26-04-2004 03:44									#1
	Yet Another Civ3 FLC conversion thread Enter the AD-FREE zone

Maq and BigMC threw the thought around about convert FLCs again. According BigMC its possible to get PSP8 scripted to convert FLCs faster.

I'll open this with a list (I'll attach later) of Civ3 FLCs that can replace Ctp2 unit graphics (atleast through the modern era. I'm hoping BigMC and Maq can put some tips with PSP8 (although I still have 7) up here.

other threads
FLCster for Ctp2
Civ 3 Unit FLCs to be converted
Civ 3 Unit FLCs to be converted 2
Civ 3 mod for CtP 2?
Civ3 Mod
Civ3 mod possible?
Civ3:PTW WW2 Unit FLC's

From I-Wombat (I may make adjustments as I play with pallettes etc)

Flics -> Sprites in more easy stages than I care to count.

Part one - the FLIC

Start with a Civ3 Unit FLIC, or rather, collection of FLICs. Since all the animation has been done for you, there's no excuses for not using movement, attack and defeat flics. If you like, idle and victory ones, but these are seldom used or observed in CtP2, and aren't worth the effort IMO.

The FLICs you have will almost certainly not be the correct size (which technically is anything with the ratio 4:3, but in reality is almost always 96*72 pixels) - so you have to crop them. For these purposes, the flics are animations just the same as animated GIFs are - FLICster becomes useless, you need an art program. I used Animation Shop (AS), simply because you can get a "free trial" version from the JASC website.

Load Animation Shop, and open a FLIC file. These instructions assume it is a movement FLIC.

Using Animation Shop (and no doubt similar programs work similar ways), the cropping tool is dragged across a single frame, and forms a box. Press the "crop" button, and everything outside the box is deleted, and similarly for all the other frames in the animation, the same area is taken automatically.

NOTE: When doing this, if it is at all possible, count the number of pixels from a horizontal border, and a vertical border your cropping is. This is very useful later on.

The downside of AS is that you cannot find out what size each frame is, without resorting to a little workaround. If you have Paint Shop Pro (which AS is often packaged with) then you can export a frame (right-click on the frame, and select "export frame to Paint Shop Pro"), and go to Image -> Canvas Size.

Otherwise,assuming you have the file saved, go to View -> HTML code - and that will give you the height and width of the image.

Either way, keep cropping and undoing until you have a set of frames 96 by 72 pixels in size, with the unit somewhere towards the middle horizontally, and towards the bottom, vertically. Hopefully you have kept a count of the pixels, because then you can attempt to replicate the exact same x and y position of the unit in the other FLIC files (attack & death, and maybe others).

Now separate out the facings. You only need five. Facing due north, north-east, east, south-east, and south. The sprite maker mirrors the rest for you, and to save space.
To collect all the frames of one facing together, select the first one, hold down shift, and select the last one, then cut then (ctrl-x) and paste them as a new animation (ctrl-v).

Once you have a set of facing frames, select all the frames in the FLIC (click the first, hold down SHIFT, select the last) and go to File -> Save Frames As.

From here on, I will assume you are using the northery facing (facing 1) frames of the movement animation.

Choose your options so you save them as *.tiff files, with long file names and with the Save frame number in file name box ticked. Then set up your standard name to be (assuming you are using the movement animation) - "GUxxMA1.".tif The extra . is important, because now when you save it, the frame number will be saved after it, and create the file name as the sprite creator reads it - GUxxMA1. y.tif

As explained in the sprite creator readme, the naming is important.




G is a prefix, it is always there.

U stands for units.

xx is the sprite number you choose to use in the creation. You can change it later, but must stay consistant for now.

M denoted that you are using the movement animation. "I" would be for the Idle animation, "A" for attack, "V" for victory (where victory can also equal "death" - it marks the end of a battle)

A - its the animation itself. An S here would be for the associated shadow tiff.

1 - the facing number. 1 is north, 2 north-east etc etc, 5 is south.

.y - the point is always there, y is the frame number, starting from either 0 (geeks) or 1 (non-geeks). This method uses 1 as the first frame, because of the quick save thingy in Animation Shop.



Choose a place to save to. If you already have the sprite creator installed (which is advised) - then something like CTPSpriteTool/Units/xx is the place for them. If not, any temporary folder will do, so long as you move them out afterwards.

Open the folder where you saved all the tiffs to, and delete the blank spaces between all the "."s and all the frame numbers. This takes little time once you've practise, and believe me, 500 frames is a lot of practise.

