Creating Lara Outfits

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In the toolbox is what appears to be rectangle made of dotted lines. It will say "Select rectangular region" if you move the mouse pointer onto it. This is a mask tool. Select it. Move the pointer so that it's to the right of the flesh colored area in the Editing window. Now, as accurately as you can, place it so that it's half way down and just to the right of the flesh colored area. Click and drag the mouse pointer to the left until it's all the way across and outside the flesh colored area. Then move it upwards until it's higher than the top of the flesh colored area. Release the mouse. You will now notice a light red box surrounding the upper half of the colored area. What ever we do now will only effect this area. Select either of the Paint Can tools and click inside the red outlined area. The top half of our rectangle is now the color of Lara's pants. Go ahead and save this by clicking File.... Save.

Using the exact same steps as we did above, load in "Text35.bmp." This will be our "Type D" rectangle. Color this rectangle so that the top half is the skin color and the bottom half is the pant color. Save it when you've done this.

Load in the "Text63.bmp" file. Set the Zoom to 500%. This will be our "Type B" rectangle. Use the same exact principles and colors that you did above to make the right half of this rectangle skin colored and the left half pant colored. Then go ahead and save it.

Load in the "Text64.bmp" file. This will be our "Type A" rectangle. Again following the same methods, coloring it so that the skin color is on the left half and the pant color is on the right half. When you're done, save it.

Go ahead and exit your image editor. Hopefully those of you who are using your own choice of image editor have enough experience to realize what we are doing here well enough to create the same thing using your own programs. If you couldn't tell what we did, either download and use the VicMan's Photo Editor program and use it temporarily, or send me an email.

Now boot up your StrPix3 program. Once again load in the "tut1.WAD" from the "Laras Closet\Preview" folder. Select Texture#31 and "Import" the file "Text31.bmp." Select Texture#35 and "Import" the file "Text35.bmp." Select Texture#63 and "Import" the file "Text63.bmp." Finally, select Texture#64 and "Import" the file "Text64.bmp."

Now comes the tricky part. We have to change the mapping of the texture on her legs so that our new textures replace the ones that were there. Select "Mesh#18." This is her left leg. Just to make absolutely sure that we do this correctly, click the "Center" button once. The triangular section at the bottom is the same triangular section that you sketched when we were figuring out the orientations. That makes this a Type C tile. Select Texture#31 and click the triangle. Now change over to the "Textured" mode by selecting "Textured" in the text box that's in the right window. You should see the tile that we just textured. Referring to your notes, the next tile to the right of the triangle is a Type D rectangle. Select Texture#35 and then click just to the right of the tile that we just textured. The rest of the tiles are Type C so select Texture#31 and continue around the rest of the lower half of her leg texturing tiles until you reach the first tile that we textured. On this leg all of the areas that we textured will look correct except for the triangle.

Now select "Mesh#21." This is her right leg. Switch back to the "Wireframe" mode. Click the "Center" button once. The triangle you see in the bottom half according to our notes is a Type B rectangle. Select Texture#63 and click inside the triangle. Switch to the "Textured" mode. This triangle will NOT display correctly unless the flaw in the program has been corrected. The rectangle on its left side is also a Type B rectangle. Click just to the left of the tile that we just textured. In checking our notes, the rest of the textures on the lower half are all Type A rectangles. Select Texture#64 and continue texturing the lower tiles until they've all been textured. All of the tiles except the triangular one will appear correctly.

Now we're ready to check our work again. Go ahead and click File... Save. This will update the "tut1.WAD" file that's in the "Laras Closet\Preview" folder. Before you exit, save this updated bitmap as a file. Click Textures... and select "Export to Bitmap." Save it in your "Laras Closet\Workspace" folder by double-clicking on the "New_Lara.bmp" filename. Now exit the StrPix3 program.

Changing The Color Of Lara's Top

In order to change the color of Lara's top, you'll have to make a list of all of the tiles that contain parts of her top in it. They will be found in Mesh#24 and Mesh#39. If you have a program that can load in the entire bitmap, then this will be much easier because there are a lot of textures to change. If you are using VicMan's Photo Editor program, you'll have to use StrPix3 to save the texture from each tile that may need to be altered.

I'll walk you through changing one of the textures. Boot up your StrPix3 program. Load in the "tut1.WAD" from your "Laras Closet\Preview" folder. Click in the texture list and select Texture#212. Click on "Export" and save this in your "Laras Closet\Workspace" folder. Exit from the StrPix3 program.

Boot up your image editor program and load in the "Text212.bmp" file from the "Laras Closet\Workspace" folder. Set the zoom to 800%. With the VicMan program things are going to be a bit tricky. Let's change Lara so that she's wearing the color that's next to the black color in the palette. If you're using a different program, this color is burgundy on my screen.

Select the brush since it feathers its edges. If you are going to color in an area so that it's completely this color without any different shades, set the "Transparency" to 0%. If you are trying to just give an area a bit of a tint, such as the area of Lara's cleavage, then set the "Transparency" up much higher, even to 80 or 90 percent. The same thing goes for working along the edges of her top. To color in the area where Lara's top meets her skin in the currently loaded texture you can very carefully even do it with a "Transparency" of 0%. As you click close to the edge, the paint will feather outwards towards the skin. If you make a mistake, click Edit... Undo. Experiment with the settings to see what you like the best. You can use the Pencil for fine work by setting the nib size to 1 and setting the "Transparency" value to around 70%. When you have finished this texture save it as "Text212_altered.bmp." Do Texture#192 next if you want. Just keep doing this with each tile until you have her top completely done. Then use the StrPix3 program to "Import" each of these adjusted bitmaps back into the WAD file. You should be now able to refer back to the work that we've already done to know how to do all of this.

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