How to Customize Icons Borders

[Cpt.ZnacK]

Warcraft 3 Icon Borders

This tutorial was made to teach you how to make your very own custom borders for Warcraft III maps.

Why Have Custom Borders?
They can generally look nice if made properly, as long as they aren't sloppy.

• They provide a nice effect to your icons.
• They usually won't take more space (or at least not much more space) than normally-bordered icons.

Note that these borders are for Warcraft III only, not Starcraft II.

Requirements:

• Button Manager 1.8
  This tool allows you to turn an ordinary picture into a icon for Warcraft III.
• Art Tools [Saint Paint Studio]
  Well one can easily use any art tool to make these borders. Paint, Photoshop, GIMP, among others, will work just fine.
• Blanks
  These are basic icon borders to help you create your own borders.

How Do I Make a Border?
Making a border is very simple. You can physically draw the picture, or just edit the normal icon with your graphic program (photoshop, GIMP, paint, etc.)

Steps	Discription
1.	Go to you're Button Manager File.
2.	There are two folders in it Standard and Custom. Open the Custom folder (here you will find some .bmp format pictures.)
3.	Now open the blanks that this tutorial provides and edit them in the way you want.
4.	Copy in the borders you want to apply to your icons [Borders must be in .bmp format]
5.	Open Button Manager 1.8, then go to Tools -> User Border (F4), or just click on the Standard Borders Label under all the buttons.
6.	Open the picture you want to be borderized.
7.	Click on the name of the border you want to apply, and viola, you've got an icon with a custom border.

1. Recent version of Button Manager is 1.8.1
2. Custom borders can be stored in any format supported by program, but TGA and BMP are preferable (due to lossless image format and alpha channel support).
3. Alpha-channels, stored in borders, affect icons to which they are applied. For example, open bm_att.tga or bm_upg.tga.
4. Pixels colored with gray-scale colors (ex: 255-255-255 or 128-128-128) affects brightness of the same pixel on the icon.

Things you must know!

• The reason for the white area in the .bmp format is that white is the color that gets replaced by the image that you want the border around.
• Black is the background.

Here are some icon borders that have been created.
To download a border, click on the border picture. Be sure to give them credits in your map.
If you have made a nice border that you would like to share, PM me Cpt.ZnacK with you're border in .bmp format and I'll add it to the collection.

Border	Discription	Creator
	A border made for a Starcraft/Space map in Warcraft III, Used as a BTN border. The Original Link Borders	General Frank
	A border made for a Starcraft/Space map in Warcraft III, used as a PAS Border. The Original Borders	General Frank
	General Frank's Original UPG Border	General Frank
	This is basically General Frank's borders that I've customized to however I like it.	General Frank/ Cpt.ZnacK
	A border made for a holy caster type.	Cpt.ZnacK
	Battlefield border that I made as a suggestion for the upcoming Battlefield Map.	Cpt.ZnacK

Example in Game

These are the Battlefield icon borders

Special Thanks to General Frank for allowing me to use his custom borders as examples and to Shadow Daemon as well for the information.

 

[PurgeandFire]

You need to change the colors to the ones approved in the sticky of this forum. (Or at least to something similar to them, at the moment there isn't enough contrast for readability)

Also:

-Art Tools
Well one can easily use any art tool to make these borders. example Paint or Photoshop.
-Blanks(these you can make you're custom borders on.)

You should link these. And what do you mean by "Blanks"? (unless it is a tool)

Otherwise, it is nice I guess. There are a lot of tutorials showing bordering (it is the same process) but I guess I can still approve this (once some things are fixed) since it is a cool idea anyway. =)

 

[adrianwho]

You should improve the color's you use for your fonts. this does not look good: BAD!. These color's would look Much much better: GOOD!, GOOD!, GOOD! and GOOD!. Also did General FrankAllow you to use them really????????

 

[Cpt.ZnacK]

yep he has... and ill change those now

 

[Shadow Daemon]

1. Recent version of Button Manager is 1.8.1
2. Custom borders can be stored in any format supported by program, but TGA and BMP are preferable (due to lossless image format and alpha channel support).
3. Alpha-channels, stored in borders, affects icons on which they are applied. For example, open bm_att.tga or bm_upg.tga.
4. Pixels coloured with grayscale colours (like 255-255-255 or 128-128-128) affects brightness of the same pixel on icon.

 

[PurgeandFire]

I fixed the grammar and other stuff, ~approved.

 

[Kakerate]

Anyone have the blanks file?