my ff7 avatar work i need some help please!

[knight1120]

there are some color loss in my avatar that i made, is there anyone that who knows how to fix it???

[Grimmy]

Every avatar has it's own custom 256 color palette, so an new avatar you create is forced to use the same palette. Color loss is expected in custom avatars, but if they are coming out all brownish in game that would mean you used the wrong color palette. I always open the original bmp in photoshop and paste my new image into that layer. Then as long as the background is still locked and says indexed save and your good to go.

[knight1120]

what you mean to open the original bmp? you mean you open the another avatar and you will paste it your image?? i can't figured it out 

[Grimmy]

You need to convert the original avatars .tex into a .bmp using omega. then open the pic you want for the new avatar resize it to 120x120 (I cannot remember the exact measurement) and copy it to you clipboard(Ctrl+C). then open the original avatar bmp in photoshop or paint and paste it(Ctrl+V). put the new pic over the original one and save it. use omega to convert back to a tex and copy it into your extracted menu_us. then recompile the menu_us with lgp tools. That should be all the steps, I didn't know where you were getting hung up.

[Aali]

You're not forced to use the same palette.. The palette is stored in the .tex file. You can either change it or just use an unpaletted .tex

[Grimmy]

How do you get the unpalletted tex. Anytime I've ever used a bmp with a custom color palette the conversion always comes out brownish in game.

[knight1120]

thanks for advise all of you guys im almost done  hihihi.... so this is my first mod that i made, actually im planning to release it 

[Grimmy]

No problem. I just condensed instructions found on this forum, and Aali knows tons more than I do(never could get those custom/unpaletted bmps to work in game). I had Just done another set of avatars with that menu on my FMV thread and was thinking of a release, but now I want to see your work.

[knight1120]

cloud, vincent, sephiroth, barret are already done and the others are in progress i'll try to finish it tonight so if i done i will release it tomorrow 

[Aali]

No problem. I just condensed instructions found on this forum, and Aali knows tons more than I do(never could get those custom/unpaletted bmps to work in game). I had Just done another set of avatars with that menu on my FMV thread and was thinking of a release, but now I want to see your work.

Which tool are you using? I've never done any FF7 modding myself so I wouldn't know whats out there.

[Grimmy]

For Avatars I use Omega and sometimes Biturn. But the latter can be problematic. Omega is pretty much the standard, but it forces you to load a tex before converting a new bmp, I think it gets all the info for the new tex from the old one you load. I've used biturn to make a custom tex that was unpaletted at 2048x2048, but omega refused to load it and ffvii won't display tex files made by biturn.

kula_wende, you see the white drop shadow. to get ride of it either make the avatar bigger, or use paint.net to crop and resize the pic and save it as a 256 bmp, then copy it, open the original avatar in regular paint and paste it then save and convert with omega. I'm not sure why but when I do it all in Photoshop the tex file that omega makes is moved up and to the left, but with paint the tex file is always in the right place. I have no idea why but it always happens that way.

[Aali]

Biturn seems to write mostly garbage to the .tex header so no wonder that doesn't work..

Omega I could not find, all the download links I found were dead.

Seems like I'll have to write a proper .tex converter

[Aali]

Omega gets the header "correct" by simply copying it from the input .tex file.. so that's useless for doing anything more advanced than editing the existing image in the same format.

[Grimmy]

I don't know much about headers, but I know if you didn't select the same tex file you moddified all the colors came out brownish. So the color palette is saved in the header? What about the image size?

[Aali]

Well, it uses the palette from the input .tex file too, but thats not really part of the header.
Image size is stored in the header, tex is really a very flexible format and FF7 will take just about anything.

I created a .tex out of rainbow jesus (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/328693250_2e09ad24e5.jpg) as a 500x333 bitmap in 24-bit color with no palette and replaced all the battle effects with it and even the D3D driver could handle it just fine.

[Grimmy]

ok, what did yoy use to create the tex file.

[Aali]

A hex editor

I'll probably write some simple tool to do it though, for starters a unpaletted 32-bit png->tex converter (because this is dead simple), but ideally you'd want something that can replace textures with more than 1 palette too. (If you replace a paletted texture with an unpaletted one FF7 will simply render the same thing for all palettes, and that won't look very good)

[Grimmy]

If anyone can create a better FFVII tex creator it you.

[Grimmy]

kula I forgot the most important part ,  the trick to prevent almost any color loss is to open the image in photoshop, use the "save for web" tool ( or save it as a .gif file ), then open the gif in paint and save it as a 256 color bmp(thanks spoofer).

[knight1120]

hey guys i seperate the release thread of my avatar, see it in game tweaking