Yay! Thank you, Saint Jiub! :clap:

Do you have any suggestions for what to with making icons of the candles? It's really hard to get them to fill the icon space, they are so skinny and leave so much empty space in the icon. If I crop to just the candle, then there might be confusion about what the holder looks like (silver, pewter, bamboo, brass, etc).

I'm also considering re-doing the boot (armor) icons. As it is, I used the ground mesh for the icon. But, I wonder if they will look more like boots if I instead set them up on a dummy in the CS (like I had to do with pants, shirts, and robes).

Thank you.

After some experimenting, http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/1117/candleicond.jpg the best candle icon I was able to come up with (http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/5295/candleicon1.jpg one that might be closer to actual size). I think that was the best way I could come up with to get as much candle as possible in the shot. Hope that helps

Okay, how does this look? http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/icons/ico_lights_1.jpg

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Redid cup icons (cup, goblet, pitcher, tankard) so that the angle all matches for 'em all. Haven't updated the screenshots for that.

Also, why did no one tell me I hard forgotten the icons for the Silver weapons?! :ahhh: They are now done.

Feedback please! Does anything look odd? Any icons too light, too dark, too unsaturated/oversaturated?

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mesh fixes: some candles had an alpha property attached to them for no reason, so I removed that. It would make the candle-sticks semi-transparent, which makes no sense since other similar candles (just the color is different) are solid/opaque.

Would there be a way to get some fire on the torch? Otherwise, it all looks great

I'm not sure if it would work out well. I was barely able to get a bit of the particles on Trueflame and Hopesfire. I keep running into the problem where the particles are a bit transparent, and my nifskope packground is grey... I tried changing the background color, but it just makes the flame look weird. =/

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Redid boots. I like how they came out, they now look more like boots. Um. Yeah. :bonk:

I think I got all the icons then. Am I missing anything? I suppose the next step is to take a look at them in-game and see if I goofed up on anything.

Those light icons are beautiful.

DISASTER.

I tested them in-game, and they all look HORRIBLE. I converted them to .dds (because for some reason the game won't use the .tga versions), and there is so much aliasing/jaggies, and they all look like they've been run through the "bright" filter too many times. :banghead: What is going on?!

With 'them' you mean the light icons or all icons?

You're just testing them now?!? Oh no's Alaisiagae, oh no's!

I think in future you'll want to test any sort of major overhaul immediately after making a couple changes to save you the trouble of a major redo. :facepalm:

Can you post some screenshots of how they look in game? From the WIP pics they seem really good.

We can do this, right? The game doesn't load the tga version, because it always loads DDS first. It just searches for those first, so you get the ones in the archive. It's got a lot of people over the years. Secondly you should check your compression settings. DXTn isn't for icons! You should be saving in RGBA8 or ARGB8 (whichever works). How are you doing your alphas? Did you do black background/white background differencing? If you make a composite mockup of the icons over a bare screenshot and compare it to an actual screenshot it would help diagnose the problems.

Okay, I'm calming down. Deep breaths, deep breaths.

Okay.

I'm using the DDS Converter for conversion, set to use nVidia (As opposed to S3), DTX1a, with alphas saved. No other settings (build mipmaps, dithering, fast compress) is checkboxed.

I made the alphas by:
example: used the magic wand to select the background (grey). Inverted the selection to get the item. Cut the item. Pasted the item into a new layer. Deleted the background layer. Saved as .tga.

I wasn't sure what you meant by composite mockup. Well, actually I do, but I'm just not sure how to make it. Um. I took some screenshots:
http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/icons/Jaggies_Urfing.jpg
http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/icons/Jaggies_Naspis.jpg
http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/icons/Jaggies_Erla.jpg
http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/icons/Jaggies_Crulius.jpg

I can't tell if the brightness is my fault or the game's fault. The icons looked good against a black background in Irfanview, but they look like crap against the transparent background in-game.

Currently I'm using Paint.net to convert my icons to .dds format. I use the DTX3 (explicit alpha) setting when converting them, since the DTX1 gives me a pixelated effect on the icon borders. You might want to try it for a few icons to see if that will solve the problem.

@ Hrnchamd: Just for info, why do you say DTX isn't good for icons? I'm using it and my icons don't seem to give problems. But maybe there's something I'm not aware of...

I just tested your method (usind DDS converter for convenience) on some of the most noticeable problem icons (some of the goblets), and now they look great! I'll go re-convert everything (takes but a few seconds) and check it out in-game. I still might end up having to re-do some icons due to the brightness issue...