Part Two - the Images

Open all of the tiffs into a Paint Program (I use PSP, again, because you can get the free trial to download, and because Harlan already wrote instructions for using it. Which aren't too accurate, but got me started)

The tiffs as they are are not much good. The shadow is in the same file, and the background is the wrong colour. The first thing to do is to set your foreground colour (left button) to white, and the background colour (right-button) to black. If you are lucky, you may never need to change these colours throughout the rest of the process.

For each frame you do, you must follow this procedure. It is very time consuming, and boring, but once you get the hang of it, you can switch your mind off and day-dream while you go.

Using the magic wand tool, set to a tolerance of about 20-30 (as set under the tool options floating menu), select all the shadow around the base of the unit, and all the pink background along with it. Hold shift while you click to add bits to the selection, hold ctrl to subtract bits.

Copy it (ctrl-c) and paste it as a new image. This should also be 96*72 pixels, unless you have a decidedly odd unit, so this will become the base for the shadow file. Select all the pink, and then using a large brush, paint it all white. Don't worry about going over the shadow - it's outside the selection, so unaffected.

Next, invert the selection (Selection -> Invert, or Ctrl-Shift-I), and paint over all the shadow in pure black.

Once you have done so, keeping just the black selected, go to Selection -> Save to Alpha Channel and click OK. When prompted, click OK again, a name is not necessary.

Then deselect the shadow (Selection -> Select none, or ctrl-D) and save the file. It should be saved using the same format as above, but with an "s" in place of the "a" - "GUxxMS1.0.tif". As you are saving it manually this time, you will need to increase the frame number by one each time, and of course, change the facing number when you move on to different facings.

Back to the main image, with the unit on it, you should have all the background selected still. Using the background colour (right mouse button) colour over all the pink and all the shadow to make it pure black.

Then invert the selection, and check to make sure there are no black pixels in the unit image. If there are, the easiest way to get rid of them without changing your paintbrush colour is to use the Clone Tool to take areas of colour from nearby, and copy them into the black. Right-click in the colour you want, and left click in the black. Do each pixel individually if you are unsure of this technique.

When you are sure there are no black pixels in the unit image, or non-black pixels in the background, again go to Selection -> Save to alpha channel and save the non-black selection into the alpha channel. Resave this file, it should still have the same name as before "GUxxMA1.0.tif"

When you have done a frame, ensure you have saved it, and its shadow, with the correct file names, then close both images within PSP. Load up the next one, and repeat the process. It might be better to keep the finished frames separate from the unfinished ones, lest you get confused, or break half-way through. You can copy them all back into the correct folder afterwards.

Once you have finished a facing, go back to Animation Shop, cut out the next facing, and repeat.

Once you have done all 5 facings, close that FLIC, and move on to the next one.

Its a long process, with each frame made up of 3 animations, made up of five facings, made up of usually a dozen or so frames, each becoming two pictures... but the finished sprite looks top quality.

NB: If you are a real perfectionist, you may wish to resize each FLIC by about 150% before beginning the process, to ensure CtP unit-sizes, but then you may have to sharpen the image, and cutting the black and non-black out may be harder later on. Your choice.

Last edited by E on 15-05-2004 at 00:26

	26-04-2004 05:52									#2
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quote: I'll open this with a list (I'll attach later) of Civ3 FLCs that can replace Ctp2 unit graphics (atleast through the modern era.

Why do we want to replace any of the CtP2 sprites? I think theyre better than civ3 flcs generally, more colours certainly. Id be more interested in seeing new unit sprites, like the Jaguar Warrior (my beta war walker )

quote: I'm hoping BigMC and Maq can put some tips with PSP8 (although I still have 7) up here.

Im still writing a guide to using PSP8 script to change the colour of an existing CtP2 sprite, its just taking me longer than i thought. It could easily be extended into a whole FLC conversion guide though eventually. Its not the only way either, i remember Caranorn (sp?) using Photoshop macros to convert FLC's more easily too.

Ill try to keep this thread relatively spam and hijack free (a unique achievement for me) and we'll see if we can get some flcs converted.

	26-04-2004 14:08									#3
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I am getting interested in converting the dinosaurs again I noticed that a civfanatics member made flying dinosaurs. But I am concerned we must seek permission from fan made art to convert it to ctp.

	27-04-2004 22:56									#4
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quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora Why do we want to replace any of the CtP2 sprites? I think theyre better than civ3 flcs generally, more colours certainly. Id be more interested in seeing new unit sprites, like the Jaguar Warrior (my beta war walker )

Maq, I just felt like making a list to try to keep unit graphics some what consistent. Ctp2 and Civ3 do have different styles. But thats a matter of my preference.


