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  1. #9
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
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    Default Creating a new Icon.

    There are several ways to create a new icon. The first and most obvious is to tell it which image to use. That can be found under the Menu / Images and Icons or by pressing F2. From there you will see an option "Create New Icon from an Image". With that you run through a sequence of dialog options where it asks you for the name of the new icon then asks where you want to save it then it brings up a similar file selection box where you select the image to use and then it creates that icon for you. Unfortunately it creates it with the origin in the middle and at 1mx1m which is not always the best. The idea is to then edit it and resize it up to be correct.


    But maybe you knew all along how big this icon was supposed to be. There is now a wizard where you set the name and image to be used and you set the width and height and whether the origin is in the middle or bottom left corner. Most people use this one now because even if you have to edit it your normally closer to where its supposed to be.

    There is another option where you can create a new icon which is a clone of an existing icon. With that option you can, for example, take an icon of a chair and make a new one called giantchair and then point it at chair and it will make a new one with same image and same size and origin. Then you can edit it so as to make it much bigger. Then you have two icons sharing the same image but of different sizes. This is also useful when you need different child icons for the same main icon or image. Another good reason to use this option is when you have say an Inn and want to put it down on a city. If you place that Inn down directly then any modifications to that inn will be done across the world. If you clone it you can call it something specific like "TheGreenDragonInnInWaterdeep" or whatever and then it will be unique.

    Lastly you can take a screen capture as the image and make a new icon. You supply the name but the size is taken from the screen scale so that its exactly correct to match up with the current view. This is especially useful when you have say a few huts on a regional map and you want to make a new village map and get those huts down onto their own map. You can take a screen shot covering the village, add the huts to that new icon lining them up with the backdrop image then replace the backdrop image with a clear image and put it back on the map. Delete the old huts and allow the new ones to show from the new icon.

    There's one more special option. You can create a Contact Sheet of all the icons in a directory. It makes a new clear icon and add one of each icon you have in the selected directory and labels it for you. It names the icon _contactsheet so you will find it at the top of all icons in that directory.
    Last edited by Redrobes; 02-07-2010 at 05:50 PM.

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