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Heroes Community > Heroes 4 - Lands of Axeoth > Thread: New hero skins
Thread: New hero skins This thread is 2 pages long: 1 2 · NEXT»
mirage
mirage


Promising
Hired Hero
posted June 07, 2018 04:53 PM

New hero skins

hey guys!

i decided to make a separate thread for my creations:

[url=http://jmp.sh/txuP5Bt]robin_hero[/url]



[url=http://jmp.sh/FwNS3bv]the skeleton hero[/url]



[url=http://jmp.sh/Fqc0ByU]a dryad hero[/url]



and i just finished this one:

[url=http://jmp.sh/crpvCDt]a female barbarian hero[/url] or something like that...



enjoy

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nostradamus
nostradamus


Adventuring Hero
posted June 07, 2018 09:19 PM

Finally,new characters in combat to play with,this is what we had been waiting,Mirage you are the best,one question I have for you,sorry if I am too much novice,amateur- where do  I extract this heroes.table text from h4r text file with mh4win, to anywhere?, to modified heroes table?,
so I dont have problems when opening or searching it with textedit tool,also custom sprite means an image,the content of heroes table text probably,well I am ashame that I know almost nothing considering with coding,if you have a little time,  write a short tutorial ,you have my thanks,but its not important.

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shade_hunter
shade_hunter

Tavern Dweller
posted June 08, 2018 01:37 PM
Edited by shade_hunter at 13:38, 08 Jun 2018.

Oh that is very facinating! I believe all different heroes should have different versions. I was always irritated how Emilia Nighthaven and others did not resemble at all their hero sprites.

How did you do it? Could you perhaps make a small tutorial?

As I understood, all battle sprites are 2D pictures but just in 3D fashion. I was thinking that perhaps in theory these sprites could be turned into battle characters.

https://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/mnmvii/

I would be willing to work to make it happen if I would know how to make the files. I was able to take hr4 files apart to see the sound effect files and more, but I do not know how to edit SEQ files.  

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pekute99
pekute99


Known Hero
The prettiest I must say
posted June 08, 2018 02:28 PM

Does this change their models on the adventure map too or just in battles ?

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mirage
mirage


Promising
Hired Hero
posted June 08, 2018 02:45 PM
Edited by mirage at 14:48, 08 Jun 2018.

nostradamus said:
Finally,new characters in combat to play with,this is what we had been waiting,Mirage you are the best,one question I have for you,sorry if I am too much novice,amateur- where do  I extract this heroes.table text from h4r text file with mh4win, to anywhere?, to modified heroes table?,
so I dont have problems when opening or searching it with textedit tool,also custom sprite means an image,the content of heroes table text probably,well I am ashame that I know almost nothing considering with coding,if you have a little time,  write a short tutorial ,you have my thanks,but its not important.


just extract the table.heroes.txt into the same folder where you extract the sequence files and the combat_actor file since you have to add it to the same h4r file anyway after you modify it.

the 'custom sprite' is the name of the combat_actor file like Skelly, Dryad or Robin. always the upper case word in those file names. that is what you have to write into the table.heroes.txt (this file is what i mentioned also as hero table, and the 'modified hero table' is the same file after you have written the custom sprites models skins combat_actors name into it.)

sorry if i wasnt clear.

then you should do some practice using mh4win to see how it works cause i cant explain it better.

shade_hunter said:
Oh that is very facinating! I believe all different heroes should have different versions. I was always irritated how Emilia Nighthaven and others did not resemble at all their hero sprites.

How did you do it? Could you perhaps make a small tutorial?

As I understood, all battle sprites are 2D pictures but just in 3D fashion. I was thinking that perhaps in theory these sprites could be turned into battle characters.

https://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/mnmvii/

I would be willing to work to make it happen if I would know how to make the files. I was able to take hr4 files apart to see the sound effect files and more, but I do not know how to edit SEQ files.  


unfortunately the sprites under your link arent in isometric view so they would look bad in heroes 4. they are looking like the heroes 3 battle sprites. you should search sprites in the view like [url=https://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/dragonfinsoup/]these[/url].

i will try to make a tutorial later but im not sure i can explain it very well.

pekute99 said:
Does this change their models on the adventure map too or just in battles ?


i didnt make the adventure sequences for them yet. but im planning to do it at least for the skeleton and the dryad as they would be good creatures and not just heroes. its not so good idea for heroes cause they have a horse riding sound when walking on the map and it looks and sounds very stupid if they have no horse to ride

maybe i should search for riding hero adventure sprites in heroes 3 and other games like that to get more custom look for these heroes...

