What image editing program would you use to convert/rename a bunch of sprites?

[Phml]

I wanted to make the arachnotron sprite smaller, so I just extracted all its sprites as BMPs with SlumpEd and resized then renamed with XnView ; however, when I import them back into a wad with SlumpEd, I have to convert to Doom Gfx and the background color turns into a solid white mess that shows up ingame (using GlBoom+). I want to keep things Boom compatible.

What should I do?

[GreyGhost]

IrfanView has some nice batch conversion options, resizing is done through the advanced options and since it defaults to outputting 24-bit images, I normally change the colour depth to 8-bit in order to retain the palette.

Did you forget to nominate a transparent colour when converting to Doom graphics?

[esselfortium]

If you use SLADE 3 to import them, its image conversion dialog allows you to optionally specify a color to determine transparency from. That's the easiest way, probably.

[Sigvatr]

I think you can get transparency color problems if you use the PNG file format.

[bgraybr]

Export them as .png images used SLADE 3. The backgrounds will automatically be transparent. You can do what essel said now but I thought that this information would be useful for future reference.

[Phml]

Did you forget to nominate a transparent colour when converting to Doom graphics?

Probably. I didn't get an option to do so in SlumpEd, just clicked on "convert to > Doom GFX" and it did the conversion without giving me a choice.

If you use SLADE 3 to import them, its image conversion dialog allows you to optionally specify a color to determine transparency from. That's the easiest way, probably.

I don't really get what I am supposed to do there.

Here's the default window I get when clicking on "Gfx => Convert to" : 1. If I convert it like that, I get that solid white background ingame.

If I select "transparent colour", I get this : 2. In game it shows up with messed up colors.

Picking "Doom" in the drop down menu right under the right picture instead of "Existing/Global" gives me a slightly different looking mess, but still a mess.

Export them as .png images used SLADE 3. The backgrounds will automatically be transparent.

So then I tried that - clicking on "gfx - export as PNG" in Slade 3, then resizing the images in PNG with IrfanView (somehow they came out with a black background, maybe this is where I messed up?). Reimporting them with Slade 3 and converting to Doom GFX, selecting black as the transparent colour and "Doom" as the option in the drop down box it seemed to look alright on the preview screen : 3

Ingame (using GlBoom+), the arachnotron shows up while it's idle but becomes invisible as soon as it moves.

[GreyGhost]

Phml said:

If I select "transparent colour", I get this : 2. In game it shows up with messed up colors.

That "Transparent Colour:" radio button is what I was referring to. It looks like XnView is outputting 24-bit images with probably several similar looking shades of blue for the background, and Slade is only picking up one of them.

So then I tried that - clicking on "gfx - export as PNG" in Slade 3, then resizing the images in PNG with IrfanView (somehow they came out with a black background, maybe this is where I messed up?).

You're probably using the default black background with IrfanView, that'll show through since the nominated background colour in Slade's PNG images appears to be a transparency layer.

[Phml]

Alright. I didn't understand those "X PPP" in parenthesis meant X bits. Now it seems to work fine. Thanks for walking me through this. :)

[DaniJ]

Given that your sprites exist in a WAD, I'd do the following:

1) Extract them into some folder.
2) Write a script to apply the naming convention you want.
3) Run said script on every file.
4) Import back into your mod.

I would like to be able to say that the existence of lump managers obsolete this approach but I've personally not found one capable. Its also much less annoying (and quicker) than having to sit there clicking through the same dialog over and over.

[Gez]

Slade offers a wildcard-based masked rename, so you can (for instance) quickly change all BSPI* into ARAC* and it'll work.

The "clicking the same dialog over and over" option is called "Rename Each" rather than the standard "Rename", and was added by request. It can be used if you want to rename a bunch of stuff but masked renaming filters cannot be used.

[DaniJ]

I'll have to check out Slade in that case. Does it support regular expressions or is it a masked-replace?

[Gez]

Just masked.