Make high-quality UI cards!

[AqD]

I have read many other tutorials, but nobody seems to mention this....

To make a high-quality UI card, you must never scale down the image, i.e. a bigger picture cannot be used as the source - you must, always, create it by 3D Studio Max, render it from the original models & textures.

Import the model, texture, and animation. Now:

1. Go to the menu, Rendering -> Environment:
   
   • Background: set the color to RGB(192, 192, 192) or other medium-gray. It helps you to determine how bright the unit should be. (it's still transparent on exported images anyway)
   • Global Lighting: Level [1.25] (adjust the value for brightness), Ambient color set to RGB(128, 128, 128). Don't use advanced lighting because they look weird for UI cards
   
   
2. Go to the menu, Rendering -> Render:
   
   • Swicth to "Renderer" tab: Antialiasing filter set to Catmull-Rum (very important!!!), make sure "Filter Map" is on.
   • Switch to "Common" tab, adjust size and press "Render"!
   
   

Filter (Default "Area") vs Filter (Catmull-Rum):



I tried other filters in 3ds 9, all suck.. and the "video" filter is the worst of them

[Swagger]

no pics ?

[AqD]

done!

[jakobh94]

Where do you find the animation in .cas file?

[AqD]

You need to unpack Data\animations\pack.idx by "xidx" tool

[jakobh94]

... um ... okay. Where can i find this "mysterious" tool?

[AqD]

Here => http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...?do=file&id=32

[jakobh94]

thanks!

[Crawe]

I agree with you Aqd. But not everyone has access to 3d Studio Max and it is expensive to buy.

I use Gimp to make my UI cards and the quality is as good as 3d Studio Max, though it involves some trial and error. It doesn't even take that much longer. Creating new unit cards using 3d Studio took me maybe 10, 15 mins when I last did it a couple of years ago. Gimp takes me up to 30mins, but often less, per set of cards (but that includes the entire process from start to finish). So 3d Studio is ideal, but Gimp is a good alternative in my opinion.

[mcantu]

those are pretty much the steps I use too. playing around with the lighting variable gets you good results...

[Darth Nihilus]

for me i use adobe photoshop cs3 its still has great quality in making ui cards.

[jakobh94]

If i want to remove the black area around the sheild, do i need to edit the sheild or what?

[AqD]

No need, check this => Deleting Alpha Channel parts in 3dsMax renders

If you're making your own shields, just make sure those parts are made transparent in photoshop (it's better than to use 3d shields though )

[ElvenKind]

Thanks for this great tip! +rep

[ahowl11]

This was very useful!