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BTNQuillSpray

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Throws out a spray of sharp quills damaging enemies nearby. Can be used with boars or any type of hostile creep or hero.
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BTNQuillSpray (Icon)

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8512590215848
Seems half-liquid thingie, not as a spiky quill. Try to give it more stright shape. Also, as an optional tune zoom it out a little and make some color-shift on the farther spikes. A bit colored background can also improve icon's quality (a cloudy...

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
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Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,177
They are not making them "blurry" but introducing compression artefacts. Since one generally makes JPEG content blp files for the icons they are subject to 8*8 pixel block JPEG compression artefacts, a result of the lossy compression.

So that quality remains consistent with the rest of WC3 one should generally set the compression of all JPEG content BLP buttons to 80% quality (or 20% compression depending how the program specifies it). Yes the artefacts will still exist however they should not be pronounced enough to negatively affect view quality.

If you use a high resolution master image (>>64*64 pixels) you might need to downsize to 64*64 using area averaging to avoid aliasing. Bilinear and bicubic algorithms only allow down sampling of approximately 50% for a single resampling operation and can produce visual artefacts if used repeatedly.
 

The Panda

Icon Reviewer
Level 57
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Jun 2, 2008
Messages
8,893
They are not making them "blurry" but introducing compression artefacts. Since one generally makes JPEG content blp files for the icons they are subject to 8*8 pixel block JPEG compression artefacts, a result of the lossy compression.

So that quality remains consistent with the rest of WC3 one should generally set the compression of all JPEG content BLP buttons to 80% quality (or 20% compression depending how the program specifies it). Yes the artefacts will still exist however they should not be pronounced enough to negatively affect view quality.

If you use a high resolution master image (>>64*64 pixels) you might need to downsize to 64*64 using area averaging to avoid aliasing. Bilinear and bicubic algorithms only allow down sampling of approximately 50% for a single resampling operation and can produce visual artefacts if used repeatedly.

Thank you sir its good to know this because id like to have my icon to be HD isn't of pixelated and blurry or "Artefacts" as you said it :p
 

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
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Jan 18, 2005
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Thank you sir its good to know this because id like to have my icon to be HD isn't of pixelated and blurry or "Artefacts" as you said it
Nothing stops one making icons 128*128 pixels as long as appropriate boarders are created for the size. Since the UI is subject to bilinear filtering and does not use mipmaps anything larger than 128*128 will cause aliasing artefacts for most users so is not recommend (average user assumed playing on 1080p or smaller display). Logically a 128*128 blp file is 4 times the file size of a 64*64 blp file however some size could be saved by increasing compression slightly. Technically something like 96*96 pixel would serve as a good "HD" icon resolution however one would have issues with making the boarder consistent with the standard icons.
 
Level 50
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Mar 22, 2016
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588
Please don't go off topic guys, take these sort of discussions elsewhere. Only acceptable size for uploading icon here is 64x64 pixels, anything else is not.


Haven't we already had this on pending Panda?
124357-ec2ff3f11ec64914427eefd074a287f1.jpg

Don't delete/ reupload stuff please, use edit button and replace icons with their updated version instead.

New version seems better, colors could still be lass saturated and there is quite a lot of highlight but ok. I think you should make background black, no need for dark brows in between of quills. Solid black will add on to the definition of these objects in motion.
 

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,177
Please don't go off topic guys, take these sort of discussions elsewhere.
It is not off topic. He was having issues with icon image quality in chat, of which this was the example being referenced.

The problem was eventually fixed by using 80% quality, which statistics show is the standard quality used by Blizzard for JPEG content BLP files.

Only acceptable size for uploading icon here is 64x64 pixels, anything else is not.
Not according to the rules. Nowhere do they mention anything about icon size restrictions, or even the number "64". You cannot just make up restrictions because you feel like them, even if you are a moderator.

WC3 mechanically supports buttons of any size, although high resolution textures will suffer from aliasing due to no mipmaps being used. As long as the boarders remain proportionally correct and are appropriately filtered while upscaling there should not be any noticeable stylistic difference between a 128*128 icon and a 64*64 icon. Resolutions like 96*96 would be a better trade off but there might be visual artefacts on the boarders that would make them stylistically different.
 
Level 50
Joined
Mar 22, 2016
Messages
588
Not according to the rules. Nowhere do they mention anything about icon size restrictions, or even the number "64". You cannot just make up restrictions because you feel like them, even if you are a moderator.
As I said, no icon with size other than 64x64 pixels will be accepted. Go complain to staff contact if you think I'm making up rules.
 
Level 49
Joined
Jan 12, 2010
Messages
1,771
Seems half-liquid thingie, not as a spiky quill. Try to give it more stright shape. Also, as an optional tune zoom it out a little and make some color-shift on the farther spikes. A bit colored background can also improve icon's quality (a cloudy things\trails from spikes, etc.) Generally would love to see some color variety on this icon.
 

Dr Super Good

Spell Reviewer
Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,177
A bit colored background can also improve icon's quality (a cloudy things\trails from spikes, etc.) Generally would love to see some color variety on this icon.
Blizzard icons are inconsistent with regard to this. The older RoC ones tend to have clouded backgrounds while the TFT ones generally have pure black backgrounds. This is likely a result of an art style shit during development.
 

The Panda

Icon Reviewer
Level 57
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Jun 2, 2008
Messages
8,893
Seems half-liquid thingie, not as a spiky quill. Try to give it more stright shape. Also, as an optional tune zoom it out a little and make some color-shift on the farther spikes. A bit colored background can also improve icon's quality (a cloudy things\trails from spikes, etc.) Generally would love to see some color variety on this icon.

I can try to add more color but i wanted to make it washed colors as in my head quills are all brownish messy colors. Ill straighten them out a bit, and i added some grays in the background too indicate the quills where moving fast at the enemy but i removed them because murloc said too so im not sure what to do in that point.

I can try to add more color but i wanted to make it washed colors as in my head quills are all brownish messy colors. Ill straighten them out a bit, and i added some grays in the background too indicate the quills where moving fast at the enemy but i removed them because murloc said too so im not sure what to do in that point.

But, ill edit it one more time see where it stands.
 
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Level 22
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Feb 6, 2014
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Since one generally makes JPEG content blp files
So it's better to use a different file format before converting to BLP then, something that has no lossy compression like PNG or BMP to remove the remains of JPG lossy compression like 8x8 pixel blocks, chrominance down sampling from YCbCr (thought barely visible) and high quantization of Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients?
 

Dr Super Good

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Level 63
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
27,177
So it's better to use a different file format before converting to BLP then, something that has no lossy compression like PNG or BMP to remove the remains of JPG lossy compression like 8x8 pixel blocks, chrominance down sampling from YCbCr (thought barely visible) and high quantization of Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients?
One cannot create BLP files from JPEG alone anyway since JPEG files do not support alpha. JPEG content BLP files get around this by using a non-standard JPEG format in the form of RGBA component values (why the images look corrupt in most viewers if extracted into a .jpg file).

For maximum image quality you want to use a lossless format that supports RGBA with 8 bits per component such as png and then allow the BLP converter to perform the desired level of JPEG compression. It seems practically every JPEG content BLP icon in WC3 that Blizzard made used 80% quality (20% compression).
 
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