Ryandor.com

I'm trying to create a new animation by tweaking/changing an existing one. However, when I save the bitmaps some of the images save distorted and split while others save correctly.

Am I doing something wrong or is this normal behavior?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks..

-CMS
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hmmm.. seems I had those similar issues too, where one frame would save good, and another would save with a white background, or somthing like that..

wish I knew what it was I did to fix that.. If It comes to me though I will most definetly let you know..

Thanks, bunches.

The odd images appear slanted and stretched and appear to have half of one frame and half of another. Sorta like it saved part of the animation while it was "moving" or something. ::shrug:: It's hard to describe.

-CMS
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After you modify an animation frame you have to use one of the 3rd party programs or edit the background yourself by filling it with true black. Then when it is added with a .mul editor it will show as transparent.

Are you using Photoshop batch editor?

Dev

_________________
"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

I haven't gotten as far as putting all the images together yet. Right now, I'm just opening InsideUO and saving the bitmaps. For example, "run down left", etc., saved as five images. That's where the problem is coming in, at this time. Most of the images save okay. But, some save all skewed and stretched and look like two halfs put together. Like it saved in the middle of the "film strip".

I'm using Corel Photopaint to alter the images. Once I have them altered, I need to change the backgrounds to black instead of white? I honestly didn't know that. Thanks.

Once I have all the images altered, I was going to use MULPatcher to patch them into the .mul.

I'm working on something simple this first time out. No major changes in the original image. Just to see if I *can* do one.

-CMS
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you *can* do it.. I did it sucsesfully once before. I had patched that baby dragon that was submitted to the old SerpentsMoon site Dev had going.. and liked it so much I took the frames to the red dragon from InsideUO and did my own, to have the pair red/grey baby dragons. It worked just fine. After several trials and errors. The background, yeah. has to be true black like Dev said.

How are you saving the images from InsideUO though? I think theres a way you can save the entire set in one shot, as well as single images... Been a long time since I messed with that stuff though.

I'm right clicking on the "folder"...like in InsideUO, on the left side under "deer" (that's what I'm practicing with), then under "walk", then under "down", I right-click on the "down" folder and "save as bitmaps". This saves the five "walk-down" images.

I'm doing that with each action and direction. I thought, maybe, it was only one direction that was messing up. But, it seems to be completely random. For example, the "die2/up", "die/upleft" and all the "fidget" images are messed up (plus a few others). ::shrug::

-CMS
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Thats odd.. I just saved all the deer animation images just like you said you did.. and they were all fine, nothing odd like split images as you describe.


Here you go.. I zipped up my set, unmodified. you can compare them to the deer frames you saved, see if theres any difference's. They seem to be all in good shape to me.

Deer Animation Frames

Thanks for the set.

I think I found the problem. When I unzipped your files and looked at them in Explorer, they displayed correctly. It also showed they were being associated with LView. Apparently, though, my OS isn't using LView to display them since, when I used the actual program to look at them, it says it can't read that format. This also happens when I try to use Photoshop. Corel Photopaint will open some but not all. So, I reinstalled Paintshop Pro and it seems to open all of them just fine.

So, apparently, it's not the files, themselves, but the program being used to view/edit them. :/

Now I just have to figure out how to work with PSP, since I've never used it before... lol (wonders if her daughter can help..hehe)

Again, thanks for the time (both you and Dev) and files. I'm creating a "fawn". If anyone is interested in such a thing, I'll gladly post the set of images and/or the actual animation patch once I'm done.

-CMS
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Sure, any time. glad you got it figured out. and as far as paintshop, Im sure you will like it. It might be a little confusing at first, but its a great program.. I use it prety much exclusivly.

Another quick question, if I may.

When I resize the "creature", do I need to keep the original image size? For example, the image size for the doe standing left is 48w X 45h pixels. But, of course, when I resize the fawn to 75% (50% was cute but too small, I think )...the image size, itself, changes. Do I need to resize the "canvas" back to 48x45 in order for it to work? Or will the reduced size work?

Thanks.

-CMS
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nope, you will need to allow the canvas size to contract too... after all, if all animations were on an image canvas that size, there would be an awfull lot of creatures out there that would be missing heads, and legs

Also, if the canvas size of the image is a lot larger than the image, the animation could give you little bugs in game.. like being able to pull the health bear off the creature without even touching the creature.

Makes sense.

Thanks, bunches.

-CMS
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Just be careful when you resize them because not all frames are the same size for each series of animations.

Dragons are one of those tricky ones.

InsideUO will cause those lines sometimes if you use the batch save for the entire group. I remember that from the dragon animation I shrank to make the baby dragons as you have already figured out.

Dev

_________________
"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"