Game Models in Photoshop

[BrynnOfCastlegate]

Does anyone know if it is possibe to render a unit or structure from 0 A.D. in Photoshop? I discovered that Photoshop Extended will open the .dae model files I found in the art/meshes folder, but I do not know how to texture them. I see textures in the art/textures folder, but which ones go with what models? How do I apply these in Photoshop?

The reason this would be useful is that I could render large images of the game elements on transparent backgrounds, which would be very useful for creating box art, promotional images and such.

I have never done 3D modeling, in Photoshop or elsewhere, so I am not sure how it all works. If anyone can help, thank you!

--Brynn

[quantumstate]

You can normally guess which texture go with each model from the names, but if you can't have a look in public/art/actors, there are xml files which match up models with textures. No idea about the photoshop thing.

[feneur]

I think it would be a lot easier to just open up Atlas, paint a large area of the terrain with a single color (see the "Special" tab), put in the building, and then do a screenshot. Then it's just to Select-->Color range, or maybe even just use the magic wand if the building layout allows for it, and delete the selected area and you have the building on a transparent background

[zoot]

I think it would be a lot easier to just open up Atlas, paint a large area of the terrain with a single color (see the "Special" tab), put in the building, and then do a screenshot. Then it's just to Select-->Color range, or maybe even just use the magic wand if the building layout allows for it, and delete the selected area and you have the building on a transparent background

Would that preserve the alpha channel so nasty edges are avoided?

[Pedro Falcão]

GIMP is great for working with any image and is free, unlike photoshop. Also has an easy tool to add alpha channel to parts of an image, you'll just have to google a "how to" and be happy.

[feneur]

Would that preserve the alpha channel so nasty edges are avoided?

Preserve the alpha channel? That would create an alpha channel rather =) But when I actually try it it's not producing as good results as I had hoped. The building itself works fine, but the semi-transparent area doesn't work as well I'm sure there are ways to make it work though, I'm just not an expert in that area

Did a quick search and found http://www.wetzeland...GreenScreen.php , the color contamination part is useful. Read that page for a more indepth description, but in short you create a new layer, set it to hue mode so only the hue you paint with has any effect, create clipping mask so only the pixels of the below layer are affected and then paint with a color that is similar to what the one which is "contaminated", (i.e. still has some green in it if you used a green background terrain and so on) should look like and paint over with that one. Not sure how well that will work with areas with more complicated sets of hues, but on the other hand this is mostly relevant for shadows and decals which are generally fairly monotone in hue, so it should produce good enough results. If nothing else I'm sure searching for more info on how to work with greenscreens will yield more useful tips

I tried to import a .dae and add the texture to it, and while that works really well in one way (the file imports as it should, and Photoshop reads the UVs fine so the texture is where it's supposed to be) it's still a lot of work to get a good result. First of all the model seems to be rotated in a weird direction (a small issue I know, but still =) ), second a lot of buildings consist of more than one .dae file, and a decal in addition to that, which is probably the main issue as that makes it a lot harder to deal with inside Photoshop. And third you need to do the lighting well, which should be possible to do, especially since you can add textures for e.g. normal maps which should allow you to mimic the in-game look somewhat. But overall that seems like a lot of work to me =)

EDIT: Forgot to mention: to get huge screenshots from Atlas click the Misc hacks menu item and then Big screenshot. That can be useful if you want to have a larger image to use in some design

[Enrique]

Does anyone know if it is possibe to render a unit or structure from 0 A.D. in Photoshop? I discovered that Photoshop Extended will open the .dae model files I found in the art/meshes folder, but I do not know how to texture them. I see textures in the art/textures folder, but which ones go with what models? How do I apply these in Photoshop?

The reason this would be useful is that I could render large images of the game elements on transparent backgrounds, which would be very useful for creating box art, promotional images and such.

I have never done 3D modeling, in Photoshop or elsewhere, so I am not sure how it all works. If anyone can help, thank you!

--Brynn

You can use Blender3D (open source) to import the DAE models and create a simple material with the textures as colors. When you render, it's very easy to use the background as alpha channel on the final inage, sharp results.

There is very good video-tuts on the net about blender for starters if you are interested.

[BrynnOfCastlegate]

Thank you for your tips! I did not realise I could paint the ground black in Atlas; that almost gets the sort of thing I was looking for. The main thing is the camera pitch. The game controls for pitching the camera do not seem to work in Atlas. Is there a way to get a lower angle on the camera?

Feneur, did your model already have texture when you imported it to Photoshop? When I do it, the model has no texture (it is white). You're probably right that it is too difficult to do this way!

--Brynn

[feneur]

Thank you for your tips! I did not realise I could paint the ground black in Atlas; that almost gets the sort of thing I was looking for. The main thing is the camera pitch. The game controls for pitching the camera do not seem to work in Atlas. Is there a way to get a lower angle on the camera?

Feneur, did your model already have texture when you imported it to Photoshop? When I do it, the model has no texture (it is white). You're probably right that it is too difficult to do this way!

--Brynn

To get a lower angle in Atlas just press the Ctrl key and press and move the middle mouse button to change the rotation/angle.

No, I had to manually add the texture in Photoshop. The reason is that the texture information is not included in the model files but rather added via XML files tying the model/texture together (generally at least I saw it was once included in one of the models, but it still didn't work properly). And yeah, using Photoshop to do it is probably the hardest way. You might get decent results with importing into Blender, but then again that's another program to learn + since we don't include the texture information in the DAEs you have to manually add them.

[BrynnOfCastlegate]

To get a lower angle in Atlas just press the Ctrl key and press and move the middle mouse button to change the rotation/angle.

Thank you! That is perfect! I think Atlas with the big screenshot is the best way to do it. Thank you for your help everyone!

--Brynn

[Khopesh]

Don't think you can import models into Photoshop (you need to open a seperate texture file that can be applied in the modelling software like Blender, or applied in the game engine itself). Either way, I wouldn't recommend using Photoshop because it requires a licence. GIMP is a free equivalent.

Sculting software sometimes had an option for painting directly onto the model (rather than using Photoshop or GIMP to paint onto UV maps). Not sure about any free software for sculting though.

Sorry if this is a dead thread and you have already figured this out.