MAKING BAMS, problems about making original BAMS and green bottom visible IG Options

[Rigel]

Hello i'm working on a MOD for BGT-BG2 called "GOODS of FAERUN". It's a MOD who add some merchants, few little quests and a lot of new items. I will make a merchant who sell armors and helmets of diferent colours but with no special caracteristics, it's just a black helm, or a dark red plate for fun, just to be fashion; however...

I will also create new ITEMS, and in that purpose, i need to create new bams; i will recolorize existing bams with news colours schemes.
I make 2 bmp files with a selected bam and after i work on them under GIMP 2. Next i use ITEM GRAPHIC CONVERTER to get a "quite" new original bam.

It's quite easy to do but i've got a big problem: i see the green bottom of the bams IN GAME; i've made some ressearches and i think it's a ALPHA CANAL (who set transparency) problem. It's like some graphical zones were losing their transparency during the change betweeen bam file becoming 2 bmp files.

So if someone know something about that graphical problem, i would be so glad if you can help me, and explain me how it works exactly, and how dissmiss that green bottom, if you can indicate me a tutorial it would be nice too. I'm not afraid of complicated explanations: i want to know all about that subject, cause i need to be a pro item creator.

This post has been edited by Rigel: Jan 30 2009, 08:19 PM

[Rigel]

No i didn't use the overlay setting and didn't use brush, i used tools of colors menu under GIMP 2, they're is many tools you can use, i was trying to do simple things; i've tried the overlay setting (on your advice) it can be useful but you have to take really care of pixels you paint, you can use overlay with floodfill tool. I think it's better than paint cause you can paint two times the same pixels if you don't take really care !!! Floodfill a selected zone with overlay setting is more simple i think and maybe brush for really little zones.
You can change part of the item colors: it depends how good are your selections of pixels zones, it's really important when you want put your bam in black and you touch at luminosity and in any case it's always better.

How to not have green fonts:
When you save your RGB image in indexed colours image you get a colors palette of this image and you have to reorganize it (--> reorganize colors palette) putting the green font color in first position in the palette (position 0); after doing that save it: with that kind of bmp indexed colours images you will see no green font in game or under Bam Workshop. Because bams are maked with two bmp images it can be useful to import the palette of the first bmp you worked on, like that you can save the other one with that palette (when you change it in indexed colour image chose the palette you imported). Now you're sure the two bmp of the bam have the same colors palette.

It's the global method but to make it works you have to make same colors changes on the two bmp images and the best pixels selections (it's quite some artistics and technical feelings, you will know what to do after experienced it) in your two RGB bmp image you worked on.

It's possible use many other tools of GIMP 2 to change colours of part of the item or of the entier item, personaly i used mostly the tools of the colours menu.

In any case i will be always curious know about other methods or possibilites !

This post has been edited by Rigel: Mar 19 2009, 03:10 PM