Big MC (and Maq)

I know the animation shop with PSP7 (not sure about PSP8) is able to read Civ3 FLCs but it just cant make them. Of course we are concerned about sprites but I was wondering your script would include opening the animation shop, dividing the frames by 8 and taking the ones needed, size them right, turn all Black 0,0,1 and make the pink background black 0,0,0
to allow for easy sprite input?

Or is it even possible to just get animation shop to make sprites, I guess maybe Martin the Dane could answer that though.

	27-04-2004 23:32									#5
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quote: Originally posted by E Maq, I just felt like making a list to try to keep unit graphics some what consistent. Ctp2 and Civ3 do have different styles. But thats a matter of my preference.

Consistent with what? Not that im disagreeing with you, im just not sure what you mean.

quote: I know the animation shop with PSP7 (not sure about PSP8) is able to read Civ3 FLCs but it just cant make them. Of course we are concerned about sprites but I was wondering your script would include opening the animation shop, dividing the frames by 8 and taking the ones needed, size them right, turn all Black 0,0,1 and make the pink background black 0,0,0 to allow for easy sprite input? Or is it even possible to just get animation shop to make sprites, I guess maybe Martin the Dane could answer that though.

Well i think its gonna be very unlikely therell be one script suitable for every unit conversion. If theres instructions, its gonna be things like how to setup and record the script and the order of the process needed, like creating alpha channel etc, which i still dont understand fully, i just know the process

Im not sure if you can make animation shop open a FLC and do all the work with a script, but its not much work to seperate the frames from the FLC manually anyway.

	28-04-2004 01:11									#6
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Two points here

It will be impossible to convert any flc file by script alone You will have to resize the civ3 graphic to make it fit into the ctp scheme of things but converting a flc into a bunch of pre alpha images is pretty easy same with the shadow really.

But the psp work can be completely script up to a point. Like I said the problem is resizing a civ3 flc file into the size of a ctp2 tile.

The second point it is impossible as far as I know for animation shop to make a spr file.

	28-04-2004 23:01									#7
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quote: Originally posted by The Big Mc Two points here It will be impossible to convert any flc file by script alone You will have to resize the civ3 graphic to make it fit into the ctp scheme of things but converting a flc into a bunch of pre alpha images is pretty easy same with the shadow really. But the psp work can be completely script up to a point. Like I said the problem is resizing a civ3 flc file into the size of a ctp2 tile.

By resizing do you mean a specific pixel size of the image or just having the sizes match the CtP2 unit?

Flicster allows for pixel resizing of the image, but not the unit. the background and dhadow to 0,0,0 black is easy to do. Shadows might be left out to save time.

	29-04-2004 00:41									#8
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For size take the T Rex Flc from civ 3 It it to big to fit on a ctp tile so we must resize it to allow it to blend in better with the other spr files.

Shadows should also be relatively easy to do.

	29-04-2004 00:58									#9
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You can't make a script that resizes? That seems a bit remiss.

	29-04-2004 02:27									#10
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Probably not the right thread but this is the unit I am currently working on.(sneek pic)

	29-04-2004 05:14									#11
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I'm not a SciFi player but it looks pretty good...bytheway have you seen this unit FLC (example is a few posts down)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showt...&threadid=29211


I'll look through the other threads about the process for conversion, but I'm wondering if it'll be easier to divide certain tasks. Like I could change the pallete and do some resizing but I know nothing about alpha channel and using makesprite.

	29-04-2004 05:35									#12
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Looking good Big Mc

and that Crawler unit looks trully evil

quote: I'll look through the other threads about the process for conversion, but I'm wondering if it'll be easier to divide certain tasks. Like I could change the pallete and do some resizing but I know nothing about alpha channel and using makesprite.

Perhaps we could, i hate using makespr, i dont mind doing the alpha channel part. It could get confusing doing things this way though, but it might be less tedious.

	29-04-2004 13:17									#13
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It’s not perfect yet you should see it when it is armed I just got to fix the hazing problem at the moment.

Also I don’t fined makespr that challenging and seen as my copy of psp 8 is quickly approaching it’s use by date I would be happy to help in the conversion conveyer belt.

Also some ones got ask if we can use that crawler

	29-04-2004 18:47									#14
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I looked an Immortal Wombat's post on the conversion proces (page 2 of the FLCs to be convert part 2 thread), I tried resize just the image pixel size and its easy to do with FLCster (of course there is the question matching it to CTP2) and changing the pallete to be all 0,0,0 black instead of individually highlight and fill was very fast too.

