DaDonch44 Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Hey everyone, First I just want to thank everyone involved for creating all of these outstanding mods to enrich the gameplay and enjoyment of my favorite game. The talent that everyone is showcasing here is amazing. I am trying to create 2x portraits with photoshop 7 , and then create a .fsh file with fshed, and then import them with eagraph. I have searched the forums endlessly, most of the leads don't seem to work for me or the links to off-site tutorial pages are no longer available, or incomplete. I have tried importing with MVPEdit, but when I double-click on the picture box, nothing happens. I imagine this is b/c I have the UR mod (over 3,000 portraits) installed. I have tried to reinstall both MVPEdit and MVP 2005 and nothing has worked. It works great for changing rosters but not the portraits. I was wondering if it was how I was creating the portraits: I just create a new 256x256, create the portrait, save it as a .bmp. Is there any specific type of compression that has to be applied to the portrait when making it in photoshop, or will that be taken care of through fshed? Does it matter whether it is 16-bit, 24-bit, etc? Any specific mode it has to be created in? The alpha has to be grayscale and 8 bit, correct? Also, when I import the new .fsh file into portrait.big using EAGraph sometimes there is a red fish, a briefcase, or nothing at all next to the new file. I never get the Green Star. Does this matter at all? I apologize for this being such a big post. I will continue to search the forums for help, but could someone please lead me in the right direction with some of these problems, or give me a link to a tutorial that definitely works. : ) Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted May 1, 2006 Share Posted May 1, 2006 Alright, I'll try to answer your questions. Here's your basic steps to making a portrait: - Make it 256x256 (2x) - Save picture and alpha as .bmps - Make sure alpha is grayscale - When saving, portrait is 24-bit, alpha is 8-bit - FSHed is not necessary if you use MVPEdit to install portaits - When installing with MVPEdit, click on existing portait, and click "Delete FSH" in lower right corner - Locate your new .bmps and load them in - Make sure "Export 2x Portraits" is checked in MVPEdit options! - MVPEdit compresses it for you. (You get the red fish because your portraits aren't compressed when you install using FSHed.) - For 2x portaits, there shouldn't be a green star; there should be a blue and yellow "X" Hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaDonch44 Posted May 1, 2006 Author Share Posted May 1, 2006 Thanks kg... sounds great... you have simplified it so much. So .fsh files are no longer necessary b/c MVPEdit takes care of it, thats cool. My only questions now are, since the portraits don't normally show up when I import portrait.big, (I get the "Searching for Picture", then "Picture Not Found"), how will MVPEdit know which portrait I want to delete? (Does it just delete the portrait for the player I have selected at the time?) What is the correct way to import the .bmps with MVPEdit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaDonch44 Posted May 2, 2006 Author Share Posted May 2, 2006 well... i have tried every possible way i can think of.... everytime i try to import the .bmps into mvpedit... it crash with a run error "53" i believe... there doesnt seem to be a "delete FSH" button anywhere on my MVPEdit I have compressed the .bmps with fshed and imported them into portrait.big with eagraph and gotten the yellow X with blue circle, but when i start mvp2005 it crashes when i try to see the player profile lol... any ideas for an easy step by step way that will work... could it be something with my version of MVPEdit (I have uninstalled and reinstalled it)... any ideas?? thanks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted May 2, 2006 Share Posted May 2, 2006 You delete the .fsh by clicking on the player's portrait, and in the lower right corner is the delete button. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianpassmore3 Posted May 4, 2006 Share Posted May 4, 2006 I'm also having a spot of bother with this portrait lark. kg, I've followed your instructions to the letter (I think) ie, created the two .bmp files, deleted the .fsh file in MVPEdit and then loaded the two .bmp files, oh, and also checked the "export 2x portraits" option. Sadly, after saving/exporting data, I have no updated portrait - it just searches but returns a "no picture found" message. What am I doing wrong? Having opened the portraits.big file, I've discovered that the corresponding .fsh file is no longer in there (#298 Nomar Garciaparra in this case). Part of the procedure includes deleting this file, but it would appear that it's not being recreated for some reason. Any help would be hugely appreciated. PS - I used the 2x portraits tutorial by Krawhitham to create the .bmp files and I'm also using the UR 6.3 plus roster files, if that helps at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaDonch44 Posted May 4, 2006 Author Share Posted May 4, 2006 thanks to kg, i was able to fix my problem... ianpassmore3 - make sure that when you click on the options tab that your having MVPEdit point to the correct directory. it needs to be pointing to: "MVP 2005data" i was having such a hard time and overlooked it because when you first load your rosters it has to point to "MVP 2005datadatabase" but when you want to import portraits its "MVP 2005data" hope that helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianpassmore3 Posted May 4, 2006 Share Posted May 4, 2006 DaDonch44, Tried what you said, but still no joy unfortunately. Thanks for your help anyway, though. What version of MVPEdit are you using, by the way? I'm using version 2006.2. As this is first time I've tried to create a portrait I'm not entirely sure what should be happening, but it appears that MVPEdit simply isn't creating a new .fsh file with the updated .bmps in it. I'm now starting to suspect that it may be the .bmps themselves that are the problem....somehow. Just to clarify, I have two bitmap files: the picture file is 256x256, 24 bit and the alpha file is also 256x256, greyscale 8 bit. I can't understand why it isn't working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianpassmore3 Posted May 4, 2006 Share Posted May 4, 2006 I've figured it out. What I didn't realise was that MVPEdit creates a temporary folder into which you have to place the .bmp files. I was just accessing them from my desktop, which is why it wasn't working. All sorted now, although not quite in Hory's league! