Complete Icon Tutorial - All About Icons

[Flame_Phoenix]

If you are talking about the size of the icon, then that will most likely not just work, it will also crash your game.

 

[Shadow Daemon]

Flame_Phoenix, sorry for interfering your thread.

I think, Storyyeller is talking about mipmaps (wiki) in BLP files.
If there's only 1 mipmap in the BLP icon file, it would not show up correctly on:
1. Low "texture detail"
2. Low resolution
3. When "mipmap level" is bigger than 0.
4. When dragging an item in the inventory.

A while ago I had the problem with mipmapping in my program, so output files gave weird results like that one.
Also, in some cases, game just takes neighbour icon's mipmap and displays it.

 

[Flame_Phoenix]

MipMaps mmm I never experienced such a problem, I never heard of it mmm
Thx for explaining that, I will see what I can do.

 

[Amargaard]

Woow! What a big tutorial, and its look good, although i haven't read it all... -->

I downloaded the irfanview, but when i opened it, it says that its not a guilty win32-program... ?

Is the program not for Vista or...? I thought that i would use another program instead of Irfanview, but I dont know which programs that is the right ones...

Can you improve a litle so its like:

Instead of Irfanview you can use - ...
Instead of W3IR you can use - ...
Instead of Warcraft 3 Viewer you can use - ...


or just answer as a comment...

Thanks anyway for using time on a big tutorian-projekt that will make us Icon-n00bs happy

 

[GTR_MajorBlood]

Not Bad Hard To Understand In Some Areas but overall I give it a 4.5/5

 

[Nognix]

Hmm, didnt read anything about it in this tutorial, but maybe that's just me. But can you take the existing icons out of the wc3 database to edit them?

 

[Flame_Phoenix]

Mmmm
yes ... You can even make a printscreen of the icon in game and the work on it ... Or you can export it using an mpg afaik.

 

[legospencer]

Very nice tutorial indeed! +rep

But, I have a problem! I'm quite sure I followed everything in the tutorial; my custom icons appear very nicely in the editor, normal buttons and disabled buttons. However in the game the disabled buttons appear as green boxes of death. What's with that?? Have you ever heard of a problem like that?

 

[Flame_Phoenix]

You should see the "fix green icon" section of my tutorial. I am pretty much such the icon is not a 64x64 icon as it should be, but it can also be something else.

 

[Ozmax]

I don't get any little thing to my mind in this tut. I don't even know how to covert my pictures to blp...

 

[Flame_Phoenix]

I don't get any little thing to my mind in this tut. I don't even know how to covert my pictures to blp...

More reading less whining.

 

[Dr. House]

nice tutorial but you need alot of patience to read all this

 

[Flame_Phoenix]

nice tutorial but you need alot of patience to read all this

Imagine the patience it took for me to make it then xD

 

[MoonRider]

Awesome Tutorial! All works thx duuude!

 

[xxALMIRxxx]

Perfect done dude. But i've got a question, how can i take icons from normal wc3 to modify them??

 

[Flame_Phoenix]

Perfect done dude. But i've got a question, how can i take icons from normal wc3 to modify them??

Icons in wc3 are in BLP format. Basically there are 2 ways:
1 - Run the game, and make a print screen of the game. Then use crop tool to select the tiny icon and save it as a BMP or JPEG image. Then you can modify it and do anything you want by following the tutorial.
2 - Use an MPQ extractor and extract the BLP icon from the engine. Then convert the BLP icon to BMP or JPEG format using wc3Viewer and then modify it as you want.

Hope it helps.

 

[xxALMIRxxx]

Ty dude , I love u <3

 

[siegaeditor]

Hey Thanks This really helped

 

[Gutrot The Legend]

How do you export an Icon from WC3?

 

[BlackDoom]

You need is the Warcrat 3 Viewer & WinMPQ if I remember correctly.
WinMPQ will open up the MPQ files inside the W3 directory as any standard archiver (like WinZip / WinRAR). You can see there the BLP files and a lot more.

With the W3Viewer, you are able, as far as I remember, to search for specific files, or to export entire models with their resources.

