TD light tank with antennae (RA) (SHP)

[AchromicWhite]

WAS going to be used in my mod, then it became obvious that I needed one with a loading and unloading animation, but if you want a nicer looking light tank, you can use this

 

Converted from TD, added aerials, says it all... if someone tells me how to make it into a GIF animation, I'll add that to this post also.

1tnk.rar

[Nyerguds]

What are aerials?

 

[edit]You mean the antennae?[/edit]

 

As for making GIF animations, Gimp can do that... you just add the frames as layers, save it as GIF, and tell it to use the layers as animation. It even has a function to optimize the frames by using transparent cumulative layers where only the changes are added.

 

But adding the turret, well, that's a whole other thing. The positioning rules for turrets are kinda fuzzy in C&C.

 

[edit]

 

This is with the turret just centered on it...

[AchromicWhite]

No one else calls them aerials? yep antennae...

(maybe it's a New Zealand thing, we have a few words that we use here that others don't)

Cheers, I might use gimp to do that for the Abrams as well, I think the Abrams came out better, but this also looks pretty good ingame.

BTW how DO you make it with the turret going around?

[AchromicWhite]

I'm using XCC to make the SHP into a PNG, but the best I can do it make the PNG save a very long picture of all the frames, how can I make a layered PNG of the SHP file?

[Nyerguds]

Um, I just did "copy as PNG" in XCC so it converted it as multiple frames, and then dumped all those frame files into the Layers window of Gimp. It supports file drag & drop.

 

btw, I just posted on PPM how you can use XCC to convert one bug PNG into a SHP with multiple frames:

http://ppmsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=426731#426706

 

[edit]

 

All right, what I did was a bit more complex than that... I'll explain in detail:

 

-Copy the SHP as PNG frames.

-Divide the frames in turret frames and body frames. I used a rename tool to rename the turret ones so they start from 000.

-Use XCC to make TS SHP files from these 2 frame sets, to get a SHP for the turret and one for the body.

-Convert both body and turret SHPs to a single PNG file.

-Open the body PNG in Gimp. Drag the Turret PNG into the Layers window.

-Right-click on the turret layer in the Layers window, and select "add alpha channel".

-Use the Select By Colour function to select the background of the turret layer, and press [Del] to clear it so it becomes transparent. (make sure you converted it with a palette where the background is NOT black, otherwise you get errors).

-Make sure the turret layer is above the body layer, and merge the two layers. Save the now-complete unit rotation with turret as a new PNG.

-Use the method from the PPM link to copy that PNG to a TS SHP with all (32) frames

-Copy that SHP as PNG frames

-Open frame 000 in Gimp

-Dump all the other frames (001 to 031) into the Layers window of Gimp, and move the layers around to correct their order.

-(optional) Stretch it to 2x size, with pure pixel resize method (no interpolation). Note that if the image is still Indexed it never uses interpolation anyway.

-Save as .gif, and make sure to select the "save layers as animation" option.

 

If you're not using a transparent background for the GIF, you could use the Gimp option "Filters -> animation -> Optimize for GIF" to make the gif file take less space by working with layers that only contain the changed pixels, but this doesn't work well if the gif has a transparent background.

 

If you want to give the GIF a transparent background (I didn't, because it made the black antennae invisible on this forum's background), you have to add an alpha channel to ALL of the 32 frames, and then use the same colour selection method used for the turret to clear the backgrounds. This is a lot of work though, since there's no way to automate it. You just need to do it 32 times.

 

Note that the turret fixing method doesn't work on all units. If you look at C&C's SSM Launcher, Rocket Launcher, Mobile HQ (RA's Radar Jammer) or RA's Mobile Gap Generator, you'll see the turret is moved by the game itself to be on the back of the vehicle, while it is centered in the SHP graphics. So this method won't work for units like that. For most tanks it works fine though, since their turret is perfectly centered. And with this method you can adjust the height of the turret on the body just fine, by moving the layer a bit.

[AchromicWhite]

XCC keeps resizing the frames to cut it as close as it can to the turret (getting rid of as much background color as it can) when I try to make the turret and the body into SHPs.

And if I copy and paste as a SHP, it creates a corrupted SHP for some reason... and resizes SOME frames also (wtf, lol).

I also couldn't figure out your renaming program... which isn't too bad for vehicles, but would be terrible for infantry.

 

[Nyerguds]

XCC keeps resizing the frames to cut it as close as it can to the turret (getting rid of as much background color as it can) when I try to make the turret and the body into SHPs.

That's just how TS SHP format works. The frames are cut out, but it remembers their position in the frame. If you look at some more TS SHP files in XCC Mixer, you'll notice they're ALL like that. It's normal. Nothing is resized. If you convert it back to PNG it looks fine.

 

And if I copy and paste as a SHP, it creates a corrupted SHP for some reason... and resizes SOME frames also (wtf, lol).

What exactly did you copy and paste as SHP? It should only be done with PNG or PCX files, and you have to make sure to give the correct dimensions and number of frames.

[Chimas]

Hi White,

First of all, nice innitiative.

 

Can we use this SHP file in Tiberian Dawn for the light tank?

If so, are you done or still making refinements?

If it's finished already, I'd lke to advise to publish a MIX file so we can throw it in C&C95 folder to test and play, or any other proper way to do that.

 

Let me know if you're about to make something like this for helicopters.

I am studying these SHP files and planning later to make a version of the Black Hawk for TD, but from what I've read from Nyerguds it's definitely not an easy task.

[AchromicWhite]

This one seems fine, the Abrams seems to need some more refining, the more I look the more I see small mistakes (transparent dots and so on, because I was finding my own way to solve problems with transparencies) . Not due to the way I draw stuff, but because of the converting files just to SAVE the work I do.

 

To quickly answer your question, no, TD and RA work using different pallets, these would all have crazy colors if you tried to use them in TD. Hell, the planes even have less FRAMES than the flyers in TD. I would like to make versions of both of these for TD as well, I am planning on it.

 

These were for RA because I'm starting a mod for RA. Issue is, I don't really mod, so it's a learn as I go experience (although, I have done some fiddling, so I know about what can and can't be easily done).

 

You know that I just took the TD light tank and put sticks on it right? This isn't a total redesign...

 

A Black Hawk would be cool, but to really make a good looking one you'd have to make a 3D model and take a shot of it from 32 angles. Else you'd have to be the most awesome pixel artist ever.

[mrgreenno1]

Added this one to the game. Not working. 

 

UPD: its working ?

Edited January 27, 2021 by mrgreenno1