found a way around my noobness

I extracted the static file for a map that I could open in UnlockedFMB, and simply dropped it in the Mapmods/maps/Kuban folder. Kuban now uses a static file with a lot less objects, and loads without problem. Map is kinda messed up in FMB, but what do I care, I'm only interested in the Map_T

Real time painting of the landscape brings back memories of scenario making in AoE

Cheers

Nico