Lately, I can't get zoot to show any ic or ism or m animals. I have reinstalled zoot, and it still doesn't show any original or uca's, just blank areas where animals animations and/or icons should be.
What can be wrong here?
Zoot Problem
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Jay
- african elephant keeper
- Posts: 11558
- Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 9:23 pm
- Location: Orlando, FL (M:68)
Although there are a few things Zoot cannot show, Zoot can show more things than APE can. So it is probably that you are still picking the wrong folder as the Project. You should try to follow the instructions I gave previously. Here are the instructions for your freshwater croc:
viewtopic.php?p=35455#p35455
And for a scenery example, here are instructions using an example statue:
http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic ... 9#msg18199
Another way to look at selecting a folder as the project for an animal is to look for the folder that contains the "animals" folder, but do not click on the "animals" folder when you click Open. Another way to look at selecting a folder as the project for scenery is to look for the folder that contains the "objects" or "scenery" folder, but do not click on the "objects" or "scenery" folder when you click Open.
viewtopic.php?p=35455#p35455
And for a scenery example, here are instructions using an example statue:
http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/index.php?topic ... 9#msg18199
Another way to look at selecting a folder as the project for an animal is to look for the folder that contains the "animals" folder, but do not click on the "animals" folder when you click Open. Another way to look at selecting a folder as the project for scenery is to look for the folder that contains the "objects" or "scenery" folder, but do not click on the "objects" or "scenery" folder when you click Open.
Thank you Jay. I was clicking on that animal file instead of stopping short and just clicking the folder.
I am trying to get all my instructions and tutorials from downloads in order.
I still can't find a compatible ingame animal pal file for a true white recolored uca. I have two uca's right now that I wanted white. A horse and a jaguar. They don't look to bad though. They are just a little more silver than white.
I have been trying to work on the gimp program. I follow Fern's instructions for putting an animal on a different background, but I just never can copy it to the new background as the new background always disappears and just the icon animal remains with a white background. The closest I can get is with some of the new background on the top, bottom and sides. I really hate that gimp online help...it has no search option that I can see and the way it is set up is just annoying.
I am trying to get all my instructions and tutorials from downloads in order.
I still can't find a compatible ingame animal pal file for a true white recolored uca. I have two uca's right now that I wanted white. A horse and a jaguar. They don't look to bad though. They are just a little more silver than white.
I have been trying to work on the gimp program. I follow Fern's instructions for putting an animal on a different background, but I just never can copy it to the new background as the new background always disappears and just the icon animal remains with a white background. The closest I can get is with some of the new background on the top, bottom and sides. I really hate that gimp online help...it has no search option that I can see and the way it is set up is just annoying.
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Jay
- african elephant keeper
- Posts: 11558
- Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 9:23 pm
- Location: Orlando, FL (M:68)
In GIMP, before doing a Copy of the animal, you should use transparency and delete the original background. I talked about turning on transparency in this post:
viewtopic.php?p=35470#p35470
With transparency turned on, you can then follow the instructions I gave for putting an animal image on an icon background:
viewtopic.php?p=35438#p35438
No, the GIMP help is not great. Sometimes you can find what you need by looking in its Index. But, except for a few tutorials, most of it looks like it is just as a reference for more experienced GIMP users.
viewtopic.php?p=35470#p35470
With transparency turned on, you can then follow the instructions I gave for putting an animal image on an icon background:
viewtopic.php?p=35438#p35438
No, the GIMP help is not great. Sometimes you can find what you need by looking in its Index. But, except for a few tutorials, most of it looks like it is just as a reference for more experienced GIMP users.
The last time I got gimp to put an icon on a background correctly, I did something to the background first...before using the pasteinto. Can't remember what it was, or if that made a difference.
I have used the transparency. It still doesn't work, even with that checkerboard background. I can clear the icon's background to white, which I assume is clear, but when pasting it, the icon just blends in with the background. i.e. pink elephant, brick background = pink elephant with no background...or pink elephant, blue background = blue elephant and blue background.
Obviously, I'm missing something here. Fortunately, I was able to use a white background for the pink elephant and a black background for my black halter horse. These were the last of my uca's so far.
I'll just keep on with the trial and error and hope I get something to work right.
John
I have used the transparency. It still doesn't work, even with that checkerboard background. I can clear the icon's background to white, which I assume is clear, but when pasting it, the icon just blends in with the background. i.e. pink elephant, brick background = pink elephant with no background...or pink elephant, blue background = blue elephant and blue background.
Obviously, I'm missing something here. Fortunately, I was able to use a white background for the pink elephant and a black background for my black halter horse. These were the last of my uca's so far.
