Turelus wrote: »

Photoshop is how I did mine, it's not perfect but kind of works.

If you can get 8 images in the same area which kind of work I should be able to do something amateur for you.
Just put them all on top of one another and then use transparency to line them up and erase areas of the layers above to show the characters.

These were my two character next to each other.

Awesome, that is what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, I do not have photoshop, but I might be able to find something that I can mess with.

Btw, grats on your "promotion" to Community Ambassador!

Edit: I did it the hard way - overlaying

Just dropping in to say how I got a group photo of my characters in another game!

I'm using a very old version of Paint Shop Pro (Jasc) but there are many modern utilities for picture manipulation - including some that are free to download and use.

Here is what I did;

To get the images needed

With game in windowed full screen and art package open for easy switching between them:

1. Find an area accessible to all characters - preferably somewhere well lit with a neutral background that, if possible, has a low amount of colour variance
2. Mouse zoom to see as if looking through character eyes and capture the background (screenshot) - this is not necessarilly to be the background for group photo
3. Line up (each in turn) character too the chosen background area - I made a 'jig' that I taped to my monitor to help with alignment of characters
4. Screenshot at least three times - so I could pick best shot later
5. Paste each screenshot into art package and save the image

To get the background for group photo:

In [2] above I got a 'working' background to play with. The background you want to use for the group photo can be got in the same way and can be any scene from game!

Putting it all together;

1. Take a good look at the character images and choose the best image of each character - I took one character image as the 'main' and compared the images of other characters for matching purposes - wanted best lighting and sizing match
2. With each selected character image I cut out the character as tidely as possible - PSP(Jasc) took ages as I kept zooming and cutting bits away to get best overall character image neatness - other programs are able to cut out characters very quickly and easily
3. Save work as going along - save each individual character by name for ease of use
4. Cut each seperated and neatened character from image and paste to new image with a blank background - I made a too large new image with a single colour background (green) - essentially I was kind of 'green screening' charaters into background
5. MUST NOTE HERE - I was using transparencies - the green being the colour to be transparent (choose a colour that will not conflict with same colour in character image)
6. Open up the background image you want to use
7. Cut character from it's own image - remember to set up transparency if needed
8. Paste character image as transparency into background image
9. (layers can come into this but I'm just giving as easy a description I can from memory)

This looks like a lot of work and it can be! The results on first, second ... tenth attempt can be somewhat lacking. With practice though a good result can be had.

Sorry I do not have any of those opld images left to show as example. And I'm sure there will be faster / better ways to get what you want. Also, I'm sure others can give better descriptions - I'm writing from memory!

Regards.

Edit: cleaned up a bit.

Night_Watch wrote: »

Edit: I did it the hard way - overlaying

Just dropping in to say how I got a group photo of my characters in another game!

.

Thanks a ton for that, I may need to sit down and take the time to do this way as well. Looks like the one thing everyone agrees with is a neutral background, I'd really like to have it with my EP Chateau in the background, I think that'd be legit...but with the rolling smoke, near impossible I bet. Lots to consider, thank you!

Cheers,

Nordic

GIMP is free and very powerful. Lot's of tutorial videos around as well. I guess you could do that nicely with layers for the characters. I don't play around enough, I have to re-learn every time I want to do something.

I've been wanting to do that for months, but I've been too lazy to begin it. I have GIMP and Corel Paint Shop Pro, and I recommend both of them.
One of these days I'll get around to finally doing it.

Those are some awesome screenshots!!

if the backdrop is an in game location you can take the pictures then use free online photo stitching to create something like this



3 of my characters I made for a sig