Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:28 am Post subject:
Shadow palette indistinguishable?
Subject description: I can't see my own shadow :(
I constantly have to switch to unitsno to be able to see the background colour in unittem in the 3.38 b15...
The shadows in XCC mixer always had a darker blue shown, or at least there was multiple "shades" of shadow and most used the darker one?
The problem is twofold, in unittem/uniturb, the empty background and shadow are the same exact colour visually.
The current shadow colour is #0000C6 which is too close to the background of #0000FF, but I've also seen #0000AA used which is easily distinguishable...
Some clarity on the shadow colour functionality would be nice, BUT can we just fix the shadow to ALWAYS display PINK except in cases like the anim.pal where pink is the transaparent?
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Second to this, I find that having edited the file in say photoshop, then imported by SHP Builder, the shadow frames look visually correct, but are often the wrong shade of pink/blue/black etc... can SHP Builder auto-correct the shadow frame palettes?
Currently I have to double-check with the XCC mixer to see if the resultant shadow frames are correct...
I think it's made worse by the fact that shadow frames hide the available palette but doesn't rule out the existence of those colours either.
For example: I could have a black #000000 background on unitsno.pal and have other black dots also #000000 that are not considered transparent black. XCC mixer will show the shadow frame in the right pane as large as needs to be to encompass all non-transparent dots, which then appears larger than a correct palette frame.
Well, is not the solution glaringly obvious to your problem?
You edit the palette with your desired shadow/background color then (be it PINK or whatever you desire) and replace the palette in your shp builder folder...
In effect making also a conversion pal so colors won't mix up if you make sure chosen color is unique and thus everything is placed in right indexes.
SHP Builder has no tool to sort shadow frame content, they use same palette as rest despite it toggles it only to show 0 and 1 indexes, turn shadows off and use color replacer in defined shadow frames range to correct any miscolor shadows. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:04 am Post subject:
Noone cares about which color the shadow has, actually. You can have rainbows at shadow and it will still work without a problem at all, since any pixel on the shadow frames not having background color = shadow. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
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Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
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WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 12:27 pm Post subject:
Using a proper background (as said, cyan or pink is your friend) errant dots can be easily noticed.
Also what is that nonbackground background? I repeat - the game does not care about the shadow color itself. Hell, Lao Tze used green shadows on all his SHPs and no bugs were triggered!
If you really nitpick that as a huge issue then split shadows into a separate SHP in SHP Builder, use Custom Scheme->Binarize and merge them back. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
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Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
I don't think your assertion is 100% correct, because I've had "defective" shadows in game where they looked fine in the editors... things like errant pink or blue dots.
Also this suggestion would make it a lot quicker/simpler to make snow/temperate buildings where I actually need to edit the buildings in the other palette, and can't arbitrarily flip. I could at least copy the shadows from the wrong palette without modification and so on.
Isn't the whole point of these utilities to help save us the manual labour of it all? I plan to make a bunch of civilian buildings and rubble to make maps feel like actual warzones, but I also need to make some airports and such...
Dude, I've made plenty of .shp's, with various combination of tools, and everytime I think about how much time I waste sending things back and forth (plus testing in game) to weed out the little flaws...
MOST of those could be eliminated the first time with an auto-palette shadow fixer thingy...
I propose a simple menu option: Posterize Shadow...
All it has to do is divide the shadow frame into 2 colours: whatever is on the image, divide all the light colours to the actual background colour of the active palette for the object (ie. unitsno) and change everything else to a colour we designate -- or predefine something you know works perfectly for that palette like pink. QUICK_EDIT
If you render the shadow correct, there is no fixing necessary.
My 3dsmax rendered shadow has the exact same color as the index 1 color in the palette, and the palette has no second similar color.
So during conversion there is no mixing up possible.
And even if there is a bad colored pixel in the shadow frames, the ctrl+a color conversion tool fixes it in 3 seconds. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
3dsmax is example.
Blender Maya, whatever you use, set it so that the shadow frames aren't rainbow colored but a single color.
We have templates for blender and 3dsmax. Take them, invest a bit time, then use them right.
There is no need to request SHP Builder to do a job, which you can prevent in the first place with just a few adjustments in your image creating tool.
SHP Builder also has color schemes, palette conversions and other helpful tools to do such adjustments in 2 mouse clicks. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Select region (the shadow)
delete region
fill selected region with shadow color
->convert
Or in SHP Builder
press ctrl+a and convert the shadow frames only using a custom palette _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
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Shadow palette indistinguishable?
