My pattern doesn't want to work. I did everything right - I think, but when I go in game it's all grey, but the colors are there.





When I picked the pattern in CAS. Anyone else have this?

Abbey its not exactly clear from your screenshot what your problem is - please detail it. Thank you.

Ahh, sorry =P I was kind of in a rush

I was running into the exact same problem as you and finally figured it out. When you're ready to save as DDS, you need to do a Layer -> Flatten Image first...even if you only have 1 layer, it will change the name from "Layer 1" to "Background", and your channels will still keep their data.

Maybe in HP's copious spare moments he could add another line in his tutorial for Photoshop users along with the Gimp info on the Compose step since this happens at the same time. Either way, it's an awesome tutorial! Thanks for all the hard work you put into it.

Hi, I tried the tutorial this morning and it took me a while, but now I have a pattern imported in Delphy's. The only thing is, when I try to save I get a message and it won't save. Any ideas?

Image

Translation: An exeption has occured. If you press 'doorgaan' the message will be ignored and the application will continue. If you press 'afsluiten' the application will be closed.

Cannot find file or assembly blablabla or cannot load one of it's parts. The system cannot find the file.


Edit: It turned out that I was missing the .net framework-thingy. Now it works!

Now I have another problem. When I select my pattern and choose the same colors for all options, I still see an outline. This isn't right is it? See screenshot.

Screenshot

Schaapje82, the outline would depend on how you have your channels setup. Can you zip up and post the DDS?

Here it is...
the dds

Hope you can tell me what's wrong.

I do have another question. I get the impression that you want a very clean line, no blurring - but when I shrink the texture down, there is blurring and I'm not sure how to keep that from happening.

I had this happen. I then applied different colors to each of the layers and the pattern appeared. I went back to the Pattern Packager, applied those color values to the pattern and resaved. The pattern now looks right in game. Edit: It could also be that your channels are in the wrong order. Try putting the patterned one uppermost, and the solid one bottom most.

Maybe that's where my outlines come from too... Tomorrow I'm going to try to first shrink the vector to 256x256 and then make the different layers. Maybe that will help.

I haven't even gotten to the other layers - I have some really nice gimp brushes but they are huge - when I shrink the results down, its blurry and pixellated.

Just a pointer for OSX users: the NVidia photoshop plugins are Windows-only, but apparently you can use GraphicConverter instead:

http://www.lemkesoft.com/content/193/key-features.html

It's a quite useful tool for lots of things. Shareware, but the unregistered version is almost as powerful as the paid one – it only can't do batch processing.

That reminds me...another limitation of the nVidia DDS Photoshop plugin is that they don't work in 64bit Photoshop CS3/CS4, you have to use 32bit or they aren't loaded.

so with the 4 channels, red, green, blue, alpha ..... i would cut out red for the area i want black, would i need to add another channel after alpha? to get the 5th color in so it can be changeable? ^_^; sorry i'm a bit slow here...

I think what Delphy means is dat on the red-channel, you can make shapes in black, that will get the background-color you select in de pattern packagers. The shapes you make in white will get the color that you select under palette 1. On the other 3 channels you can put the other three colors.

I finally got it right. No outlines and a fully working pattern. Yeah!
Thanks for the help, if I can help anyone, please let me know.

To kawaiimiyo: You have 4 channels (Red, green, blue and alpha 1).

Each of them has a colour.

You have a pattern with 5 colours, and you don't need one of them to be changeable, let's say, Pink.

If you leave the PINK part out of the 4 channels, it will be filled with the Background colour, which is not changeable.

When you are in the Pattern Packager, you can pick the Background colour. You set it to PINK and that part of the pattern, in-game,will be PINK and will not be changeable.

I apologize for making another post, but I've got the feeling that mine got lost in this thread. When I try to copy+paste the black and white masks into the channels, the image remains transparent, but the entire image becomes selected as if something was, infact, pasted there. It seems like it should be quite simple, but for the life of me I can't figure out why it's not working. Thanks.

I for the life of me am not sure what I'm doing wrong. I am using GIMP.

At first I thought it was because I was using the coloured layers into the decomposed layers, so I instead pasted in my raster layers. Then I thought that using a fourth colour was complicating it, so I stitched to three colours, then I thought maybe the blue layer [which is set to red in the colour picker] was in the wrong place, since when I decompose red is at the top instead of the bottom, so I put it back the way the tool set them - no matter what I do, when I import it into the game, the pattern is gone and I've got this red, pixelated mess.

I don't want to break down and get illustrator, don't really have the money for that right now, but if anyone has managed this with GIMP I would appreciate some pointers.

I'm looking for a way to center my pattern. Wasn't sure if that was something to mention here or in its own thread. I put all my files in its own thread but thought I'd post here in case there's already that information elsewhere.

Hi,

This may be a dumb question however is it possible to create any kind of transparency in a pattern?

Thanks

To the best of my knowledge, transparency is handled by the underlying texture that the CAS one covers. So, patterns can't - if I am understanding things right.

Hi, thank for the tip! I'm a completely green at CC creation, so I have lots of noob questions:

I'm wondering if a tutorial exists for creating patterns on mac? I'm guessing Graphics Converter is used for making the DDS file, but how does a mac user import the file into the game? I am unable (for... uh... obvious mac-ish reasons) to use Delphy's particularly peachy pattern packager for PC people.

So, I'm slowly but surely getting the hang of this. And I would be so happy, except when saving to DDS format in GIMP, I don't get a popup.

Arrrgggg! I have DDS Utilities and the plug-in for GIMP, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Any help????


I've gotten everything done, used Delphy's packager, put the file in Mods/Packages, and I can't even find my pattern in-game.

I must be missing something. Anyone?

Hi ^^

I've started making patterns as well - I'm actually very new at making my own custom content (I've tried recoloring, modifying alpha layers, making my own meshes, modifying meshes; I guess I'm just not good at that XD). I understand the vector program (I use Inkscape), the channels (using CS3), how to mask/unmask, where everything should be, how to save as DDS and the packager.

The problem? Placing the different layers into the channels. Either I get a message saying I can't place into the channel since I only have one selected, or if I have all, that I can't copy/paste layers.

I've tried using a 2-color pattern to start; red and green. In the first layer, red = black, green = white, and vice-versa for the second layer. But I can't put these as channels for some strange reason. Could anyone help me out with this? ^^;;