Links Corner Forum

I think I have been able to get a screenshot that shows the white patches on the hands in particular but also the arm.

I have been playing around a bit more to see what is possible and what is not and something strange is happening.

I'm baffled.

I saw a face in an old Ani I thought I would see if I can use it. No problems in extracting the TGA file. Also no issue with converting it to a BMP file.

It looks like the old M series face textures included the hair on the top of the head and the eye. I noted that the texture size is 512 x 256, but the Anifactory face textures are 1024 x 512 so I resize it as well as remove the eye and the top of the head.

I build a test ANI.

Look at it in Links.

The face is fine but the arms and hand are grey, there is white glove on the other hand!

Clearly I have done something wrong or need to do something more.

I'm scratching my head, I don't get it I'm playing with a face, but the arm colour is totally wacky?

Advice appreciated.

Des

I can answer my own question.

It was a bit of bad luck really, but I learnt something. The answer is indirectly in the AniFactory PDF.

The face I was working with is wearing sunglasses, this is the reason for my interest in the first place, I wear either plain glasses or sunglasses. The reference pixel used for other skin colours comes from the face and it was just falling near the edge of the sunglasses, hence grey skin.

Once I went back and adjusted the face position, I ended up with the arms I expected.

Des

Folks

Out of the box AniFactory works fine, this note is more about expanding your texture library, some restructuring, some tools and other odds and ends.

I wanted a different structuring of the texture library to make it a bit more granular and with some more sorting.

The texture library is basically anything under the assets\texture folder.

I wanted a different ordering of the main items i.e. Face, Eyes, Hair etc. This is just a simple ASCII sort order so I changed the number to what I wanted and inserted a hyphen after the number, to give it a bit more definition. Within many of the textures I added categories and then sorted the textures to suit. So if I want a green shirt they are now all in the green shirt folder etc.

I have also created some plain hat textures and some plain shirt textures to give more variety of colours for those with no logos. See below for pointers on how to create textures.

For the Penguin logo shirts I added ones suitable for a left handed golfer by reworking the existing shirts. This was just trial and error and using some settings derived from JC’s tutorials.

There is one area outside of the textures folder I have done work in, this is the models folder. For the basic skeleton files I have looked at pros who have a standard height, and with a build and hat type that is different from the non-pro golfers that are already present, I have taken a copy of these and gave them a suitable name so there are as many of the model types as is possible in the non pro section, which I renamed Generic- there should be nothing different about a SKL file used for a pro.

Not every possibility is there, but there are not models covering all build/hat types.

While I have considerable expertise in computing, none of it is in this sort of graphics, it is mostly at the systems level, so I am a novice in this space as much as anyone, which means that anyone should be able to do it, I’m sure it took me much longer than someone with expertise to do anything.

I also thought I would have a go at reworking some “M” series faces, those I could find with glasses or sunglasses and especially greying hair so they could be used in AniFactory. M01 series were pretty straightforward, M02 were much harder especially with my very limited knowledge of the software, AniFactory uses “S” series. I use these series names as they are reflected in the file names.

I have looked at GIMP and Paint.NET and both will do the job, and I have used both for many texture creations, I used the exercise to gain some familiarity with the software, however in the day, many people were using Paint Shop Pro (PSP), with only a few using tools like GIMP and Photoshop. Many of the instructions I have seen are for PSP and like GIMP, for old versions of PSP, the price is now right.

Paint Shop Pro 4.12 and 7.04 and 8.1 and 9.01 are freely downloadable from:

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/paint-sho ... 9-01.5113/

There are many reports that version 7.04 is the best and the two later versions offer little more. PSP 7.04 was released in September 2000. PSP 8 was released in June 2003 and Paint Shop Pro 9 in August 2004.

This means that when Link 2003 was released Paint Shop Pro 7 was the current version.

Documentation:

Given everything, I am concentration on PSP 7 sources.

Paint Shop Pro 7

Getting Started Guide: https://flagoptions.com/wp-content/uplo ... -Guide.pdf

User Manual: https://dn710202.ca.archive.org/0/items ... lights.pdf

This site also has bonus pack highlight guide, so there are two guides you can download from this site.

So between these three guides you have pretty good documentation.

If you want to use a different version, there are guides available for download.

Creating Textures for AniFactory

JC has created Tutorials for using PSP to create shirts, trousers and shoes, you can get them from:

https://www.jclinks2003.com/golfer-util ... -tutorials

There are three tutorials, they are not overly long and cover the basics. Between these and the manuals above you have the needed information to get you started. The tutorials look to be using PSP 7.

Explorer will mount the ISO file so that you can use to install the software from.

Software Notes:

For GIMP users export BMP files in 24 bit (R8 G8 B8) RGB Format and deselect to Write colour space information. If you get the format settings wrong Links will crash

For Paint.NET users I would suggest installing the BoltBait pack add on - currently v6.11. Amongst other things this gives the ability to horizontally and vertically flip selected parts of the image, very useful for making left handed golfers.

Good Luck

Des