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Thread: Spikes? :D

  1. #1
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    Default Spikes? :D

    XD It's just a random mod suggestion, dont kill me for it, but!

    I know a lot of people who, RPly, have spikes instead of frills on their back! SO I thought, since it was possible to do fur, manes and other stuffs, 'sit possible to do spikes too as a mod?

    I'd try it myself, but as I said before, my AGHviewer hates me!

    Thanks for reading this and hopefully not chewing me off for asking!

    ~Cey

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    It's possible to have whatever you want on your dragon's back, so long as it fits along the part of the model that the spine frills have allotted to them.

    You just need the art. :P

    I mayyyy give it a shot sometime, but this isn't a promise. I only have so much time~.

    .:Malestryx:.

    Aegis Shatterer - Scourge of the Scourge - Blight's Own Decay

  3. #3
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Quote Originally Posted by Raptress View Post
    It's possible to have whatever you want on your dragon's back, so long as it fits along the part of the model that the spine frills have allotted to them.

    You just need the art. :P

    I mayyyy give it a shot sometime, but this isn't a promise. I only have so much time~.
    D'aww, thanks Siiv! <3 Would be awesome if you could! You or anyone who would wish to, of course, this thread isnt going anywhere! XP

    Thanks so much again!

  4. #4

    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    What, sort of like the ones Kesqui's got, or more bony-like?
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    - Kesqui - Formerly of Ice, now of Chaos, lair in Liak
    First Rebirth 12-12-2003 / Ascended to Ancient 12-12-2010

  5. #5

    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    I saw a beautiful picture while game was loading today of a hatchling with spikes down its spine. It was overlooking a couple of small islands with a big flock of birds (seagulls? don't remember exactly) in the sky. It would be neat to have those spikes as a character option. :-)

  6. #6
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Naturally, as soon as I think something will be relatively simple, it turns out to not be simple at all. xD

    I've got some art done for this, I'm just having some trouble getting it to play nicely in the game. It's like it remembers where the texture is supposed to be, and I'm not entirely sure why.



    Figuring out what voodoo Soltaire used to get his natural teeth and claws to work correctly is going to come into play too, assuming I can figure out what's going on here to start with. I don't think it's a transparency problem because 1) the entire spine ridge area is not black and 2) other things that need transparency are still working correctly.

    .:Malestryx:.

    Aegis Shatterer - Scourge of the Scourge - Blight's Own Decay

  7. #7

    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Those black and red frills look kinda nifty tho, and I really love how the black fades to red in the horns!

  8. #8

    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    The black to red fade is default to the game actually xD If you have an unmodded Istaria those horns would look like that.
    Avatar is of my character Akrion, snipped from Hrae's Hoard of Creatures by the excellent moss loving artist Nambroth. <3

  9. #9

    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Just edit the file. I did for makes should not conflict with solitaire. Teeth and claw. Mod

  10. #10
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Quote Originally Posted by Blue Hasia View Post
    Just edit the file. I did for makes should not conflict with solitaire. Teeth and claw. Mod
    Your manes don't need the stuff that Solitaire did for his mod because your manes are meant to be tinted by the dragon's scale color. Spines, being like horns, ideally would look like horns. That's why I need to look into how he did his mod. I have a rough idea of how it was done, I'm just trying to figure out what's causing that black area between the spikes first.

    .:Malestryx:.

    Aegis Shatterer - Scourge of the Scourge - Blight's Own Decay

  11. #11

    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    You need to create a new alpha for the transparent area. The dorsal fins are basically a flat featureless surface on the model. The color area you created for the spikes is painted onto it. The alpha channel makes the surface visible or transparent. You need to create a silhouette of the spikes painted in white where the spikes are and black where they are not. The shadow you are seeing is the alpha for the fin membranes you based the texture off of.

  12. #12
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    I figured it was something like that. You know.. something I'm not really experienced with. :P Thanks muchly though, Solitaire! I have a direction to go now.

    .:Malestryx:.

