CA3 Creating Symbols Questions
I have been playing around with creating and modifying symbols with Paint.Net program and have made some interesting Mods and editions to my catalog but I'm having a problem making these symbols vari color. I have read the guide which was very helpful but still don't clearly understand how to vari color the symbol. It mentions reducing the image to gray scale, inverting it then delete it but I don't understand how to do this. Has anyone worked with Paint.Net and know how to vari color symbols with this format, any help would be great.
Comments
Take a look at the first few PNG symbols in e.g. /Symbols/Maps/CC3/Borders/. Let's ignore the different resolutions for now.
First you have the Apple symbol PNG, then a greyscale version of that called "Apple_vari_01.PNG" and finally a partially transparent PNG called "Apply_vari_02.PNG".
The two vari PNGs make up the bitmap varicolor symbol in CC3, with vari_01 providing the base symbol, and vari_02 defining the varicolor areas.
So, to go from a colored PNG to a varicolor symbol do the following:
- Open your color PNG in Photoshop, Paint.NET or whatever image editor you use.
- Select all the areas you want to be varicolor.
- Make these areas greyscale.
- Save this version of the PNG as "name_vari_01.PNG".
- Invert your selection and delete the newly selected parts, leaving only your varicolor area.
- Set the images opacity to 50%.
- Save as "name_vari_02.PNG".
Now you can import these into CC3 as a symbol, via Symbols > Import PNGs. CC3 will automatically combine these two PNGs into one symbol with a varicolor area. If you check the option for mulitple resolutions, all the different versions will also be created automatically.
Thanks,
~Dogtag
For Dungeon symbols we use a scale of 100 pixel per foot for very high quality. 40 pixel per foot works well too.