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mirage
mirage


Promising
Hired Hero
posted June 08, 2018 05:00 PM bonus applied by kiryu133 on 09 Jun 2018.
Edited by mirage at 17:23, 08 Jun 2018.

as i promised i try to explain how to make actor sequences.

at first let me tell you that the making of the red robin hero was actually a pain in the ass cause i tried to import all of its images into the female thief actor sequences cause i thought it works like making objects when i must import the images into exported images of some existing objects. but the robin images usually didnt fit into the original frames so had to do a snowing lot of editing to finally make it

so after that i asked for the radmutants help cause he knows everything and also he is a lazy ass so always finds the best and easiest way to make things. and he did

he proposed me to use only one big frame of one actor sequence to import every animation and sent me an example file (that was the [url=http://jmp.sh/uWguZAT]first frame[/url] of the actor_sequence.Black Dragon.combat.walk.e file) and a [url=http://jmp.sh/qb8dp1c]a few edited copies[/url] of that sequence file itself to help making my new sequences centered. so this isnt really my knowledge here...

now lets begin

at first you will need [url=https://www.gimp.org/downloads/]gimp[/url] to be able to edit .ora images.



duplicate the frame as many times as you want or need and paste your images into the frames in order.



then export the built animation as a new ora file (in this case it was actor_sequence.hero.mirage_barbie_female.melee.ne.ora for example )



after this you will need the [url=http://jmp.sh/pBXxUpb]h4reshelper tool[/url]. import your ora file as layer into it





and save it as h4d



now lets talk about the sequence files

they always start with 4 bytes of '02 00 02 00'.

never touch it.



right after this 4 bytes starts the image animation itself. the animation ends where the 'footprint data' or what the heck starts at the end of the file:



this is 8 bytes of bullsnow and in the original combat sequences its always '97 FE FF FF A5 FE FF FF'. in radmutants template files its 87 FE FF FF F5 FE FF FF or 97 FE FF FF FF FE FF FF. its cause the dragon is flying instead of walking so the animations would be 'off-centered' with the original data. at the very end of the file there is 00 00 but i dont know what is that.

so now lets open the h4d file that you saved above in a hex editor



and open the sequence file too and copy EVERYTHING in the h4d and paste it into the sequence file. be sure you overwrite everything with the pasted stuff in the sequence BETWEEN the 02 00 02 00 and the footprint data!!!

and save the result as a new sequence file (in this case: actor_sequence.hero.mirage_barbie_female.melee.ne.seq).

and i forgot to mention (again): never change the width of the image frames in the ora files, only change the height of them if you have to do that cause changing the width will probably causing crash ingame.

im quiet sure i forgot to mention a lot of other things but you can always ask for more help when you need.

ofc you can try to use a different sequence to import your stuff like one of the megadragons sequences as it is also big enough and its stands on the ground instead of flying. maybe that can be centered on its own without snowing the footprint data? maybe

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mirage
mirage


Promising
Hired Hero
posted June 13, 2018 02:02 PM

aaand finally made it! this one was exhausting...

a [url=http://jmp.sh/ARGyLYS]wolfman hero[/url]


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radmutant69
radmutant69


Promising
Known Hero
posted June 14, 2018 01:00 PM

Nice

But before it goes too far, I think we should give credits for the original authors of these characters.

The 'skeleton hero' is a work of Clint Bellanger who also made some more character sprites. Also he made some other stuff that I used to create new objects.

All heroes after that were extracted from custom Fallout Tactics characters made by Diablo7707 (if you want to rape the Google Translator or you are kkfkkkfk, you can try this site too. I think he is not the original author of most (or some?) of these images but he still did insane amount of work to create these sprites so...

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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 17, 2018 04:15 PM

Oh my. I didn't expect people to get this far without automation or good tools...

Although I was the one who technically said this could be done, doing it frame for frame...

Anyways,

If I release a new version of the mod, do you think I could include some of these?

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nostradamus
nostradamus


Adventuring Hero
posted June 17, 2018 11:31 PM

Nimo,that would be completely new homm iv game experience,together with Mirage and Radmutant new adventure objects,it could be also a new campaign,I miss also stonehenge monolits,well people,fans are really struggling,and working together to create better homm iv game,we must appreciate that,I believe something amazing will come out of this,with combined knowledge,exchanging information,good to see you back in homm iv world!

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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 18, 2018 03:18 AM

Of course, and thank you for your enthusiasm. Our work would be npothing without fans.

Coincidentally I was thinking on using this new Tree hero, along with the new spooky stuff, in a campaign map, where you enter the deep dark woods to cure the forest of an ancient and terrible power...

* * *

There are literally thousands of isometric sprites in this style that could be converted (Baldur's Gate series, Diablo II, etc.), and the H4 engine seems to support an indefinite number of custom hero appearances, so really we could have some very insteresting creatures and heroes in the future if someone puts their mind in it.

In fact, I believe the day that an H4 total conversion is fully possible is not very far.

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mirage
mirage


Promising
Hired Hero
posted June 18, 2018 09:42 AM

NimoStar said:
Oh my. I didn't expect people to get this far without automation or good tools...

Although I was the one who technically said this could be done, doing it frame for frame...

