41 replies to this topic

[Daulmakan]

Using the latest version, I can't seem to get Seifer's old trick for overcoming the palette issue to work. And I can't use the older version of BW since I'm on x64 (tried Universal Extractor, but to no avail).

 

Any ideas?

 

[Sam.]

And I can't use the older version of BW since I'm on x64 (tried Universal Extractor, but to no avail).

I don't have time to do much research ATM, but for now I have updated the OP with an archive containing the previous versions of BAMWorkshop (see spoiler tags).  Note that to ensure proper functionality, you should rename the version of BAMWorkshop you want to use to "BAMWorkshop.exe" before running it!  Universal Extractor works, the file you need is just buried multiple layers deep...

[Daulmakan]

And I can't use the older version of BW since I'm on x64 (tried Universal Extractor, but to no avail).

I don't have time to do much research ATM, but for now I have updated the OP with an archive containing the previous versions of BAMWorkshop (see spoiler tags).  Note that to ensure proper functionality, you should rename the version of BAMWorkshop you want to use to "BAMWorkshop.exe" before running it!  Universal Extractor works, the file you need is just buried multiple layers deep...

Awesome as always, Sam. (AwSam.?)

 

Cheers.

[Miloch]

Using the latest version, I can't seem to get Seifer's old trick for overcoming the palette issue to work.

I've had no issues with this in the latest version (it's always been my standard way of creating BAMs with BAM Workshop).

 

Edit: of course, the best solution would be to fix palette initialization so that trick isn't necessary, but I don't know if that's feasible.

Edited by Miloch, 07 December 2014 - 02:17 PM.

[The Imp]

Sam, you might want to talk to Solaufein, so he would upload this version to baldursgatemods dot com, like specifically, in here.

[Sam.]

Sam, you might want to talk to Solaufein, so he would upload this version to baldursgatemods dot com, like specifically, in here.

He sent me a PM a while back asking if he could upload it at BaldursGateMods, and I definitely encouraged it.  I guess he just hasn't done it yet...

[Creepin]

I have noticed that BAMWorkshop 1.1.1.0 archive uploaded on SHS is broken, I've tried to open it on 2 different PCs unsuccessfully. Does anyone have 1.1.1.0 and willing to share?

[Sam.]

I have noticed that BAMWorkshop 1.1.1.0 archive uploaded on SHS is broken, I've tried to open it on 2 different PCs unsuccessfully. Does anyone have 1.1.1.0 and willing to share?

I just downloaded and tested it twice, and it opens just fine. As stated in the 1st post, however:

Note that you will need a recent version of WinRAR (at least Version 5.00) in order to extract the files from the download archive.

That is a requirement, not a suggestion.

Alternatively, there is a already a ZIP archive hidden behind the spoiler tags in the first post that should have what you want.

[Creepin]

Thank you for clarification, Sam., that archive under the spoiler worked perfectly!

Actually I never thought that new zip archiver that is supplied with win7 could have any problems with rar archive, guess I was wrong

[Creepin]

I've got a case of bam fubared by making green visibly green and making black transparent even when following Seifer's workaround to the letter. This happens when using both latest (1.1.1.0) or older (1.1.0.7) versions of the BamWorkshop. I've found further workaround to that workaround by using Seifer's workaround with BW older version which will fubar bam anyway and then finalizing this bam by changing second palette slot from pink (which weren't present in the original bmp palette at all) back into black via bam editing function of Near Infinity. Admittedly this is dumb and I can't explain the reason it works (I haven't touched the green in palette slot 1 in NI after all but it somehow got fixed back into transparent), but it works for me.   I wish there were bit more sane way though...

Edited by Creepin, 07 May 2017 - 03:16 AM.

[Sam.]