For convention sake I've heard that we should increase sizes by 120% If we agree thats the size we can increase FLC image borders to be 120% extract with flicster and also extract another one and resize the who unit. Change the pallete color than paste it back into the FLC. As a new FLC you can then extract it as separte FLC frames and just need to do the Alpha channel. This seems pretty standard is it possible to script that with FLCster and PSP images working back and forth?

	29-04-2004 18:51									#15
	Inflate your Upload Space

I have got to go of line for an hour or two but when I am back online I was planning to Wright a letter we can use to send to civ 3 unit artist who we want to use a flc file of there’s.

as to resizing that's something I will have to look into.

	29-04-2004 19:00									#16
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The sizing is tricky, but i think we should do it on a unit to unit basis. If we do a mounted unit we should compare it with a CtP2 Knight or Cavalry, if a foot unit then with Infantryman etc.

	29-04-2004 21:06									#17
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That’s right. The good thing is when we get I configured right for the se facing or east facing we just resize them all by this factor.

	29-04-2004 21:45									#18
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Heres an idea about what to send

quote: Hello I just saw you crawler unit for civ3 and was wondering if I could convert (steel) it and some of your other units to the ctp spr file format for use in the game.

The stuff in () will be removed

	29-04-2004 22:16									#19
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: Originally posted by The Big Mc Hello I just saw you crawler unit for civ3 and was wondering if I could convert it and some of your other units to the CTP sprite (spr file) format for use in the game. You will be properly credited for your work.

I edited a little bit, but I think thats all you need, nothing fancy. bytheway, I asked STephh if he has found a way to display flics in his SSS. If he has I asked him to release the source for it so we can either make F:C readable in CTP2 or make it easier to convert.

	29-04-2004 23:45									#20
	Inflate your Upload Space

FLC in CTP would be good we all know that flc are easy to work with. It also allows us to use ctp graphics in civ 3 and civ 3 in ctp

	30-04-2004 03:13									#21
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This is what I got from Steph:

"I know of the releasing of CTP2 source code. I also CTP2 quite well, I made a huge mod for that with a giant tech tree.
I didn't try to make Civ3 FLC readable by SSS. However, I make it so the storyboards generated with Flicster can be imported into SSS through the included editor. I'm using my own sprite system (basically with multisize frame to save memory), and I've done converter. So I don't think my code is exactly what you need.

I won't implement my ideas in CTP2, because I think CTP2 is to limited to handle them, except if you are ready to change a LOT.

However, I'm opened to exchange of ideas about new features.

And there is one thing I'm interested in. Random map generator"


Extracting the flics and resizing them is no problem. I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure how Steph is displaying the extracted frames or how his sprite system works. But perhaps there is some hope...

	30-04-2004 03:45									#22
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Slight problem with the crawler it appears the Maker went walkabout two years ago and claims not to be back till October. Some idiot bumped the thread.

I posted a pm. So he should get it if he shows up in secret from time to time.

	13-05-2004 07:48									#23
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Since most of my tile work is done I'm looking to try converting a few units mainly:

Guerrilla
Settler
Balou's modern Infantry
Balou's Parachutiste
German Infantry

One question, were the previous units resized to 120%? I think Immortal Wombat has the spearman, swordsman etc, nut they look like normal size.

	13-05-2004 11:40									#24
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I tried to convert a civ3 dragon a couple of weeks ago got it in the game but if I resized it I lost all the detail so it go to go in the game as a mega unit.

	13-05-2004 19:03									#25
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So they can be any size or just equal to or greater than a regular sprite? I'd like to keep Civ3 Ships huge.

	13-05-2004 21:14									#26
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GO as BIG as you like I once did a mega city sprite file which took 9 tiles up

The problem will be however in battle view all you units will get scrunched together and all that eye candy lost.

However there is a problem with the makespr system were if you don’t specify the size correct you spr goes to weird as a line of clear goes straight though it after a certain size.

	13-05-2004 22:01									#27
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quote: Originally posted by The Big Mc However there is a problem with the makespr system were if you don’t specify the size correct you spr goes to weird as a line of clear goes straight though it after a certain size.

I might have you take a look then, but I don't expect to get too big.
On your mega city sprite was that a unit or a city? Im thinking about making a whole big set of city sprites from civ3 and (resized) RoN to add different city flavors for each civ...

	14-05-2004 00:50									#28
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city

but it should work for a unit.

	15-05-2004 00:28									#29
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I added Immortal Wombats FLC making process to the first post as I get ready to embark on some conversions...

by the way, where are the civ3 flcs that have already been converted? I know there are a few out there...

	16-05-2004 05:27									#30
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quote: Originally posted by The Big Mc city but it should work for a unit.

BigMc: an odd question. If City graphics are sprites can you make animated city graphics?