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Shadow palette indistinguishable?
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G-E
Defense Minister


Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:28 am    Post subject:  Shadow palette indistinguishable?
Subject description: I can't see my own shadow :(
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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?

---

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.



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ApolloTD
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Joined: 19 Nov 2003

PostPosted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 8:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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.

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Graion Dilach
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary

PostPosted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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.

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"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
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
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G-E
Defense Minister


Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 3:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

But it doesn't fix* the non-background background then....

I guess what I'm saying is it would be nice if SHP Builder could posterize the shadow frames to whatever the background and shadow colours are.

Even if it's just an option under the fixes menu, some way to automatically divide/replace whatever colours are found in the frame.

Another fix option might be errant dot removal, like a despeckle filter to remove that one stray dot at the edge somewhere.

These sound like little quibbles but it would speed things up immensely.

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Graion Dilach
Defense Minister


Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary

PostPosted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 12:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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
=======================
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...

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Krow
Commander


Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Location: Malaysia

PostPosted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Just edit your palette. Is clicking on a few things that hard for you?

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G-E
Defense Minister


Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 1:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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...

I'm not arguing that it can't be done the hard way, I don't want to do it the hard way!

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Krow
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Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Location: Malaysia

PostPosted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 4:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

It's not hard. You're just lazy.

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interesting seeing your voxel work. They're still better than Aro's!

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G-E
Defense Minister


Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 6:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Krow wrote:
It's not hard. You're just lazy.

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.

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 6:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Posterize Shadow function attached.
Load this and then use it for conversion.

5 seconds work in pal editor. really, there is no need for any fancy coding work.
Use a custom palette and learn how to use them to your advantage.



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G-E
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Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Well thanks LKO I'll use it, but that still doesn't automate fixing it...

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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.

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G-E
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Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

And how does that help someone who doesn't use 3dstudio? :\

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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. Wink
SHP Builder also has color schemes, palette conversions and other helpful tools to do such adjustments in 2 mouse clicks.

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G-E
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Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

You miss the point. I don't render to .shp at all...

My last few structures made with solidworks were screen captured and then manipulated entirely in ps/psp/osshpb/xcc...

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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 11:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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

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G-E
Defense Minister


Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2015 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Please LKO I'm not after more multi-step workarounds, I already have to do similar things...

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