I'll just keep on with the trial and error and hope I get something to work right.
John
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Jay
- african elephant keeper
- Posts: 11558
- Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 9:23 pm
- Location: Orlando, FL (M:68)
You should not clear or copy the icon. It is the animal image you should be dealing with. Let us say you have a pink elephant image on a black background. It is the pink elephant image where you would add a transparency layer if it is not there, select the black background using a threshold of 0, clear the black background, resize and autocrop the pink elephant image if necessary, and then do copy. Let us say you have a yellow icon that you want the pink elephant to be on. You would just open the yellow icon and, without doing anything else to the yellow icon, do paste into.
The above approaches assume that you have an icon that is more than a solid color. For example, the icon I use has a shaded border around it. If you just want a solid color around the animal, then you do not need a separate icon file. You can just change the background in the animal image. Let us say you have a pink elephant image on a black background and that you want the background to be yellow instead. You would select the black background using a threshold of 0, set the foreground color to yellow, use bucket fill to change the black to yellow, resize and autocrop the image if necessary, zoom in, and, if the top left pixel is a color that is already used, change it to some different color.
The above approaches assume that you have an icon that is more than a solid color. For example, the icon I use has a shaded border around it. If you just want a solid color around the animal, then you do not need a separate icon file. You can just change the background in the animal image. Let us say you have a pink elephant image on a black background and that you want the background to be yellow instead. You would select the black background using a threshold of 0, set the foreground color to yellow, use bucket fill to change the black to yellow, resize and autocrop the image if necessary, zoom in, and, if the top left pixel is a color that is already used, change it to some different color.
Hi Jay, I hope you are not getting frustrated at tbe amateur here.
I kept doing and redoing the gimp background change and I guess I must have hit on the right way to do it, because I was able to do my last two animals the way I wanted. I just kept going over your instructions again and again from start to finish, and I still can't figues out what was wrong, but it has been working right so far.
Does it matter what form of animal or background I use in gimp? Can I use any of the ext's supported by gimp? I.E. a bmp background with a png icon? or a jpg background and a bmp icon? I think for my last two successes, I used a png icon animal saved from zoot in png form, and a bmp from Fern's list of Icon backgrounds.
Thank you,
John
I kept doing and redoing the gimp background change and I guess I must have hit on the right way to do it, because I was able to do my last two animals the way I wanted. I just kept going over your instructions again and again from start to finish, and I still can't figues out what was wrong, but it has been working right so far.
Does it matter what form of animal or background I use in gimp? Can I use any of the ext's supported by gimp? I.E. a bmp background with a png icon? or a jpg background and a bmp icon? I think for my last two successes, I used a png icon animal saved from zoot in png form, and a bmp from Fern's list of Icon backgrounds.
Thank you,
John
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Jay
- african elephant keeper
- Posts: 11558
- Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 9:23 pm
- Location: Orlando, FL (M:68)
Although GIMP can work with any of those file extensions, some are easy to work with than others.
The best format to use for design work is ".png". It is the only format that Zoot supports (although Zoot only supports certain ".png" formats). The ".png" format uses compression to make smaller files. The ".png" format is also a lossless format. That means, when a file is saved in that format, it can remember the colors that were used.
The ".jpg" format, on the other hand, is a lossy format. That means, when a file is saved in that format, it might not use the same colors. It will sometimes change the colors to something that is close in order to compress the files even smaller. So this format will produce the smallest size files of those 3 file extensions. Therefore, it is the best one to use for things like screenshots. But since it is changing the colors, it is not good to use for design work. It can be very difficult to get rid of the background in ".jpg" images because it might not all be the same color.
The ".bmp" format is also a lossless format. But it does not use compression. So it has no advantage over the ".png" format. It is okay to work with a ".bmp" file while designing, but it is best to save it as a ".png" file when done.
The best format to use for design work is ".png". It is the only format that Zoot supports (although Zoot only supports certain ".png" formats). The ".png" format uses compression to make smaller files. The ".png" format is also a lossless format. That means, when a file is saved in that format, it can remember the colors that were used.
The ".jpg" format, on the other hand, is a lossy format. That means, when a file is saved in that format, it might not use the same colors. It will sometimes change the colors to something that is close in order to compress the files even smaller. So this format will produce the smallest size files of those 3 file extensions. Therefore, it is the best one to use for things like screenshots. But since it is changing the colors, it is not good to use for design work. It can be very difficult to get rid of the background in ".jpg" images because it might not all be the same color.
The ".bmp" format is also a lossless format. But it does not use compression. So it has no advantage over the ".png" format. It is okay to work with a ".bmp" file while designing, but it is best to save it as a ".png" file when done.