DXT1a is the worst format for alpha, ever. It actually reduces the available colours in the edge blocks by 25% and being 1-bit alpha, doesn't antialias. All DXT formats quantize colours so it leads to desaturation/discolouration for multi-coloured areas. It's not as noticeable until you notice it, it's not a problem per se.

Everything thing looks bright because Morrowind is dark. There's no fake blue backlight to give the impression of nighttime, castles are dark inside. The inventory background is dark. The average light level is about 120-160 ish, there is no specular, which is nowhere near the default lighting in NifSkope. Matched lighting setup is a cornerstone of realistic CG, but you can try and blast it through some levels filter.

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/icons/it_works.jpg :clap:

Thanks for the info, Hrnchamd! I had no idea DTX1 was bad for icons, I've been making icons using it for a while and they didn't look too bad... but now that I know, I'll use DTX3.

Hm, as for brightness... Not sure if reducing icon brightness would fix it, or if I have to start all over and apply (or, rather, not apply) bright/contrast changes to the larger image. Which do you think would/wouldn't work?

EDIT: Hmm, after looking at these some more in-game, I think my problem is that when I made the adjustments, I usually set brightness higher than contrast. Now things aren't as well defined. This might mean a major re-do, but I'm not too worried. There are some changes I want to make anyways.

EDIT: And now I can save directly to .dds via Paint.net. Maybe that'll boost the quality.

Ran it through a S-shaped curve, it looks pretty nice with some tweaking. That magic item background is obnoxious to compare against though. It really depends if the icon model got some directional shading or not. Those potion bottles really could do with better lighting for example, shading would suggest some volume to them. Icons don't have to be super three dimensional of course, the silhouette is most of the story. Things like darkening the interior of helmets or folds of cloth could help with recognition.

I could try loading things up in the CS and giving my interior cell some lighting? Actually, wait, I think I can set up lighting in Nifskope... Yup, I can set up a bit of directional lighting in there. Looks good! *rubs hands together in anticipation* Alright, this can be done! Any other suggestions before I start on the icons? Should I forgo all brightness/contrast entirely? I was just afraid the dark things (DB armor, daedric armor) would look too dark and indistinguishable from the inventory background.

EDIT: I can play with planar angle and declination of a lightsource in nifskope. Any suggestions for "the best" setting on these two to produce good shadowing effects?

Throw the dark ones into one folder and the too bright ones into another for processing. Put all the icons onto a dark background and then play with the curves tool. Brightness/contrast sliders are untouched these days, they clip so you can lose your black point / white out things too easily. Bend the curve down in the middle and back up at the highlight side. I would post an example but yeah.

That went way over my head. What program am I doing this in? It also sounds very time-intensive... there are over 600 icons to make. :wacko:

And I'm having serious doubts about how good my eye is for brightness - it's easily fooled by background color, that's for sure.

It's in Photoshop/GIMP. If you just paste all the icons onto one or two sheets, you can operate on them all at once. Then you cut them up at the last minute, I think there's a plugin that does that. Everyone's eyes are fooled by background colour, it's how the brain works to guess lighting - also the basis of a wheelbarrow full of optical illusions.

I don't know how to use GIMP very well, and I don't have access to Photoshop anymore. Maybe someone would be willing to help me? I dunno. *sigh* First things first: I have to re-do those icons. That'll keep me occupied for a while.

Alaisiage, this is a fantastic project! It's the type of thing that makes you say "why didn't anybody ever do this before?" Sheer brilliance, and thus far masterfully executed! Thanks for this! :twirl:

Because it is one of the more tedious things in the universe? :hehe: I can lose a whole afternoon going through a mesh folder of 200 items. And I learn that bethesda sure can make a lot of spelling mistakes! And they have bad naming systems. Very bad. The Clothing icons are the worst offenders for inconsistency, followed by the Misc items for incomprehensibility, and then the Most Annoying Reward goes to weapons for being unable to decide whether to sort weapon by weapon-type or weapon-material.

I take it that other game engine features are just as frustrating?

I wonder if I should rub in the fact that I'm the first to do this in the mod title name? I'm still trying to think of one. "Improved Inventory Icon Replacer" or 3IR for short? Like I-Triple-E, except without the "e" and triple the "i".

Oooh, d'you think I should do the Tamriel Rebuilt icons, too? I guess I'll do them for my own sanity whenever I actually play Morrowind again.