Importing Custom Icons into SC2

[JackRCDF]

A video tutorial by me.
Linky is here:

Best viewed onsite.

 

[JackRCDF]

Updated with a better video.

 

[gaby-boy]

Nice Tut but plz remove the double post!

Btw, nice job

 

[Dr Super Good]

This tutorial is usless.

Firstly, you do not explain why the icon must be 76 * 76 pixels. Which I know for a fact it does not have to be as you can use even 256 256 textures as buttons.

Secondly you say save the file as a dds. I admist things like MS paint will not have a dds exporter but I went to a more advanced image editor from 2007 (which was not cheap) and it did not have the ability to export to dds. You failed to touch the "what if" question of the steps needed for people who do not have axcess to dds exporters within their art program.

Then you went on talking about how it is important to save it with a specific compression method.... Why exaclty? Do the others not work or something? Or is it your opinion that it is the best option availabe? Tutorials should help you understand how to do something, not raise a lot of why questions.

Then you went on to import an icon into a map... Why not into a mod so everyone could use it as blizzard intended?

I do not particually think this tutorial is that helpful to anyone as it is only usable by a select few people, does not explain the choices made then shows people the wrong way to use icons.

 

[JackRCDF]

This tutorial is usless.

I beg to differ, several people have said that they have found it useful.

Firstly, you do not explain why the icon must be 76 * 76 pixels. Which I know for a fact it does not have to be as you can use even 256 256 textures as buttons.

76x76 is what Blizzard uses for their icons, which makes things easier when matching up to the current icons. I didn't explain because it was a quick and dirty tutorial to start people off with getting icons into sc2.

Secondly you say save the file as a dds. I admist things like MS paint will not have a dds exporter but I went to a more advanced image editor from 2007 (which was not cheap) and it did not have the ability to export to dds. You failed to touch the "what if" question of the steps needed for people who do not have axcess to dds exporters within their art program.

If they don't have a .dds exporter, they can use irfanview or gimp + the dds plugin. I didn't address this because I didn't think of it till after, but I may add an annotation to the video to make it more understandable, as you aren't the first to bring this up.

Then you went on talking about how it is important to save it with a specific compression method.... Why exaclty? Do the others not work or something? Or is it your opinion that it is the best option availabe? Tutorials should help you understand how to do something, not raise a lot of why questions.

I don't know why, I saw another tutorial that recommended it and I didn't have time to find out what the other compession methods would do.

Then you went on to import an icon into a map... Why not into a mod so everyone could use it as blizzard intended?

Who cares what blizzard intended? Most people aren't looking to make mods with sc2 (well, multi-map maps) so it's simpler to show them what they want: how to get custom icons into a SC MAP.

I do not particually think this tutorial is that helpful to anyone as it is only usable by a select few people, does not explain the choices made then shows people the wrong way to use icons.

It is useable by most people, very few people won't find it useful if they are new to SC2 editing. It doesn't need to explain things to show how to get something done. It doesn't show the wrong way to use icons. It achieved its purpose and I find it to be satisfactory.

 

[Dr Super Good]

.dds is a microsoft DirectX texture format. It is capable of prety much direct transfer into graphic buffers of the correct type thus why blizzard used it. Warcraft 3 on the other hand with its .blp used JPEG compression and so required the texture to be decompressed before it was usable by the graphic process. As such loading a SC2 texture is far less computationally intensive.

Like .blp, .dds stores all mipmap levels pre generated.

The form of compression used transfers into the game engine and continues being used even after loaded, or so says the DX specification (Starcraft may or may not convert to a common universal texture format). What alters is their efficency and quality. 5 gives alpha lossy compression and colour lossy compression at ratio of 1:4 of uncompressed 32bit image. 3 gives alpha colour reduction and colour lossy compression at ratio of 1:4. 1 Gives no alpha support snf colour lossy compression but at a higher ratio (1:8). It also supports a fully uncompressed solution for 24 or 32 bit (alpha) images.

The compression used works on minimum of 4*4 blocks. As such it has to increase the size of each image to a multiple of 4 (same with all mipmaps). The end result is that it will always store some wasted pixels. Do not get confused with JPEG 1 compression (descrete cosine compression) which works on 8 - 8 blocks, JPEG compression is unsuited for realtime texel axcess due to the large block size and complex calculations required to rebuild blocks whereas the compression used in .dds is and is used in a lot of games.

Be aware that there are both DX9 and DX10 versions of the format. I do not know which of them SC2 supports but I recon DX9 for compatability and that the compression referenced a pre DX10 name.

For icons you may wish to fall back to uncompressed 32 bit colour or atleast compare with the compressed version. This is because the majority of the pixels are 100% alpha so compression can greatly reduce file size for duplicate colours. The same should also apply with 5 and 3 compression for areas which are 4*4 100% alpha however the edges will be less compressable with data in the middle of the image being very difficut to compress due to varience.

The point of the compression is to allow textures to be 4 or 8 times the area (8 times more pixels) while generating a file size the same as the uncompressed version which is also easy for graphic cards to use with minimal need for preprocessing. Its use was designed to allow larger textures to be loaded when graphic memory was a major bottlekneck so the same address space could produce an apparently much sharper texture (the extra 4 or 8 times the piexels).

 

[JackRCDF]

.dds is a microsoft DirectX texture format. It is capable of prety much direct transfer into graphic buffers of the correct type thus why blizzard used it. Warcraft 3 on the other hand with its .blp used JPEG compression and so required the texture to be decompressed before it was usable by the graphic process. As such loading a SC2 texture is far less computationally intensive.

Like .blp, .dds stores all mipmap levels pre generated.

The form of compression used transfers into the game engine and continues being used even after loaded, or so says the DX specification (Starcraft may or may not convert to a common universal texture format). What alters is their efficency and quality. 5 gives alpha lossy compression and colour lossy compression at ratio of 1:4 of uncompressed 32bit image. 3 gives alpha colour reduction and colour lossy compression at ratio of 1:4. 1 Gives no alpha support snf colour lossy compression but at a higher ratio (1:8). It also supports a fully uncompressed solution for 24 or 32 bit (alpha) images.

The compression used works on minimum of 4*4 blocks. As such it has to increase the size of each image to a multiple of 4 (same with all mipmaps). The end result is that it will always store some wasted pixels. Do not get confused with JPEG 1 compression (descrete cosine compression) which works on 8 - 8 blocks, JPEG compression is unsuited for realtime texel axcess due to the large block size and complex calculations required to rebuild blocks whereas the compression used in .dds is and is used in a lot of games.

Be aware that there are both DX9 and DX10 versions of the format. I do not know which of them SC2 supports but I recon DX9 for compatability and that the compression referenced a pre DX10 name.

For icons you may wish to fall back to uncompressed 32 bit colour or atleast compare with the compressed version. This is because the majority of the pixels are 100% alpha so compression can greatly reduce file size for duplicate colours. The same should also apply with 5 and 3 compression for areas which are 4*4 100% alpha however the edges will be less compressable with data in the middle of the image being very difficut to compress due to varience.

The point of the compression is to allow textures to be 4 or 8 times the area (8 times more pixels) while generating a file size the same as the uncompressed version which is also easy for graphic cards to use with minimal need for preprocessing. Its use was designed to allow larger textures to be loaded when graphic memory was a major bottlekneck so the same address space could produce an apparently much sharper texture (the extra 4 or 8 times the piexels).

I'll definitely consider including this if/when I redo the tutorial, although I don't have time or SC2 at the moment. Thanks.

 

[Statharas]

You don't get the point of mods. At all. Nuff said.
Fail tutorial to be honest, i could do a better one.