IKR ? First time I stumbled on this problem it took me a good time to realize what hell was going on.OneManClan wrote:Jeezfrag.machine wrote:OneManClan, be aware that even if you correctly picked a color from the Quake indexed palette, sometimes a tool in the painting program you're using may replace it by another color index, in the same palette.
As I said, my experience is mostly old PSP versions and recently GIMP. I was never really a Photoshop fan, so I can't say if this is the case too, but ...OneManClan wrote:Ok so it's NOT a simple matter of 'use older software'? *sigh* Man, did those 14 year old boys in the 90s really have to navigate these obstacles to make their Quake skins? Anyway:frag.machine wrote:At least with older versions of Paint Shop Pro this happened to me more than once: I painted some skin area with the an indexed color (say, index 0) and later, when using the color replacer tool, the program silently replaced it with another color index that closely matched the RGB values (but using a completely different color index).
In graphic programming terms, the colormap is the array of pixels that describe the colors. Modern game engines don't use just color pixels in skins: usually you can have additional images to represent bumpmapping, luminosity, transparency and other effects (that's the case of DP and FTE, at least). Originally the Quake engine only supported colormap textures and in most cases it's the only required "component" to build a high resolution skin, so yeah, most of time colormap == texture (without the mentioned effects).OneManClan wrote:Ok the phrasing of the following step confused me.frag.machine wrote: a) create your skin using your preffered painting tool (Photoshop, PSP, GIMP, whatever). Don't worry about pants or shirts colors correctness at this stage: just focus on producing your 24-bpp texture;
b) save it in a engine-friendly format (TGA or PNG, I would advise against JPEG because they may look really bad on alias models);I'm not sure if you're using 'colormap' and 'texture' as verbs or nouns.. or by 'texture' do you mean 'the skin'?frag.machine wrote:c) from this TGA/PNG colormap texture,
An image speaks more than a thousand words, so here goes:OneManClan wrote::? Use eraser tool to remove the shirt and pants(?), and then.. 'using grayscale'? I don't follow. Bear in mind that I've drawn blood and goo running down a players chest 'over' the (team coloured) bits, though I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing.frag.machine wrote: create shirt and pants versions (basically removing the undesired parts and using grayscale to the visible parts),
Please note that this is for Darkplaces, others engines may (or may not) support this naming convention.
Just applying the Quake color palette should scale down the image to 256 colors, but again I am not a Photoshop user, so please confirm this with other sources.[/quote]OneManClan wrote:I assume there isn't a 'scale down the color' stage before applying 'the Quake palette to it' Sorry for being pedantic, but please confirm, you mean 'apply the Quake palette, which will scale down the color'?frag.machine wrote:d) go back to your first texture, scale down the color applying the Quake pallete to it;
Correct, QME, QuArK 4.07 or any other tool of your preference.OneManClan wrote:Ok g) confused me. The 'resulting image' is the skin itself, yea? How do you mean use [my new skin] with my favourite 'utility' to 'add/replace' skins in the model itself? [EDIT: Oh, I get it, you mean to use QME (or whatever) to put the skin on the model. This mod 'Doomface' involves changing skins dynamically on the same model, ie these are all player skins, and will be changed multiple times (as required) during gameplay. An earlier prototype stored all the skins in the mdl, but Ezquake can't load models with over 100 skinsfrag.machine wrote:e) knowing which color indexes represent the pants and shirt colors in the pallete, use them where appropriated;
f) save the resulting texture in a pallete indexed format (256 color BMP or PCX), so you won't incur in accidental color mismatch;
g) use the resulting image with your favorite utility to add/replace skins in the model.
I have no knowlegde of any engine that allows to load/unload skins dynamically. Back in the good ol' days there was this skin pack player.mdl with 250 different skins working nicely on vanilla GLQuake. I assume the problems you found are related to memory usage due to the number of *high resolution* skins you're using, right ?