Rug Tutorial
Please note, this tutorial has a lot of graphics
1) What you'll need to do this:
a) a good graphics program. I use Paint Shop Pro, and I like it a lot. If you would like to try it, go here and download the demo. All examples in this tutorial will be done using PSP.
b) Transmogrifier 1.1. (heretofore known as T-mog) Get it here
c) Some good graphics. Now, you can draw your own rugs, but why bother when there are so many real images you can, um...borrow from. Here's a couple good sites to get started with:
2) So pick a picture of a rug. I've decided to go with this one:
Make sure you crop the picture to get rid of any white outlines (use dotted box to outline rug, then go to Image-->Crop selection)
3) Okay, now you want to resize the rug so that it is 165 pixels (width) by 140 pixels (height). You may ask how I got those numbers--simple! I took a screen shot of one of the oriental rugs from T-mog, and then unskewed it to see it's dimensions.
First make sure your picture is in 16 million colors. Do that by going to Colors-->Increase color depth. Resize by going to Image-->Resize. Type in 165 and 140 in the correct areas. Make sure that "Maintain Ratio Aspect" at the bottom is not checked.
4) Okay, now your rug should look almost square--that's okay! That will be fixed during the skewing process. Here's what my rug looks like now:
Now we start the skewing process. These are the numbers that I've worked out from fiddling with objects and other stuff. What you want to do is have two images of your rug--one skewed from the side, and one from the head/bottom (you'll notice when you're working with the t-mogged images in the folders, there are always two images in each folder--one from the side, and one from the head/bottom of the rug, or to think of it another way, the two rotations within the game. There are four rotations actually, but the rug just gets flipped for the other two).
a) increase the canvas size of your image to 320x320. Trust me, just do this. Do it in Image-->Canvas Size. Check center horizontally and vertically.
b) Your first skew: Go to Image-->Deformations-->Skew Set the skew to Horizontal +45
c) With the same image, skew it again, but at Vertical -25 or -26. That's your first rug image. SAVE IT!
d) Undo both of the skews you just did (Edit-->Undo two times).
e) Now skew the image at Horizontal -45.
f) Skew it again at Vertical +25 or +26. That's your second rug image. SAVE IT!
You should now have two images similar to this:
5) Assuming you haven't T-mogged the original rug, you should do that now. I recommend the Castle 1, simply because its colors are dark, and that will be important later. When you export, make sure the "just changing colors" box is checked, and export only the largest zoom.
6) Now comes the hard work part of it. Open up the first set of sprites for the rug (should be the folder marked sprite0200). There should be two images in there that look like this:
You need to figure out what part of the rug this is. If you look at your images, it should be obvious that they are the following parts:
Once you work with the rugs for a while, you'll quickly get used to figuring out what end of the rug you're dealing with. It helps that the Castle 1 rug has fringe on the end, so you can see whether or not you're working with an end or a side.
Here's a couple of guides, though, to tell which part is which (the numbers correspond to the folder numbers, so 0 is sprite0200)
The next several steps are important, so pay attention (they may seem like a lot of steps to go through, but this works to make a good-looking rug, and it will quickly become routine).
a) Copy one of the t-mogged sprites (Edit-->copy). Paste it as a new layer onto your rug image (Edit-->Paste-->as a new layer)
b) You should now have an image kind of like this:
c) If you're not used to using layers, get used to it! You should have a little pop-up window floating around in your screen that says Layer Palette. If you don't go to View-->Toolbars, and check Layer Palette. Go to the Layer Palette and lower the depth of Layer 1 to about 50% (by pulling the little hourglass thing along until it says 50).
d) Move Layer 1 (the t-mogged rug sprite) until it overlaps your rug exactly. You should now have an image like this:
e) Move the layer 1 depth back up to 100 percent. Now use the yellow lasso to draw a circle around the red t-mogged sprite. Like this:
f) Use the wand tool (below the yellow lasso) to deselect the yellow selection around the rug. NOTE: do this by pressing Control while using the magic wand--this will deselect the yellow, thereby limiting the selection to only the red rug, and nothing else. Now only the red rug should be selected.
g) Now, on your layer palette box, click on where it says background (thereby switching you to the background layer). Now do copy (Edit-->Copy) and then paste it as a new layer into the original t-mogged sprite. (You will have to increase the colors of the t-mogged sprite first. Do that by going to Color-->Increase Color Depth-->16 million colors). You should now have an image like this:
h) Line up the new layer with the old--it should be easy, because they are exactly the same size. That's your first sprite done! Do all of the previous steps for the other sprite, except use the second picture that you saved, because that's the way the rotation is (if that makes sense).
7) You'll have to do that for all of the sprites, one at a time. Sounds time-consuming, huh? Actually, once you get into the swing of things, you get used to doing the same motions over and over. It took me about a half an hour to make this rug. Here's the finished product:
A couple of tips:
a) one thing that I recommend is that you keep the red rug sprites on your overall picture so as to keep your spacing right for future sprites. That way you won't be grabbing extra pixels from one sprite to the next, and your pattern should fit okay in the overall image. You can do this by making sure that Layer 1 is at 100%, and then using the magic wand to select all of the yellow. Press delete, and that will remove the yellow.
That way, you can line up the rest of the sprites that you grab without too much effort, and not overlap your pattern.
b) With the new T-mog you don't have to worry about using the same palette for everything--yay!.
c) When you finally re-import the object into T-mog, you might notice the farther away zooms are a little messed up (this seems to be less of a problem with the new T-mog, though). Since the new T-mog allows you to move things up or down, you'll just have to spend some time fiddling around with them.
d) The skewing process is not an exact science. A couple of your images may have a little white around the outside edges of the rug--you may have to do a little touch up with those ones.
e) Make sure you zoom in a lot while working--that ensures that you're cutting and pasting the correct areas.
Have questions? Was anything unclear? Feel free to e-mail me.