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**fairline** · September 25, 2003, 02:52

Nice one Catfish

Now someone just has to top this thread. Pretty please.
Seeing as how I hassled you for that reduction/conversion tutorial, I feel an isometric drawing guide is in order

**techumseh** · September 25, 2003, 03:10

Originally posted by fairline
Now someone just has to top this thread. Pretty please.

OK!

**curtsibling** · September 25, 2003, 04:25

Suberb stuff, Catfish!

And even better as a sticky...

**Catfish** · September 25, 2003, 06:08

Tip – Playing With Hues in Paint Shop Pro 8

This is not a full tutorial, just a quick guide. It assumes you have a basic knowledge of PSP. My guess is that a good many of you already know this technique.

Many games use masks to display different team colours for the same unit. In the past, I’ve wanted to change the team colours for units ripped from other games without affecting the rest of the image. Likewise, I’ve wanted to modify camouflage colours whilst retaining the original pattern. You can do this quickly by using PSP’s Hue and Saturation filters.

To use the Hue Map filter: make sure you're working in 24-bit colour, select your unit and go to the Adjust menu -> Hue and Saturation -> Hue Map…

The example, below, shows a knight (far left) ripped from Age of Kings, displaying blue team colours. By using the Hue Map filter, you can quickly produce units displaying other team colours (as shown).

The screenshot, below, shows the Hue Map dialogue box. To create a red knight, simply slide the two blue bars (circled) to red. Done. The green, yellow and purple knights were created in a matter of seconds in an identical manner.

Similarly, you can use the same technique for camouflage, and for any other colour group you want to change, for that matter. Here’s Fairline’s Chinese Type 85/90 tank. The left-most unit is the original; the next four were created using the Hue Map filter. The last one was created slightly differently.

The two dominant hues for the original camo scheme are orange (36°) and green (108°), both circled, below. The new colour schemes were created by experimenting with the slide bar for these two hues. I also reduced the level of saturation (circled) and played with the lightness level.

For the last tank, I used the Hue/Saturation/Lightness filter. It allows you to shift all colours in an image. However, using the Edit drop-down menu, you can isolate dominant groups, such as red, green, blue, cyan, etc. To use this filter, go to the Adjust menu -> Hue and Saturation -> Hue/Saturation/Lightness… or hit Shift+H.

The screenshots, below, show the same dialogue box, but with different settings for Reds (left) and Greens (right). In this example, I shifted the Greens to brown and the Reds to greens. I also darkened the brown by shifting the lightness by -40. I marginally increased the lightness for the replacement green by 6.

I’ve got a bit of work to do on the miniatures-photo-conversion tutorial – I’ll see if I’ve got time this weekend.

**fairline** · September 25, 2003, 13:10

Just an add-on to Catfish's excellent guide: Once you have finished the hue-change with the 24-bit graphic, and if you want to use the unit in MGE/FW rather than ToT, ensure that you load the civ2 8-bit palette. If you don't know where to get this from, pull up an existing civ2 units file and click on 'colours-save palette'. Now load up the palette into the unit file you are working on by selecting 'colours-load palette'.

This will give mixed results in terms of the quality of the final graphic, depending on how close the hue-change is to the limited range of 8-bit civ 2 colours.

**Catfish** · September 25, 2003, 18:34

I deliberately left this out - don't want to sound like a broken record - especially in such a short guide. For exactly how to load the palette in PSP 8, read step 11 of this guide.

**Catfish** · September 29, 2003, 02:53

Tutorial - Creating Units from Photographs of Miniatures

Edit: Figuring that this thread was lost for good following the accidental deletion of the Hints, Tips and Guides subforum in early 2005, I nuked all of the associated files (pics and scripts) from my upload section, rendering the original tutorial in this post near useless. If anyone gives a rat's, a complete version can be found here.

**Catfish** · September 29, 2003, 02:55

Sorry about the delay, guys, but I was busy this weekend - and then, of course, there were those NRL semi-finals.

Originally posted by Catfish
If I write anything about photo conversions, it won't be a straight tutorial like the one above.

I lied.

**techumseh** · September 29, 2003, 03:36

Top notch stuff, Catfish. Thanks.

**Catfish** · September 29, 2003, 04:13

Thanks. If you find anything wrong with it, let me know, so I can fix it up. It's not necessarily the most efficient method - I'll probably refine it as I become more familiar with PSP 8.

**curtsibling** · September 29, 2003, 04:50

Amazing!

I knew some of those earlier figures were warhammer!

**Catfish** · September 29, 2003, 19:11

OK, one thing that bugs me about the last tutorial is the fact that I have posted cropped, 8-bit versions of the original photographs without permission. I now have a library of such photos on my HD, only I'd be buggered if I know where I found them all.

After a search, I found the websites of two of the photos - I will post these in the tut.

Edit: Actually, I'll post them here. I hit the character limit in the post, after I modified two paragraphs in the tutorial - just clarified a couple of issues in sections 6 and 8.

Photograph Sources:
Viking: http://www.twfigurines.de/
Wizard: http://hot-lead.org/
Cave Troll: http://www.paintingclinic.com

**ravagon** · October 1, 2003, 00:43

Truly stunning work.

I'm going to have to try and get some of this to work with my old psp 5.x.

**fairline** · October 1, 2003, 13:03

Excellent guide, Catfish

Some of these resources may be handy; I use them to copy free-hand from, so I'm not sure of their suitability for this reduction technique, but it won't hurt to try:

Aircraft:

Page not found - Aechelon Technology: Synthetic Reality for Humans & Machines

http://www.aechelon.com/products/models/MODELLIBMAIN.htm

http://www.deespona.com/3denciclopedia/categoria_aircraft.html

404 Not Found

http://www.little-bellanca.com/desktop/mahogany/mahogany.html

http://www.grandearmee.com/airplane%20models.htm

http://freespace.virgin.net/pbratt.home/models.htm

turbosquid.com

http://www.turbosquid.com/HTMLClient/Search/Index.cfm/FuseAction/ProcessSearch/istSearchKey/jet

AFVs (mainly WW1/some WW2):

http://www.msu.edu/user/storto/afvinven.htm

http://www.armouredengineer.force9.co.uk/