Tutorial Creating custom fade filter with The Gimp

[Sooda]

Creating custom fade filter with The Gimp​

Q: What this tutorial teaches ?
A: How to create custom fade filters with free and powerful paint program called The Gimp. Then converting them to .blp format so you could use them in Warcraft map.

Q: What do I need for that ?
A:

• The Gimp
• Warcraft Image Viewer II (That program dosn' t convert *.blp to *.tga correctly, because of that use for converting Warcraft 3 Viewer !)
• For easier import Warcraft TFT

Q: Is it difficult ?
A: For pro it takes 5 mins, for beginners ~20 mins (When doing their first fade filter.)

So lets start. First when you open The Gimp you will see main menu, from there open one random picture. I decided to use one huge World of Warcraft wallpaper:

Now from Dialogues drop-down menu open Channels and Layer tab:

Usual image has Red, Green and Blue Channels, Warcraft uses for fade filters (and many more) Alpha Channel - that channel controls trancparency of picture. Basically we only need our picture on Alpha Channel with 100.00 opacity and to save it as *.tga file, if opacity would be 0.00 it would not be seen in game whatsoever. Make sure you have these tabs visible:

As a note you can hide or show layer when clicking on the eye icon. Don' t forget you do changes to layer what is currently active ! So even when you hide layer, you still can edit the layer. Be careful with that. First we add a new Alpha Channel to our picture from Layer > New Layer:

I re-named "New Layer" to "Alpha Channel". Make sure Layer Fill Type is set to: Trancparency and Opacity is set to 100.00. You should end up with this layer tab and channel tab:

Here comes one of most important things what you need to do. Make your first layer active what has image and copy it (Edit > Copy), then make your newly created "Alpha Channel" layer active and paste (Edit > Paste) your picture. You get one floating layer (Pasted Layer):

There are some buttons under Layers tab, use

to anchor your floating layer (Pasted Layer) to "Alpha Channel" layer, make sure that opacity is set to 100.00. The result looks like this:

You can now freely delete your first layer (In my example Background layer). We have successfully made fade filter almost.
Go to Image > Tranform > Flip Vertically, it is needed because Warcraft 3 Image Viewer turns it upside down. If it' s already upside down it will turn it back to normal view.
Because images are stored as 512 (Width) x 512 (Height) we need to scale this huge picture too:

There is Image Size Break Chain icon, it allows you freely set width and height. In Warcraft game viewable area is 450 height and 800 width but are stored (saved) in 512 (Width) x 512 (Height). Hit Scale button and you are done.
Lastly save image as *.tga file (Don' t use compression, if you do I don' t know will it work.) and open in Warcraft 3 Image Viewer. Save it again but this time as *.blp file. About quality: 75 % gives you 122 kb image when 100 % gives you 485 kb. The difference isn' t seen by eye so mostly use 75 %.
Then import image to Warcraft map and use Cinematic action:

Red, Green and Blue colors needs to be at 100.00 % because otherwise you would see in game fade filter as black. Now this filter works and you can use transparency too if you like. In game it would look like this:

I will attach WoW.blp ( 75 %) to under my post so you could download WoW.blp file and try out it yourself to see is it worthy makeing one yourself too.
I hope it helped someone like me to understand custom fade filters creation. I found other tutorials too vague but they still helped me greatly to understand main consept and gave key hints what to look.
Sorry for so much images but it was only way to teach beginners really fast what they need to do in such program.

 

[Andrewgosu]

Explained very in-detail; also, I like how you illustrated it with images.


desided -> decided.
trancparency - transparency.

I suggest you to take care of the grammar, punctuation and wording mistakes; use commas!

 

[Sooda]

> I suggest you to take care of the grammar, punctuation and wording mistakes; use commas!

Ouch, constructive criticism, I will fix them asap (Takes a bit time.). I needed that feedback really. I was so excited that I needed to write this and share my discoveries.

One major warning too, many *.blp to *.tga converters what I used while learning basics of the Gimp didn' t convert files correctly ! Do not use for *.blp converter to *.tga these programs:

Warcraft Image Extractor II - it converts without error reports but with major errors. You can' t see image on alpha channel/ layer when opened as *.tga by The Gimp (Dunno about other programs.).​

Warcraft Model Editor 1.05 by Magos - it does same errors when directly converting *.blp image from MPQ browser view like Warcraft Image Extractor II. Still when you open up image in Windows > Texture Manager and double click on it before exporting there will be no errors and you can open it as *.tga format.​

Only program what can convert *.blp to *.tga without errors is Warcraft 3 Viewer for The Gimp (atleast). You can be sure when *.tga image dosn' t have pre-view in The Gimp or InfranView can' t give you pre-view of *.tga image it is damaged.

Point behind my warning is that when you want to use parts from Blizzard *.blp files in your custom fade filter (Or any skin) then convert them to *.tga with Warcraft 3 Viewer or you have nothing to work with !

EDIT: Managed to fix these what you pointed out but did I added any errors while modifing my text ?

 

[xxxtrickyxxx]

-I would have to disagree with the way you resize the image. If you just resize it to 512x512 then its going to be warped once it is changed to 800x450.

- Theres two sizes you can go when you resize the image. You can set it to 910 height and it will be a little over 512 width or if the image may be smaller, you can set the height to 512 then set the canvas size width to 910 so it wont stretch the small picture. You may have to cut out a little of your image but not enough that it will change much if you want it to be on the whole screen like the image above. Then just resize to 512x512 and save and your done. Now the image is not stretched.

 

[Sooda]

> I would have to disagree with the way you resize the image.

I don' t mind because I don' t know nothing about image editing/ paint programs. Even your post was a bit too advanced for me. Who can understand what he explaned use that instead.