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaDonch44 Posted May 4, 2006 Author Share Posted May 4, 2006 hehe glad you figured it out... the program is so easy once you get the hang of it, but until you figure it out its very frustrating :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianpassmore3 Posted May 4, 2006 Share Posted May 4, 2006 and here's fruits of my labour.... Like I said, not in Hory's league but it'll do until he releases his 2006 works of art! You don't appreciate how much effort he puts into those portraits until you have a go yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaDonch44 Posted May 4, 2006 Author Share Posted May 4, 2006 it looks pretty sweet :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted May 4, 2006 Share Posted May 4, 2006 That's every bit as good as Hory's work! Looks fantastic. This is what my Garciaparra looked like last night: Kraw's tutorial is absolutely amazing; I never thought it could be this easy to make portraits. I've just been reeling off hundreds of portraits the last few days, and they look awesome. Good job on yours, ian :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianpassmore3 Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 Thanks guys! I probably could've made Nomar a little better if I'd blended the pixels around his outline. After your kind comments I may try a little harder with my future efforts!! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 Usually that happens because the portrait is 2x, and it's scrunched into a little piece of the screen. It may also be because you forgot to feather it. What I do is expand only 1 pixel, and feather .5 pixels. Keep posting what you do; I (and others I'm sure) would love to see what you do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianpassmore3 Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 Thanks for the tip kg, I'll certainly give that a try when creating my next portrait (which will be Eric Gagne), and I'll post it on here again so you (or others) can have a look. PS - What tolerance do you use on the magic wand tool? And do you have anti-aliased and contiguous checked? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianpassmore3 Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 OK, here's Gagne He's a bit of a bugger to create due to his hair - very awkward! After several attempts, his hair still doesn't look quite right but it'll do for me. At one stage I almost gave him a short back and sides to make life easier! I also recreated Nomar to try and de-pixelate his cap a touch, and also altered the colour tones slightly, as they didn't look quite right to me. Here's the before and after. BEFORE AFTER His hat does look slightly less pixely, so thanks to kg for his feathering tip! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I.Am.Canadian Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 Good work everyone. I usually use tolerance 30 for the magic wand tool (only for solid backgrounds). If the background is funky or it is textured, I'll change it around. PS: Gagne's hair is just like B.J. Ryan (which I've done in my Blue Jays pack) They have that hair which is tricky to get around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 I use different tolerances for every portrait. Thank God for solid backgrounds! I was just going through the Cardinals organiztion and doing portraits for their minor leaguers, and this is what they look like for Palm Beach: So much for updated PB portraits... And players with long hair are annoying; I wish everyone had the clean cut rule like the Yanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaDonch44 Posted May 5, 2006 Author Share Posted May 5, 2006 they look awesome!!!! i was trying to create a new Johnny Damon last night and I was using the new MLB pic... but I can't seem to get the portrait to look that good... the awesome ones you guys are doing look like the player is right there in front of you with an almost a 3D effect and its SOOOO CLEAR... when I do it you can definitely tell its a picture and it looks a little fuzzy.. but when i try to sharpen the pic it gets all pixelated, and looks like crap... and sometimes the portrait gets distorted when i import it in even though it looks fine when its in photoshop. i have been trying kraw's tutorial on it, but unfortunately there are no pics with it anymore (unless I'm missing something)... so I have been trying to make the portrait 256x310 and then shrinking it down to 256x256. any ideas on why my pic would look a little blurry even though its an exact copy of the original MLB...and how to you guys get it to look so clear... thanks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 Are you using this tutorial? http://forums.total-classics.com/viewtopic.php?t=80 I wonder where the pictures went. My best advice would be to just follow the directions as clearly as possible without the pictures and everything should be fine. Don't use sharpen! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaDonch44 Posted May 5, 2006 Author Share Posted May 5, 2006 thanks kg youre the man... i was using something like this but there was supposed to be pics with it to guide you along... but hopefully this helps... :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianpassmore3 Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 DaDonch44. Have you seen this thread about how to download hi-res MLB pictures directly from the MLB.com site? http://www.mvpmods.com/index.php?name=Foru...ewtopic&t=12135 They are like 2500 pixels x 3000 pixels size wise and that's how you can achieve the picture clarity and quality shown in this thread. And like kg states - defintely DON'T use the sharpen tool - take it from someone who already has!! KG, that PB background looks excellent! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgbaseball Posted May 5, 2006 Share Posted May 5, 2006 You might've been using Kraw's 2004 tutorial, and this one is 100x better. Have fun :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaDonch44 Posted May 5, 2006 Author Share Posted May 5, 2006 ian - yeah i have seen it... and i think i figured out why it they havent been clear... i opened up the pic on a computer at work, saved it and emailed it to myself. I think when i opened that new webpage with the pic it didnt show the pic at its actual size, so it was shrunk before i emailed it. (explains alot, i need to spend more time on this than my work, lol) kg - yeah i think it was the 2004 version, and the pics are back up now... i think the comp im using here at work is crap. so hopefully when i give it another go tonight everything will be good... if i can make a good Damon, ill post it up for you guys... thanks again you guys rock... oh and thanks to kraw for writing such a kick *** tutorial... :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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