Pog-style counters in CA ?
JimP
🖼️ 280 images Cartographer
I've been looking at RPTool's Maptools virtual tabletop for my campaign.
I was looking over the tokens they use for play. A square 200x200 pixel png file, 24 bit. Inside that square is a circle, and in that circle is a side or front view of the NPC/character/monster.
In the past I've made full height characters and then just copy and pasted the characters from the shoulders up using Ifranview.
Looking for suggestions on how to do the head-only portraits.
Thanks !
I was looking over the tokens they use for play. A square 200x200 pixel png file, 24 bit. Inside that square is a circle, and in that circle is a side or front view of the NPC/character/monster.
In the past I've made full height characters and then just copy and pasted the characters from the shoulders up using Ifranview.
Looking for suggestions on how to do the head-only portraits.
Thanks !
Comments
Hopefully I haven't completely missed it.
edit:
I've worked with the portrait template. The male one, with the male helms, chain coif, etc. work fine.
Changed out everything, tried to make some female warriors with helm, hat, and chain coif, but they don't look correct. I used the hat, etc. from the female catalog.
I'll post some pictures later in the week, Monday shows up early.
I have found that using a simple desk top publishing program like Microsoft Publisher or Serif PagePlus to make these counters and paper minis works best. I create a blank template of scaled minis or counter squares (I haven't tried making blank circular pog outlines but that would be easy to do as well) in the desktop publishing program (I use PagePlus now), then I import my images into the template and when I have every picture I need imported in, I create a PDF from the desktop publishing file. I print the PDF file out on my color inkjet, usually at actual size (not shrink to fit page because the measurements of my counters and minis are precisely made in the DTP program) and "best" quality.
Images can come from anywhere - Google image search, online character drawing programs like Hero Machine, and most importantly to our forum, CC3 exports. I take any images I want to use into a graphics program (I use GIMP but Photoshop, Fireworks and IrfanView among others would work as well) and get my image cropped, cleaned up, or what have you. I then import these images into the PagePlus desktop publishing program and arrange them. I find that having a larger import image that is resized smaller in the DTP program works best. That's key - having a detailed image that can be shrunk down is better I find then starting with an image that is "just the right size" to fit in the counter, paper mini or pog. With Character Artist, I would probably do a fairly decent size PNG export of my character, crop out his head (and maybe add transparency areas around the character) in GIMP and save as a new image, then import that image into PagePlus in an image box, then (if I were making a pog) draw a transparent circle with a thick black circumference border on top of that image box and arrange all those elements to they looked descent. Then create my PDF, print and cut out, and play.
Coincidentally, early this morning I posted an article on my blog about making paper mini "standees: http://justaddheroes.blogspot.com/2012/01/making-your-own-icons-standees.html
I came up with about 25 head shot characters in CC3/CA. What I don't know how to do is make the edges transparent. I think I can easily figure out the 200x200 pixel sqaure for them to go into.
I'll check into gimp.
You could definitely do all the post work in a program like GIMP - the image, a circular border, transparency areas etc. that you can't do in CC3 or do as easily.
Another good tool to have in your arsenal is screen capture - CTRL+PrintScreen. I have zoomed in on images in PDF files to get a decent size, done a screen capture, then cropped out what I needed from the screen capture in GIMP and used that to do any more post work.