01-07-2007, 05:29 PM
Since icon creation is a task you're likely to have to do many times and involves a lot of repetitive steps, it makes sense to have a plug-in that automates the process.
Firstly download this small plugin I wrote (see attached), it's a small script written in scheme (GIMP's default scripting language) and it allows you to easily create Icons which look somewhat like the default ones in game. To install extract the file makeicon.scm to the gimp's script folder - 'C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\scripts' on my system.
In order to use the script you need to get a picture of whatever you want to create an icon of, for the purposes of this tutorial I will use the glass longsword. Take a screenshot of the sword in the construction set and load it into the GIMP as shown below.
![[Image: tut1.jpg]](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/TheIrishShamrocker/IconTutorial/tut1.jpg)
Now select the part of the sword that you want to turn into the icon. We could just use the whole thing, but most of bethesda's icons show the hilt and part of the blade, like so:
![[Image: tut2.jpg]](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/TheIrishShamrocker/IconTutorial/tut2.jpg)
Before we can turn our sword into an icon we need to make sure that the 'keep transparency' option is off, and there is only one layer on the image that we want to turn into an icon.
![[Image: tut03.jpg]](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/TheIrishShamrocker/IconTutorial/tut03.jpg)
Now select the 'Make Icon' option in Script-Fu->Oblivion.
![[Image: tut4.jpg]](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/TheIrishShamrocker/IconTutorial/tut4.jpg)
A dialogue box will then appear with the following options:
![[Image: tut5.jpg]](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/TheIrishShamrocker/IconTutorial/tut5.jpg)
The default options are set up to give pretty good results without changing anything, but a brief summary of the options and what they do is given below.
Background Colour - This is the colour that will be made transparent, it is set to the grey background colour used in the CS.
Blur Width - The width of the blur that surrounds the item. 2 or 3 should give the most oblivion like results.
Tint (colour/intensity) - Will tint the item a specified colour and amount.
Tweak Item Colours - Will apply a few hand picked filters to make the item look more oblivion like.
If you want you can change these filters, they are all arguments to the prog1 function on line 83 of the script, like so:
Flatten Layers - When selected this will merge all the layers that make up the icon into 1 layer, ready to be exported to a dds file.
With all the default options selected, press OK and it should turn your image into something like this:
![[Image: tut6-1.jpg]](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b189/TheIrishShamrocker/IconTutorial/tut6-1.jpg)
Any comments or suggestions about the script are welcome (especially how I could improve it
)
Firstly download this small plugin I wrote (see attached), it's a small script written in scheme (GIMP's default scripting language) and it allows you to easily create Icons which look somewhat like the default ones in game. To install extract the file makeicon.scm to the gimp's script folder - 'C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\scripts' on my system.
In order to use the script you need to get a picture of whatever you want to create an icon of, for the purposes of this tutorial I will use the glass longsword. Take a screenshot of the sword in the construction set and load it into the GIMP as shown below.
Now select the part of the sword that you want to turn into the icon. We could just use the whole thing, but most of bethesda's icons show the hilt and part of the blade, like so:
Before we can turn our sword into an icon we need to make sure that the 'keep transparency' option is off, and there is only one layer on the image that we want to turn into an icon.
Now select the 'Make Icon' option in Script-Fu->Oblivion.
A dialogue box will then appear with the following options:
The default options are set up to give pretty good results without changing anything, but a brief summary of the options and what they do is given below.
Background Colour - This is the colour that will be made transparent, it is set to the grey background colour used in the CS.
Blur Width - The width of the blur that surrounds the item. 2 or 3 should give the most oblivion like results.
Tint (colour/intensity) - Will tint the item a specified colour and amount.
Tweak Item Colours - Will apply a few hand picked filters to make the item look more oblivion like.
If you want you can change these filters, they are all arguments to the prog1 function on line 83 of the script, like so:
Code:
(if (eqv? mod-colors-flag TRUE)
(prog1 (gimp-brightness-contrast item-layer 0 75)
(gimp-color-balance item-layer SHADOWS TRUE 100 0 0)
(plug-in-cartoon 1 image item-layer 7 0)))With all the default options selected, press OK and it should turn your image into something like this:
Any comments or suggestions about the script are welcome (especially how I could improve it
)