It's been years since I last used 'em, so I might be wrong. All in all, those are the 2 programs you need.

 

[Flame_Phoenix]

Just as BlackDoom says. I am happy to see you are still alive m8

 

[BlackDoom]

It's been long since I've last got in touch with W3, mate.

 

[Guderian]

I cant thank you enought. This guide was even more than i was needing. i thank you a lot for your work and if you ever come near Argentina there will be a case of beer and asado waiting for.
Unless you are underage for the beer

 

[momcilo94]

First of all + rep for this
Second of all IT TOOK'D ME A WEEK TO READ ALL OF THIS U PEOPLE ARE CRAZY
Third the Tutorial is so nice, kewl, awesome i didn't know what is the limit of Tutorial and reply's i mean the word limit anyhow all of u that have posted and u guy that have created this are nuts how long did u write this cuz like i said it took'd me a WEEK to READ this omfg anyhow +reps for all that told a War and Peace book in there reply's

 

[Flame_Phoenix]

Thanks for the rep++.
It took me between 2 and 3 months to create and post it here. And no, I am not crazy. I know this because every night when I go to sleep I sleep knowing I am a proud man for the people I helped and for the world I made better. Can you say the same or aren't you crazy enough ?

If when you do something you put all your heart into it, then you will achieve what no other man can, because there is no power as for the power of a one man's soul.

Time is counting.

 

[UlithiumDragon]

Amazing tutorial, but one thing I noticed and had to figure out myself:

The vanilla races use regular DISBTN icons for their autocast icons, i.e. the autocast DISBTN icons don't have the corner brackets that the regular autocast BTN's have! This causes unresearched autocast spells to not show the autocast corner brackets as well!

 

[EdwardElric]

I want to make an addition, perhaps you could add it, Flame_Phoenix. It's about the section "Fix an Icon", "Fixing green icons", point 4 (import path). I was in need to use subfolders if possible, like:
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\element1\stand.tga
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\element2\stand.tga
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\element3\stand.tga
...
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\element1\stand.tga
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\element2\stand.tga
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\element3\stand.tga
...

But subfolders do not work, at least not the way like shown above. What works is solely using subfolders for "ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\..." like:
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\element1\stand.tga
...
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\stand.tga
...

Wc3 searches in folder (without subfolders!) "ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\" for respective button names given from folder (with subfolders!) "ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\".

So this isn't solving my problem, as the different "stand.tga" files under path "ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\" would replace each other.

To cut a long story short, using subfolders isn't working for buttons in need of disabled versions. In this case you have to use different names like:
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\element1_stand.tga
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\element2_stand.tga
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtons\element3_stand.tga
...
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\element1_stand.tga
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\element2_stand.tga
ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\element3_stand.tga
...

Just wanted to clarify, as I couldn't find an answer to this question yet.

 

[Twizz]

Disabled Passive not found... /Green/

ReplaceableTextures\CommandButtonsDisabled\DISPASNeverWorks.blp

xdxdxd

 

[3ICE]

Typofix Mk. II

Beautiful tutorial. I remember reviewing this years ago. I noticed you fixed all the typos I listed last time. Except these three somehow eluded your scrutiny:

Infraview → IrfanView
hiveworkshop → HiveWorkshop (or THW)
goggle → Google

Explanation: "Irfan" is the dude's name (who made the program Irfan View (or iView)
THW is just HIVE now. But HiveWorkshop still works. Or Hive Workshop (two words)
Google is a newly registered verb (most dictionaries have added it in their latest edition). "goggle" is a very old word and means something else. Not searching, but staring / monocle / half of a pair of sunglasses or other eye-wear.
Thank you.

p.s.: The [broke] bbcode tag you used at the top is, funnily enough, broken:

[broke="Remember to POST comments; Give reputation POINTS and to RATE this tutorial."]IMPORTANT !![/broke]

+Rep'd you anyway. (Does it count as a +2 if I already +red'p some years ago? Because I did.)

 

[TheFireMage]

Instead of using W3IR, can I use Button Manager v1.8.2 instead?
Edit: I still can see the icon but not sure if it works when using on an item