| FIRST OF ALL: I just want to say that I am not an expert. I have, however, experimented and made a lot of mistakes, so I will pass on what I have learned. If you are serious about object creation, a great resource is the yahoo group: Transmogrifiers. Also, this FAQ is very general, but assumes that you have read and understood the flamingo tutorial (on the TMOG Lush Creations Page). WHAT ARE A, P AND Z SPRITES? The main "picture" of the object are the "p" sprites. If you are doing color changes and retextures only, you will only be working with these. "P" sprites must be saved in "Index" picture mode and are .bmp files. "A" sprites determine what part of the "p" sprite pictures can be seen in the game and what part of the "z" sprites to take into consideration . The white areas show the parts of the object that are visible. The darker the color, the more transparent that area of the object and black is invisible (which blanks out the yellow background area of your "p" sprites). You can make the soft edges for your objects, or make ghostly or partially tranparent windows and objects this way. If you make your own unique objects, you will probably have to deal with "a" sprites. "A" sprites must be saved in Grayscale mode and are also .bmp files. "Z" sprites determine how "close to the camera" the area of an object is, very much like the layers of your paint program. The darker the area, the closer to the top the layer is. If you have "bleed through" where an object is showing up through walls, behind or in front of other objects inappropriately, that is a "z" sprite problem. If you make your own obejcts, you will probably eventually have to deal with "z" sprites. "Z" sprites must be saved in Grayscale mode and are also .bmp files. MY OBJECT BLEEDS THROUGH WALLS. The "z" sprites aren't light enough. Lighten the area on the z sprite to make the object recede. MY OBJECT DISAPEARS INTO THE FLOOR OR BEHIND TABLES WHEN I SET IT ON TOP. "z" sprites aren't dark enough. Darken the z sprites to bring them forward. THERE ARE YELLOW DOTS OR A YELLOW HAZE ALL AROUND MY NEW OBJECT. Veeery common. So common, I always expect it now. Export your object again in either One Zoom, All Channels or All Zooms, All Channels. There are two ways that I've used to fix it. The first is fairly fast, the second is slower, but makes the nicest looking objects. 1) Open the "p" sprite and it's corresponding "a" sprite. Using the Select Color tool or your Magic Wand Selector tool click on the yellow area of the "p" sprite with a wide margin of inclusion. You may have to add areas immediately surrounding the object that look a bit yellowish to the selection. Fill all the yellow areas with solid black using the fill tool or a paint brush at 100%. Making sure to keep the same area selected, copy the (now black) area from the p sprite and paste it onto your "a" sprite. Revert to grey scale and save the "a" sprite. Do NOT save the "p" sprite. Do this for all views and sizes and reimport. I find that the object turns out OK usually in this way, but I often have either a sharp edge or a bit of yellow. 2) Open the "p" sprite and it's corresponding "a" sprite. Change both over to RGB mode. Select "All" on the "p" sprite and copy. Then paste it onto the "a" sprite. Close the "p" sprite without saving. Reduce the transparency of the "p" layer to about 40% - as you do this, the areas of yellow will be revealed like magic! Select your bottom layer (the "a" sprite layer) and using the pencil tool or a paint brush tool with black as the selected color, go over all the areas that look yellow to you. Then use a medium gray (the one TMOG uses by default is a little too dark in my opinion) and soften the new edges. When you are happy with your results, delete the entire "p" layer, convert to grayscale and save the "a" sprite. Do this for all views and zooms and reimport. THE SMALL ZOOM LOOKS LIKE A SLASHER TOOK A RAZOR TO IT. AKA VERTICAL BLIND SYNDROME. Could be one of a few things. Either your operating system is Win2K or you may be exporting with the compress bitmap files box unchecked. I literally gave up on TMOG while I was using Win2K. When I upgraded to XP, the problem only occured occasionally and only when I exported on the All Zooms, All Channels mode. MY OBJECT IS HANGING IN MID AIR, OFF-CENTER, OR A MULTI-TILED OBJECT IS IN PEICES. In the "View Object" menu, use the X offset to move the object side to side and the Y offset to move the object up and down. With the multi-tiled objects, make sure you click on the pull down menu at the top to choose the individual tiles. (The default says "All Tiles"). Then you can arrange the peices in relation to each other. TMOG HANGS IN MID IMPORT. I have had this happen many times and have discovered two problems. One time it happens is when one of the "p" sprites was saved incorrectly in 24 bit or RGB mode. It also seems to happen strangely when my file or object names are too long. I always check the sprites first. If they are fine, I reclone the original object with a shorter file name, export and copy all the folders over to the new (shorter-named) object's sprite folders. Then I reimport the new object. Usually this works although sometimes I have had to repeat this process several times. WHERE ARE ALL THE EXPANSION PACK OBJECTS? They are in the expansion pack .far files. I "exploded" the far files using a far editor and put them in my "downloads" directory only when I am using TMOG. Then I pull them back out again before I play the game. I have since heard tho that if you put the .far files directly into your "GameData/UserObjects" folder, it works just as well and there's no need to drag them around before starting your game. I just *heard* about this method though and haven't tried it yet. |