Making a character portrait for Medieval II Total War
5Instructions using GIMP
Generals require three portraits, young, old and dead. The old can have a grey beard (use the tools to create it), the dead has to be grey, e.g. unsaturate. Other characters, such as priest, diplomats, require only a "young" portrait. All portraits 69x96 pixels and saved as .tga.
Portraits go into the portraits folders in Data (search to find).
GIMP can be occasionally unpredictable. If something does not work, start all over. The first part for the image preparation to create a transparent background can be found here: penji.co/how-to-remove-background-in-gimp
The second part of creating a background that the engine can toggle on requires the following steps:
1. Right click on your image in the layer docking window. From the dropdown menu choose: "New Layer"
2. Open your background , e.g. bgnd.png, which should also be 69x96 pixels
3. From Edit menu: Copy
4. Select your portrait in the layer docking window and from the Edit menu: Paste
5. Click on the Green anchor symbol at the bottom. The result should be that the new layer shows the bgnd.
6. Move your portrait layer up from the bgnd layer.
7. Right click on portrait layer & choose "Add Layer Mask" from the dropdown list
8. Choose 3rd option down: "Layer's alpha channel"
9. Add
10. Click on alpha channel layer mask in the portrait layer (the ghost icon).
11. Control + A
12. Control + C
13. Left click on portrait icon in the portrait layer
14. Right click to open the drop down menu
15. From the list choose: "Merge down"; the three icons combine into one
16. Right click on the layer and choose: Add layer mask
17. This time choose the 4th option: Transfer layer's alpha channel
18. Add. This causes a white icon to appear next to the portrait in the portrait layer
19. Control + V : floating selection layer appears
20. Click on the little green anchor icon at the bottom
21. A ghost icon is present next to the portrait icon in the portrait layer
22. Right click on the portrait icon to open the dropdown menu
23. Choose Apply Layer Mask from the list
24. Done. The background looks transparent but the bgnd layer is saved, no worries. Export as .tga
My apologies for the poor sound quality.
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