    Aegis Shatterer - Scourge of the Scourge - Blight's Own Decay

  13. #13

    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Just to expand on this a little, I created a quick image to show you what it would look like. On the left is an example "spike" texture. On the right is how the alpha channel should appear. If you are using a program like Photoshop to do your editing, look for the channel window. It will probably have either an "RGB" channel with red, green and blue broken out as individual colors below it or it might have just "Gray" listed. Depending upon what mode the image is in. Below that will be the alpha channel. If you turn it on, you will see the spikes with membranes alpha channel if you have the texture open that you are working with. You can probably just paint everything in the alpha channel black then use the magic wand tool to select the blank areas of your spikes, inverse the selection and paint the selected area white in the alpha. Save and get it into the game. Sounds a little complex maybe but after you see how it is working it is quite simple.

    As a note, you can use the alpha channel to create varying degrees of transparency of your textures. Varying shades of gray will cause your texture to become translucent. An example for a use of this would be to create a 50% gray alpha for the horn texture in the mod. While it might not work out in a way that looks good, you could get a horn color but have it tinted with the dragon's base color. Or maybe play with the stripes so that they are highly visible on the front of the body but fade away towards the tail. That might not work with stripes, though, they are weird with how they apply to the body.

    You could use the 50% alpha for semi-transparent wing membranes but I think they would look awful. The dragon body was not designed for that and you would have holes visible in the model.
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    Last edited by Solitaire; September 11th, 2011 at 02:02 PM.

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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Thanks for the explanation! You're always so helpful with this stuff, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. ^^

    .:Malestryx:.

    Aegis Shatterer - Scourge of the Scourge - Blight's Own Decay

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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    XD D'aww it's awesome to know so many people actually give advices and work on it, thank you all so much again!

  16. #16
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Quote Originally Posted by Raptress View Post
    Your manes don't need the stuff that Solitaire did for his mod because your manes are meant to be tinted by the dragon's scale color. Spines, being like horns, ideally would look like horns. That's why I need to look into how he did his mod. I have a rough idea of how it was done, I'm just trying to figure out what's causing that black area between the spikes first.
    If ever you can't get this working though, it'd work perfectly with the same color too, considering aku's spikes - the one i actually would love this mod for! - were supposed to be black at first XD

    Thank you again for taking all the time to this! : D

  17. #17
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    I just can't get the dang AGHviewer to work! Any clue why it won't convert the files? =\

  18. #18
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    What exactly is the AGHViewer doing (or not doing), Racktor?

    .:Malestryx:.

    Aegis Shatterer - Scourge of the Scourge - Blight's Own Decay

  19. #19
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    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Argh, sorry to bother you again for help on this stuff, Solitaire, but Photoshop CS4 is not cooperating with me. D:

    I cannot tick the Alpha Channels box in the save file window when I go to save the Targa file. So I can save Targas.. but not the alpha channels that go with them. It's got a little yellow triangle symbol with a ! in it. Tried Googling, but I can't find anything that works.

    .:Malestryx:.

    Aegis Shatterer - Scourge of the Scourge - Blight's Own Decay

  20. #20

    Default Re: Spikes? :D

    Not a problem at all. Sounds like you have the image in the wrong mode. I had to do some checking to make sure that I had it right. Looks like you cannot save an image in grayscale with an alpha channel. So you can do this one of two ways I think.

    The first would be to click on the menu item "Image" then "Mode". Change it to RGB with 8 bits/channel. That should allow you to save it. Not 100% sure if the game will tint it like that though. It can be picky at times.

    The other way to do it, actually the better way, would be to save it as a grayscale PNG file. To do it this way, get rid of the alpha channel and just have the intended transparent parts of your image transparent. So you see the Photoshop checkerboard pattern in the background like in the attached image. If your image is on the background layer, you will need to right click on the layer, choose "layer from background" then select and delete the unwanted parts of the image. Tip: Soft edges look much better in the game than hard ones. So make sure that when you are selecting that you have the anti-alias option turned on with a 1 or 2 pixel "feather". If you zoom in and look closely at the image, you will see how the texture fades into transparency.

    I might have misled you a little bit with continuing with the TGA method. The last I was really working with models was a building and they generally use TGA so that was what was in my head. Characters generally use PNG files. They all get converted to AGH in the end but I think that they might be encoded differently.

    So give that a shot and see if it works for you.
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