wpkelley41

Join Date 09/2012

+11

Custom Portarits for custom factions advice or help

I intend to buy the Beta this weekend to get a 2 week head start on creating factions. I always play Gal Civ on the biggest map. I want to have my races ready to go. Can anyone give the basics on portrait size and specs?

1) What types of pics? Gifs, jpegs, etc.

2) What size?

3) Do we have to "crop" out the background, or find pics ONLY of the subject?

4) What folder do we install them to?

5) What about animation? I've noticed the in game leaders move. Will we be able to give that affect to our creations? If not, can we "turn that off," so the in game play will have conformity?

6) Is anyone organizing a location we can easily share factions with each other?

7) What about logos? Does the game offer enough? Hundreds, etc.

My first project, after my own custom race, is to create all the Master of Orion races. Always wanted to see the Saakra or Bulrathi clash with the Drengin, lol.

Thanks in advance to any GalCiv brethren that respond. I have not anticipated a game to this level in memory.

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econundrum1

Join Date 04/2007

+36

I can answer some of those the file format is .png for the static images you can use gimp or photo shop for those, unfortunately the animated movies are bink2 format and you need a commercially licensed bit of software to produce those so most modders will have to stick to static pictures for now.

png allows transparency and foreground pictures should have a transparent background so they combine properly over the backgrounds.

There are a number of different sizes look at the local files of the game on steam, or maybe someone else remembers and can answer this,

I'm sure people who have had a chance to do more modding can answer your other questions.

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You can find examples in Steam\SteamApps\common\Galactic Civilizations III\Gfx\Factions

You can also download other people's creations and take a look at what they've done: https://forums.galciv3.com/463906/page/1/

You can put pictures,etc. in Documents\My Games\GalCiv3\Factions

The animation is bik2, which unfortunately isn't free. The game started off using bik1 which is free (and used it because of this), but switched to bik2 part way through.

There are quite a few logos, but if you want more, people have already made several: https://forums.galciv3.com/462995/page/1, https://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/618459109266716540/

There's currently no specific place to share factions, other than these forums or the steam discussions. That might change in the first patch after release, when Workshop support is added.

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ScrivenerOfLight

Join Date 02/2007

+34

1) .png (for transparency--leader foreground and background images are layered in game).

2a) Foreground and background are 1920x1080.

2b) Logos and portraits are 128x128.

3) If you don't crop out a background, I suppose it will just cover the background image, and as a result, the leader's image couldn't be used on different backgrounds.

4) In my 'Mods' folder I have a folder named after the faction (e.g., 'New Faction'), and then a 'Gfx' folder and then a 'Factions' folder and then folders for each type of image: 'LeaderBGs' 'LeaderFGs' 'Logos' and 'Portraits'.

5) Not sure this is possible yet, but I could just be ignorant about it.

6) I think this will ultimately be implemented via Steam Workshop, but again, I could be ignorant of this.

7) See 2b; right now there are 56 from Stardock, I think.

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ScrivenerOfLight

Join Date 02/2007

+34

Lol. When I started writing my post, there were no others... Some of the questions were already answered in the other two posts

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econundrum1

Join Date 04/2007

+36

In-case anyone's wondering bik2 means better compression of the movies particularly for high resolution movies, and has much better more efficient playback among other advantages. It's only disadvantage is that the makers of bik & bik2 only make tools for converting movies to the former format freely available so for now no modding movies unless you can afford a commercial license to get your movies into bik2.

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