MORPHING AND ALPHA BLENDING NUMBERS - Updated 1/22/14

[NICK]

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I put the images back in this thread and posted a downloadable file with additional information.

viewtopic.php?f=85&t=15811&p=51343#p51343



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[Austinmario13]

******

I put the images back in this thread and posted a downloadable file with additional information.

https://www.footballidiot.com/forum/vie ... 343#p51343



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Woah, a wild NICK has appeared.

[NICK]

******

I put the images back in this thread and posted a downloadable file with additional information.

https://www.footballidiot.com/forum/vie ... 343#p51343



*********

Woah, a wild NICK has appeared.

Thought I fell off the planet and disappeared didn't you

[LOBBS]

Honest questions since I'm trying to bring my three year old custom Chiefs uniforms up to the latest and greatest. Since I'm only doing the one team setting up my pallettes to morph isn't a huge priority but alpha blending has me intrigued. Is there any real harm in using more blending colors? It would only take a few seconds to drag and autofill the pallette from the red of the jersey in the first cell to yellow of the border in say, cell 32, or a second full row. Then from yellow to the white of the main numeral in cell 64. It would take a little longer to edit the first 32 colors in hex but figuring out the additional hex values for the alpha isn't too difficult. It would seem having more available transparencies would even further reduce the chance for jaggies. Also can we use alpha on the name plates? Set cells 1 thru 8 as transparencies of the border color and cells 9 thru 15 or 16 as the interior color of the letters?

TIA

[NICK]

Honest questions since I'm trying to bring my three year old custom Chiefs uniforms up to the latest and greatest. Since I'm only doing the one team setting up my pallettes to morph isn't a huge priority but alpha blending has me intrigued. Is there any real harm in using more blending colors? It would only take a few seconds to drag and autofill the pallette from the red of the jersey in the first cell to yellow of the border in say, cell 32, or a second full row. Then from yellow to the white of the main numeral in cell 64. It would take a little longer to edit the first 32 colors in hex but figuring out the additional hex values for the alpha isn't too difficult. It would seem having more available transparencies would even further reduce the chance for jaggies. Also can we use alpha on the name plates? Set cells 1 thru 8 as transparencies of the border color and cells 9 thru 15 or 16 as the interior color of the letters?

TIA

Hey LOBBS, you can use as many blending colors as you want, the only thing is that it only requires 4 blending colors to blend two raw colors together, unless you are doing a rounded edge. On two colored numbers with a raw color for the number and the raw background color, I usually use the entire 16 colors of row one in the palette which gives me 14 blending colors, but in actuality I only need four blenders.

Yes, you can do this also for the nameplate, but the nameplate only works with 16 colors. It won't work with more than 16, or at least I never got one to work with more than 16. This process works for numbers, nameplates, decals, portraits, anything that requires your image to blend with a background.The numbers and nameplate are kind of linked with regard to setting up your palette the same way so you can use the same palette for both. Any other image, its probably easier just to set up an alpha channel in the image and have the dds plugin lay out your palette for you, but I really don't remember if that works with an index color 8 bit rgb image. I never had much luck in doing that cuz I was probably doing it wrong, so I did everything the way I did the numbers.

More information here: viewtopic.php?f=85&t=15846&hilit=alpha+decals

and here: viewtopic.php?f=85&t=15846&hilit=alpha+decals&start=13

[Austinmario13]

Honest questions since I'm trying to bring my three year old custom Chiefs uniforms up to the latest and greatest. Since I'm only doing the one team setting up my pallettes to morph isn't a huge priority but alpha blending has me intrigued. Is there any real harm in using more blending colors? It would only take a few seconds to drag and autofill the pallette from the red of the jersey in the first cell to yellow of the border in say, cell 32, or a second full row. Then from yellow to the white of the main numeral in cell 64. It would take a little longer to edit the first 32 colors in hex but figuring out the additional hex values for the alpha isn't too difficult. It would seem having more available transparencies would even further reduce the chance for jaggies. Also can we use alpha on the name plates? Set cells 1 thru 8 as transparencies of the border color and cells 9 thru 15 or 16 as the interior color of the letters?

TIA

Hey LOBBS, you can use as many blending colors as you want, the only thing is that it only requires 4 blending colors to blend two raw colors together, unless you are doing a rounded edge. On two colored numbers with a raw color for the number and the raw background color, I usually use the entire 16 colors of row one in the palette which gives me 14 blending colors, but in actuality I only need four blenders.

