Guide : Textures in WoW without Photoshop.

by Xenoronin | 05/11/2007 22:50:42
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Xenoronin

I always wanted a cool looking UI but never had the gear to do it, e.g. Photoshop.
You would think this is an essential purchase and /cry that you have no money, but cry no longer as here is a guide that will help you make your interface look good, for free!!
Yes there is a sticky already telling you how to make textures but all are in Photoshop point of view, and the sticky I think is confusing due "how to layout addons" included in it. But it has some very good ideas in there.
How To DIY Textures/Custom UI

Ok first the essential downloads.
GIMP : Basically your free to download Photoshop. Thanks Dust for showing me this! http://www.gimp.org/
Eepanels2 : Your way to get the art into the game. http://files.wowace.com/sw-e.html

Not essential but helpful and will not be used in this guide as it will confuse things:

Bartender3 : You will need to get rid of the original actionbars in most cases but is not essential.
Squeenix/SimpleMinimap : A configurable, moveable minimap.
Prat : A better chatlog.
SimpleCombatLog : A better Combat log.
CyCircled : Used with Bartender to make the buttons different shapes.
Clearfont2 : Change the Ingame font.
All from http://files.wowace.com

Now to find some art! I found tribals easiest to find and manipulate in GIMP so the guide will show me messing with these.
http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=deviantartkc5.jpg this is the art I used via copy and paste.

Some sites to get your pictures from.
http://images.google.com/
http://www.deviantart.com/ <--- Get Artist’s permission first, unless the pic states it can be used.
http://www.picsearch.com/ <--- Never heard of it just found though Google, seems good though.
http://imageshack.us/ <--- Can be used to search for or host your pictures.

Now that you have the basic stuff and hopefully some art we can start the image making part. Be warned, I am not an expert, but what I have done has worked for me. If anyone can add anything to this please post.


1. Open GIMP, click new and a dialogue box will open.
2. All Pictures being imported into the game need to be in a certain size. “must be in resolution where height and width are equivalent to Power of 2(i.e 16*16, 32*32, and must be saved in 32-bit uncompressed Targa format(*.tga) .” GIMP has no option to select 32-bit .tga but seems to have this by default but all that is needed right now is the image size.
3. I find 256*256, 128*256, 512*512 etc. the best sizes for the images.
4. Go into the advanced options part of the box.
5. Select Fill With: Transparency, I am quite sure this turns on alpha channels by default.
6. Colour space : RGB colour
7. Leave the resolution alone, unless it shows something different than 72ppi(pixels per inch). http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=newimageha5.jpg
8. Click ok, a new panel shows up with hopefully a grey chequered background, and paste/import/open your picture file into the picture box.
9. Scale your image to the size you selected. With Keep Aspect ticked unless you want to widen or elongate the image while scaling.
10. Once it is scaled, if you got the image by copy and paste, now is a good time to anchor the floating pasted layer to the background. The little Anchor button on the layer dialogue box.
11. Make sure your “Layers, channels, paths” dialogue box is showing (if not then go to the GIMP panel and then, File, Dialogues, Create new dock and it should be there. See if the Alpha channel is there. If not then you didn’t start correctly.
12. Your picture’s background colour should be completely white or have none if possible.
13. To get rid of the white background go to Layer, Transparency, Colour to Alpha. The default is white and so have your background white for less problems. Click Ok and your white will have disappeared. http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gimpbc2.jpg
14. Clean up anything you see wrong if you want.
15. Save the Picture as firstattempt, with the .tga extension and into the eepanels2 folder in your AddOns folder. http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=savingjh3.jpg
16. A box will show up asking if you want to RLE compress and origin to left. Untick both these boxes!!

17. Congratulations you are half way there. I’ll hurry things up.

18. Start WoW.
19. In the eepanels dialog box change the global settings to have No Border and no background colour, alpha is at 0.
20. Create panel from Global Settings.
21. Go to the Background Texture of this panel and enter this line \\Interface\\AddOns\\eePanels\\firstattempt.tga and click enter.
22. Congratulations your first picture is in WoW!!!!! You can now size and manipulate to your liking.


If anyone info or pictures are needed please do not hesitate to ask.

Thanks to:
http://diabloman101.deviantart.com/ <---- for the Art.
Dust: For the info about GIMP.
Demisirius : For the other Guide on Photoshop.
The Authors of all the addons mentioned.
The Interface community, for giving me something to do while not playing WoW and all the help with various topics.
http://files.wowace.com/
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/index.php
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/addons/
Usually all the addon sites you will ever need.

by Vaneras | 06/11/2007 16:20:17
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Vaneras

Nice :-)

Added this to the compilation sticky:
UI Sticky compilation - Updated 10/06 http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=304192506

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