I've got a case of bam fubared by making green visibly green and making black transparent even when following Seifer's workaround to the letter. This happens when using both latest (1.1.1.0) or older (1.1.0.7) versions of the BamWorkshop. I've found further workaround to that workaround by using Seifer's workaround with BW older version which will fubar bam anyway and then finalizing this bam by changing second palette slot from pink (which weren't present in the original bmp palette at all) back into black via bam editing function of Near Infinity. Admittedly this is dumb and I can't explain the reason it works (I haven't touched the green in palette slot 1 in NI after all but it somehow got fixed back into transparent), but it works for me.   I wish there were bit more sane way though...

I'm not sure I completely understand the problem.  Could you please provide detailed step-by-step instructions to reproduce the issue (as well as the solution), along with your source BMPs, the BAM created using BAMWorkshop, and the BAM after any further processing using external tools?  A picture showing the observed behavior vs the expected behavior (in terms of how the BAM frame looks) would also be helpful.  Once I have a firm understanding of the problem, I can try to provide alternative procedures to achieve the desired result (or write a tool to help achieve it).

[Creepin]

Thank you for your reply Sam.!

What I wrote was the empiric procedure that ended up in a desired bam for me. I have run some tests today to make sure this is not a false alarm as well, and simplified this procedure to following:
- bam created with BamWorkshop 7 using Seifer's workaround doesn't work for me, while that very same bam opened and re-saved without any changes in Bam Converter of NI does work perfectly
- bam created with BamWorkshop 10 using Seifer's workaround doesn't work for me, while that very same bam opened and re-saved without any changes in Bam Converter of NI still doesn't fully work (missing shadow and shaft changes colour)

Here is comparison for convenience: it got blurred somehow (by img hoster?) but the same pic of better quality is within archive.

Spoiler

I am attaching file with the source bmps, 4 resulting bams as described above and a comparison of how they all lok in game.

Regarding palette, I hardly know anything about graphical file formats or Photoshop, so I did by the hunch what seemed reasonable to me: to make sure both bmps conforms to paletted 256 colours requirement and have the same palette I did following:
- switched first bmp to Indexed color with 256 colours
- exported palette by image -> mode -> color table -> save (attaching it too just in case)
- loaded exported palette to the second image by image -> mode -> color table -> load
Logic dictates that by doing third step here it should enforce the same palette to the second bmp, but this is only my assumption to tell the truth.

Attached Files

•  bam study.rar   50.47K   249 downloads

Edited by Creepin, 08 May 2017 - 12:24 AM.

[Sam.]

Yeah, I've found quite a few bugs/inconsistencies in how BW1 works.  I'll ask around the interwebs and try a few more things, but for now give this a try:
 

0. Use pure green for the transparent color and pure black for the shadow color, or suffer the consequences.
1. Open BAMWorkshop.
2. Load the attached Template.bam
3. Click in the Sequences box, then Manage->Frame0->Delete->Yes->Close
4. Click Sequence 0; then hit the Frames Tab.
5. Right-click and hit Import Frame, then select your first image (the one that appears when moving items around in the inventory).
6. Go back to the Sequence tab. Right-click and hit Add Sequence.
7. Click Sequence 1, then hit the Frames Tab.
8. Right-click and hit Import Frame, then select your second image (the one that appears when an item is just sitting in your inventory).
9. Now use File->Save, and you’re done. Yay.

 
It should preserve your palette and produce much better results than you are currently getting.  I'll investigate further when I get more time.
 Template.zip   200bytes   266 downloads
 
Here is a BAM I made from your source files with BAMWorkshop using the above procedure.  I then hyper-compressed it with a tool I'm working on, so saving it with any other program will (almost certainly) increase the filesize.  You can compare it to your original sources to see if the above procedure is sufficient in terms of quality, then (if you don't mind) try it out in-game to make sure nothing got messed up during the compression.
 critm001_Sam.rar   1.73K   253 downloads
 
Edit:  Updated post with better procedure and different Template.
Edit2: Updated Template.zip again.

Edited by Sam., 09 May 2017 - 03:37 PM.