Yes, you can do this also for the nameplate, but the nameplate only works with 16 colors. It won't work with more than 16, or at least I never got one to work with more than 16. This process works for numbers, nameplates, decals, portraits, anything that requires your image to blend with a background.The numbers and nameplate are kind of linked with regard to setting up your palette the same way so you can use the same palette for both. Any other image, its probably easier just to set up an alpha channel in the image and have the dds plugin lay out your palette for you, but I really don't remember if that works with an index color 8 bit rgb image. I never had much luck in doing that cuz I was probably doing it wrong, so I did everything the way I did the numbers.

More information here: viewtopic.php?f=85&t=15846&hilit=alpha+decals

and here: viewtopic.php?f=85&t=15846&hilit=alpha+decals&start=13

LOBBS and NICK in the same thread? What year is this, 2013?

[rogerjinx]

LOBBS and NICK in the same thread? What year is this, 2013?

And now I remember when I was just a lurker in this site. And do the number for each team on my own. Just forgot how to do it again.

[LOBBS]

Honest questions since I'm trying to bring my three year old custom Chiefs uniforms up to the latest and greatest. Since I'm only doing the one team setting up my pallettes to morph isn't a huge priority but alpha blending has me intrigued. Is there any real harm in using more blending colors? It would only take a few seconds to drag and autofill the pallette from the red of the jersey in the first cell to yellow of the border in say, cell 32, or a second full row. Then from yellow to the white of the main numeral in cell 64. It would take a little longer to edit the first 32 colors in hex but figuring out the additional hex values for the alpha isn't too difficult. It would seem having more available transparencies would even further reduce the chance for jaggies. Also can we use alpha on the name plates? Set cells 1 thru 8 as transparencies of the border color and cells 9 thru 15 or 16 as the interior color of the letters?

TIA

Hey LOBBS, you can use as many blending colors as you want, the only thing is that it only requires 4 blending colors to blend two raw colors together, unless you are doing a rounded edge. On two colored numbers with a raw color for the number and the raw background color, I usually use the entire 16 colors of row one in the palette which gives me 14 blending colors, but in actuality I only need four blenders.

Yes, you can do this also for the nameplate, but the nameplate only works with 16 colors. It won't work with more than 16, or at least I never got one to work with more than 16. This process works for numbers, nameplates, decals, portraits, anything that requires your image to blend with a background.The numbers and nameplate are kind of linked with regard to setting up your palette the same way so you can use the same palette for both. Any other image, its probably easier just to set up an alpha channel in the image and have the dds plugin lay out your palette for you, but I really don't remember if that works with an index color 8 bit rgb image. I never had much luck in doing that cuz I was probably doing it wrong, so I did everything the way I did the numbers.

More information here: viewtopic.php?f=85&t=15846&hilit=alpha+decals

and here: viewtopic.php?f=85&t=15846&hilit=alpha+decals&start=13

Thanks Nick. I was still on an adrenaline high from roller derby practice when I typed that last night. My thought was possibly having the best of both worlds with alpha and pallette blending techniques. I got used to working with hex colors when I was coding Android apps. Finding the extra alpha values would be easy. In Photoshop it gives you the hex value for any input RGB color. Alpha and RGB are on the same 256 value scale. So in your pallette you could put pure 0, 0, 0 black in cell 1 and drag to cell 32 at the end of the second row to input pure 255, 255, 255 white and let it fill the 30 gradient colors between them. Those shades of gray are your new alpha values to blend from transparent to solid over 32 intervals. For example if one of the grays generated was RGB 64, 64, 64. That hex is 404040 or 75% gray. In the alpha channel, 40 is 25% opaque or 75% transparent. RGB 32, 32, 32 is hex 202020 which is alpha 20 or 12.5% opaque/87.5% transparent, etc. It would then be just a matter of clicking each cell in the gradient you generated in your pallette and jotting down the hex values for the alphas to use when you do your hex edits in the .dds file. A few extra minutes, at most, on top of the technique you've already laid out. The same could be done with nameplates you're just stuck using the one row.

You could still keep the idea of morphing pallettes as long as you were consistent with how the were built i.e. always having your raw colors in the same cells for each. Perhaps use two rows instead of one for single color numbers. 4 instead of 2 for three colors, etc. When you shrink from your template to the primary game size of 128x256 it would give a forced color closer to the "ideal" when it rounds off and perhaps less jaggies on the transparent alphas. I could see this being an advantage for rounded and numbers where the angles aren't 45°.

Not sure if any of this would look better in game. I'm going to play with it over the next few nights and see.

[LOBBS]

LOBBS and NICK in the same thread? What year is this, 2013?

Haha. I've checked in occasionally over the years. Hadn't picked my controller up in a few tho. I'm checking out the latest Mod, updating my uniforms to the latest templates and may revisit some ideas I had on roster ratings. I need a new graphics card to play Madden '19 and will probably jump back heavily into modding once I have that.