Anyways,

If I release a new version of the mod, do you think I could include some of these?


yeah, ofc you can use them. i made them for everyone and not only for myself

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mirage
mirage


Promising
Hired Hero
posted June 20, 2018 06:23 PM

here is the next one: a [url=http://jmp.sh/vtT7Ggj]sexy harpy hero[/url] - with an unexpected shadow bug. i dont know how to fix that



so... shade_hunter, assryn or anyone else, any success so far ?

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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 20, 2018 09:45 PM

How were the original shadows?

If you show the images here maybe I can know what happened.

Normally in H4 shadows are a different frame, at least in map images, so that other images "step" over them.

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mirage
mirage


Promising
Hired Hero
posted June 21, 2018 12:55 PM
Edited by mirage at 12:58, 21 Jun 2018.

the original images look like this



the shadow is in the same frame as the image but i guess the cause of the bug is not that but either the shadow was too black and the reshelper rendered it to transparent cause of that reason or the reshelper is bugged

it was unexpected for me only cause the previous werewolf lookalike has the same style of black(ish) shadow and that looks good actually very bad but working ingame...



so technically i do know how to fix it: erase all the shadows or make them less dark and make the whole skin from scratch again

but i dont wanna do that. that would be too many work for me to edit hundreds of image frames only for one little character. i want an easier way than that.

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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 22, 2018 07:02 PM

In the harpy hero the shoadow doesn't touch the character. I don't know how that could affect but it may.

Something strange is that you can see shadow fragments. I don't know how to explain that exactly. Maybe you should make sure the sets are in 256 indexed colors before converting them.

Otherwise, I did notice those big characters are much more crisp (actually looks bad) in the original, while the converted versions look blurry more in ine with H4 characters.

Was that intentional or simply the resizing caused it?

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mirage
mirage


Promising
Hired Hero
posted June 22, 2018 07:32 PM

NimoStar said:
In the harpy hero the shoadow doesn't touch the character. I don't know how that could affect but it may.

Something strange is that you can see shadow fragments. I don't know how to explain that exactly. Maybe you should make sure the sets are in 256 indexed colors before converting them.


afaik black pixels will always be transparent in the game but these shadows have dark gray pixels too. this is why fragments of it can be seen i guess.

NimoStar said:
Otherwise, I did notice those big characters are much more crisp (actually looks bad) in the original, while the converted versions look blurry more in ine with H4 characters.

Was that intentional or simply the resizing caused it?


that must be the resizing.

[url=http://jmp.sh/BZJ6ATS]the skeleton king[/url] is here.



it was fast work only for fun so it probably needs some fixes. i really want a tool for editing/creating actor sequences.

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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 22, 2018 08:21 PM
Edited by NimoStar at 20:26, 22 Jun 2018.

Quote:
afaik black pixels will always be transparent in the game but these shadows have dark gray pixels too. this is why fragments of it can be seen i guess.



I think that, if the game takes pitch black as shadow, then the issue will be solved if you index to 256 colors (soo all those "dark greys" will become total black), and then correct that color to 0,0,0 RGB.

Notice that shadows in the original H4 creatures aren't pitch black, probably due to the auto-transparency you mention.

Also notice that your shadows probably overrule normal pixels. AKA they are taken as a standing object, so they will superpose other creatures and heroes that stand behind...

Which is a shame because the shadows of the skeleton hero also have the same direction as H4 shadows so if edited it would fit perfectly.

Another way, a partial fix, is just to "50% erase" all those black pixels. I believe it is possible to do this to all frames at once. Otherwise it is just a click per frame with magic eraser. That would create semi-transparent shadows.

***

And, for once, God thank the blurry GIMP resizing then

THough seemingly it didn't work on the arbor dryad.

Maybe you didn't resize it? But it looks very blocky.

***

Im guessing these don't have smaller versions to be map representations, or do they?

(the map version works almost the same as the normal index of Combat Sequences)

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radmutant69
radmutant69


Promising
Known Hero
posted June 23, 2018 12:57 PM

Actually any pitch black pixels will causing holes in the imported images. Your first suggestion will just make the shadows disappearing completely.

The second way may worth a try I think.


Also no adventure actors for these so far.

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Karmakeld
Karmakeld


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted June 25, 2018 03:41 PM

It's always a bummer coming to the conclusion one has to redo hours of work, I've been there too, but I second some of the suggestions posted here.

Always make make shadow separate layers, so they indeed work as shadows are intended.

And avoid pitch black, I've had the same issue and I believe Namerutan knew this as I recall the ResHelper tool will display pitch black as transparant when viewed in it. So this allows one to do tests.

As for easy fixes, layers can be linked in Gimp, meaning you can edit all at once, however there are some limitations and sadly we can't edit shades/lighting on all images at once. If Magic Pen transparancy works I don't know - yet. But alternatively you can mark an area and all layers will be marked (as long as you don't unmark it), also the recent changes in lighting/shading is kept in a dropdown menu, so there's a bit of time saved, but still lot of work if you want to redo them.

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