[Creepin]

Thank you for your assessment and files provided! I'm especially interested in that "should preserve your palette" part of your description: I've recently tried to assemble some paperdoll item bams and while 1st one turned out just fine second one, done in the same way, got palette mixed up to smithereens. Hopefully your latest sequence will cure it, will try out and report

 

As for file size, why is that a thing? Does uncompressed bams slow down the game or what?

[Sam.]

I'm especially interested in that "should preserve your palette" part of your description: I've recently tried to assemble some paperdoll item bams and while 1st one turned out just fine second one, done in the same way, got palette mixed up to smithereens. Hopefully your latest sequence will cure it, will try out and report

What I meant to imply was that the colors of your palette should be preserved. Depending on the order of your source image's palette, things might or might not get rearranged and remapped: I haven't tested. Which game are you making these paperdolls for?

 

As for file size, why is that a thing? Does uncompressed bams slow down the game or what?

Not really, in fact it has been suggested that run-length-encoding very large frames may actually make them load slower, but I have not personally observed any such behavior.  A spot check using my compression utility showed an average of around 10% size savings compared to the original BAMs exported from the game, with savings as much as 78% compared to fully uncompressed BAMs.  10% may not seem like like that much, but consider what ten percent of a mod like Infinity Animations amounts to, then multiply that by the 200,000 or so times it has been downloaded.  Combine the decreased bandwidth and server loads, shorter download times, HD space savings in the end user's Override folder, etc. and the benefit may start to add up.  You may be thinking that "my computer has terabytes and terabytes of HD space, what's a few (or even a few hundred) megabytes?"  True, but now consider that the release of SoD to mobile platforms has been delayed by a very long time due largely to app size restrictions.  Beamdog has so far been unable to come up with a way to squeeze SoD down to under the 2GB limit.  Will my compression techniques solve the entire problem?  No, but this line of thought may be a step or two in the right direction.  If nothing else, it has been a fun exercise .

[Sam.]

I've recently tried to assemble some paperdoll item bams and while 1st one turned out just fine second one, done in the same way, got palette mixed up to smithereens.

This should be a much better approach to what you want to do.

[Creepin]

Which game are you making these paperdolls for?

Classic BG2

I've recently tried to assemble some paperdoll item bams and while 1st one turned out just fine second one, done in the same way, got palette mixed up to smithereens.

This should be a much better approach to what you want to do.

Thank you for the heads up, this is great news! Although in my case the problem was with original bmp having wrong palette, something BamBatcher won't fix for me I recon, so I spent some time to figure what these damn things do but luckily managed to work it out just in time to give BamBatcher more work

Edited by Creepin, 11 May 2017 - 02:25 PM.

[Creepin]

I'm back. After some successfully created bams I have stumbled upon one I can't beat: I've made sure that first colour in palette is 0/255/0 and the second is 0/0/0, because not placing these in first two slots of pallette was my mistake last time, but somehow it still got actual colour (and not even green at that) instead of what supposed to be transparent and actual black instead of shadow.

I've re-checked to made sure palette is correct, tried NI, BamBatcher and BW 7, but nothing helps. I'm sure I'm one tiny little step away from the solution but I will need your help with it , so, what's wrong with the bmps and/or bam attached?

Attached Files

•  bam.7z   4.43K   270 downloads

[Ulb]

I'm back. After some successfully created bams I have stumbled upon one I can't beat: I've made sure that first colour in palette is 0/255/0 and the second is 0/0/0, because not placing these in first two slots of pallette was my mistake last time, but somehow it still got actual colour (and not even green at that) instead of what supposed to be transparent and actual black instead of shadow.

I've re-checked to made sure palette is correct, tried NI, BamBatcher and BW 7, but nothing helps. I'm sure I'm one tiny little step away from the solution but I will need your help with it , so, what's wrong with the bmps and/or bam attached?

 

There seems to be no problem at all with the file you uploaded?

It works fine in NI and in-game for me.

 

[Creepin]

Thank you for checking that for me Ulb! After your test I have also tested my bam on another PC with another copy of BG2 installed and it actually works. Will have to re-test it further at home, something weird is going on.