Portrait Visual Tutorial?

[Nagafen]

Heya all. I was just wondering if anyone could do a visual tutorial on making portrait's for FFT sprites? I've been told how, but it sound's quite confusing, and I work best with visual imagrey. If no one can't, I understand.

[mav]

Yeah, I'm working on one now. So gimme a couple more minutes and I'll update this post with it.

[mav]

Alright, let's do this. First you should have GraphicsGale, go to Google to find that, since that's what I'm using to demonstrate this tutorial.

Alright, this is our first screenshot. I've opened Graphics Gale and a sprite I just saved, note that the portrait already looks wacky--I'll explain that in a minute.
 

In this screenshot I've highlighted the Palette Window. Note the numbers on the side, those are the palette numbers. Row 1 is the first palette for the sprite, Row 2 is the second, and so on. Row 9 is the first palette for the portrait. So Row 1's colors go for the sprite and Row 9's go for that sprite's portrait. Basically 8 rows below the sprite, you'll find the portrait color. So Row 2 goes with A (which is technically the 10th row), and Row 3 goes with B, and so on, and so forth, until Row 9 which goes with Row 1, since it is the first row of colors for the first portrait.


Chances are that right now your portrait looks like the one here. This is normal. What's happening is that the portrait is using the 16 colors in the first row to color the portrait. Now I'll explain how to fix this.

Step 1: First hit this icon to get the following screenshot.

Step 2: Now hit Save Palette, as shown above.

Step 3: Now save the palette as whatever you'd like. This is just to have a backup of the sprite's palette. If you have colors in Rows 2-G this step is unnecessary. In fact, this and the following two steps may not be necessary at all...Someone correct me on this, I'll edit the post.


Step 4: Now hit All Frames on the Menu Bar, then scroll to Color Depth.


This is the Color Depth Window.
Step 5: Under Format hit 4bpp (16 colors) and on the left, under Option, make sure colors is set to 16. Now hit OK.


Now it's time to fix the portrait. Hopefully you already have the portrait cropped out as a separate BMP with the correct palette. If not, proceed to do so.

Now we've opened up the portrait.

Step 6: Make sure it's set to the right color depth (4bpp). If you've forgotten how to do this, look back at Steps 4 and 5.

Step 7: Now proceed to redo Steps 1-3.

Step 8: Now Select All and hit Copy.

Step 9: Go back to the Sprite.


Step 10: If you lowered the Color Depth, set it to 8bpp. If not, skip to the next step.

Step 11: Hit the icon again. Now it's time to load the portrait's palette.

This is the Load Palette Window.
Step 12: Hit Import From File.


Step 13: Load the .pal that you saved previously.


This is the [other] Load Palette Window.
Step 14: Drag across the palette on the left. And hover over the 9th slot, left-click to Paste and Hit "OK".

Step 15: Now Paste that portrait right on top of the old one.

Before.

After.

Step 16: Save the BMP and import into Shishi.


Tips and Miscellaneous Information

• As far as I know, for all the sprites (first eight rows) the first color on each of those rows has to be black (R:000 G:000 B:000) for transparency's sake. This is not necessary for portraits.
• It has been suggested that the RGB (Red, Green Blue) values on the sprite's colors need to be multiples of 8 (possibly 4), else the game will approximate to the next closest value. The result may be a seemingly discolored sprite. This restriction is not placed on portraits.
• On that note, I strongly advise against making your own colors for sprites: borrow from existing sprites to keep the flow natural. Even experienced spriters have a hard time with this.
• Having the same color on multiple columns in one row will result in the sprite having less than 16 colors total. For example, if the values for 00h and 01h (the first two color entries on the palette) are both black you will only have 15 colors. This may result in the sprite loading improperly in-game.
• For those making portraits from scratch, I would suggest to simply cut out the portrait from the base and start your new portrait in a separate file. The dimensions should be 32 x 48. Have your Color Depth set to 4bpp, start with a background color and utilize the remaining 15 to draw and shade the portrait. Once the portrait is complete, rotate it 270 degrees, save the palette, load the portrait's palette onto the sprite sheet, and copy the portrait over to correct spot on the sprite sheet (which should be set to a color depth of 8bpp).

