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Optimize skins?

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Level 7
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Aug 18, 2008
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hey i just looked through the 2D art tutorials and didnt find any tut. on how to optimize your skin, reduce the filesize but keep certan quality, and so on.
Am i just stupid or couldnt that be useful?

if not, can somebody teach me how? :wink:
 

Deleted member 157129

D

Deleted member 157129

Download wc3 viewer.
(If it is in .blp file format) Convert it into .bmp
Reconvert again to .blp (I recommend 75 - 90 quality).

Doesn't that completely mess up your alpha?
 

Deleted member 157129

D

Deleted member 157129

Indeed. They are contemplating whether it reduces the file-size of the final .blp, though. Then again, I'm thinking that's because the alpha is gone.
 

Deleted member 157129

D

Deleted member 157129

JPEG will definitely reduce the file-size, but it'll also kill your alpha. The thing is, TGA is the only useful format (out of the three that are generally used for skins), as it's the only format that supports transparency, and that is essential.
 
Level 14
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JPEG will definitely reduce the file-size, but it'll also kill your alpha. The thing is, TGA is the only useful format (out of the three that are generally used for skins), as it's the only format that supports transparency, and that is essential.
I think, Dr Super Good meant JPEG compression used in BLP, not the JPEG file itself. Any BLP with JPEG compression always contain alpha, even if the input image was without it. Oh, and BMP can store alpha channel, read the file format specification, wc3viewer just cannot save it. Why convert BLP to something, when you can BLP => BLP?

~98% of the skins can be optimized without resaving it with lesser quality, but the difference in size wouldn't be bigger than ~3 Kb uncompressed (and ~1 kb in archive).

For example, I took SharadarSorceror.blp by Dionesiist (JPEG, 85% quality, 82,0 Kb) and optimized it in blp lab, which saved 2908 bytes. Next, I resaved original file with 65% and haven't noticed significant changes, but the size dropped drastically (51,6 Kb). Of course, it's not a limit of quality, I saw skins saved with 30%, and they looked decent in game.
 

Dr Super Good

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Unfortunatly you are going via opinions. The only real way to quantify quality is to enhance differences that occur between 2 images and the orignal and generate a value based on the sum of them. The larger the difference from the orignal, the lower the quality of the image. Additionally if large differences start appearing visually, they will be more noticable than gradual differences all over the image.
 
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