[Xifanie]

Why not reformat it in html and submit your tutorial for the main site?

[MiKeMiTchi]

Quality post mav.
should be stickied!!

oh wait btw,
Isn't it necessary also to place the 'TAN' color from the portrait to the 9th row, 1st color slot?

[mav]

Why not reformat it in html and submit your tutorial for the main site?

Awesome--I'll be sure to fix it and submit it once I'm sure it's as accurate as possible.

oh wait btw,
Isn't it necessary also to place the 'TAN' color from the portrait to the 9th row, 1st color slot?

Though it is necessary to place black as the first color on the first row, it actually isn't necessary to do so with the tan color on the portraits. I assume it's because black is transparent, whereas tan isn't. I just re-checked on the Minwu sprite, and I had tan on the fourth column for all the portraits and it worked fine when imported. I'll mention the black for the sprites though.

[MiKeMiTchi]

Good find!

Also mav, include some "how to edit or make your own" portraits, by color swapping, color borrowing, and or
borrowing hair, cloth, eyes from original fft portraits, and adding sprite\portrait colors for the 2nd row and so on...

Step 3: Now save the palette as whatever you'd like. This is just to have a backup of the sprite's palette. If you have colors in Rows 2-G this step is unnecessary. In fact, this and the following two steps may not be necessary at all...Someone correct me on this, I'll edit the post.

I do this all the time, so I think it might be needed.


Hmm..
From my past experiences, I loaded the palette first before I pasted the portrait. Would that make a difference?

Reason:
If you are starting to make a sprite without a portrait, therefore there are no colors for the 9th row. If you paste a portrait first, then it will use 'some' colors from the 1st row (if colors have the same value). So, I think it might be better to load the portrait's palette first before pasting the portrait.

[mav]

I could make a tips/things to know bit at the bottom I suppose. I'll move the black/transparency thing there, mention how you shouldn't reuse colors from row-to-row, etc. When I did the Minwu sprite I copied it over first and then loaded the colors...though I might have had to fix it by hand...I suspect that it shouldn't matter in general, assuming you're loading the palette that corresponds to the portrait: portrait first or palette first, as long as they correspond I think it works.

If I were making a portrait from scratch, I would draw, color, and shade by using the colors I place on the ninth row.

[jimmyjw88]

Wow....This will be really helpful ^^
Great work mav.
But any chances you have tutorial like this for GIMP? ^^

[Kagebunji]

Great work Mav, now I think I will get handle of it too .

[Archael]

Why not reformat it in html and submit your tutorial for the main site?

this

great tutorial should be part of main site

[Argy]

Mav,

You have inspired me to try and make/alter sprites. Thank you

Kick a**e guide by the way!!

Cheers Argy

[mav]

Shit, turns out MiKe was right: you gotta save and load the portrait's palette before you paste in the portrait. I'm not sure why it worked when I did it on the Minwu sprite, but nonetheless I've fixed it here.

[Kagebunji]

Thanks to this, I know how to insert portraits! Thank you Mav!

[Xifanie]

Why not reformat it in html and submit your tutorial for the main site?

this

great tutorial should be part of main site

[mav]

Sure thing boss; I just submitted it. If there are any errors I'll fix 'em.

[Vanya]

Glad to see this added, *prepare for bad pun*  no noob is good noob! ^_^
*Shot*
XnX

[MiKeMiTchi]

Shit, turns out MiKe was right: you gotta save and load the portrait's palette before you paste in the portrait. I'm not sure why it worked when I did it on the Minwu sprite, but nonetheless I've fixed it here.

Told ya!
haha..

Well, it did work because the portrait's colors didn't match any of the colors of the sprite. *I think.

[Paheej]

Now it's time to fix the portrait. Hopefully you already have the portrait cropped out as a separate BMP with the correct palette. If not, proceed to do so.

Hey could anyone expand on this step right here?  I don't quite get it.  I can crop the portrait but its discolored.  How do I make it use the row 9 palette?

[MiKeMiTchi]

They use the row 9 palettes when they are imported into ShiShi.
Take advantage of that, import the sprite, then you could get the right colored portrait
by PRINT SCREEN.

Or, you could separate the portrait into a new 48x32 image, then set it to 16 colors, then load the row 9 palette.