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New Duty Officer Signature
amayakitsune
Member Posts: 977 Arc User
You guys may remember this topic:
Download Duty Officer Signature by anazonda, where he and I worked on creating the duty officer signature that seem very prevalent around the forums now. Ive seen many different versions, and I love them all.
But ever since Season 6, I had been wanting to update it to bring it in line with the newer Duty Officer UI. Ive finally finished that now.
The template contains:
- Every rank from on the Federation side from Ensign to Fleet Admiral, including two special ranks: Deputy Director & Fleet Captain
- Every rank on the Klingon Side from Bekk to Dahar Master.
- All 24 Duty Officer Trait Icons
- Every Veteran Accolade icon up to 1000 days.
- Miscellaneous currency icons (Refined Dilithium, Dilithium Ore, EDCs, EC, Expertise, etc.)
- Some random medal icons
- Every Doff rarity overlay from Season 5 (Common Fed and Klink, Uncommon to Very Rare, and a Unique Gold overlay done in the Season 5 style)
- Every Doff rarity overlay from Season 6 (Common Fed and Klink, Uncommon to Very rare, incl. Unique and Ultra Violet)
- Federation Civilian, Tactical, Engineering, and Science backgrounds
- Klingon Civilian, Tactical, Engineering, and Science backgrounds
- Colour matched (to rarity border) name fields (incl. a proper gradient for the Fleet rarity, thanks to brackyews)
- All 12 commendation catagories (Including Marauding for the Klingons and Diplomacy for the Feds)
- Federation and Klingon Faction icons
- Federation and Klingon Profession icons
- 3 Special fields, where you can find the above mentioned veteran, medal or currency icons (or you can add you own if you like)
- a quote field
You can download it here: Download
Max size (500x 150): In progress, will update when finished.
Font used in text layers is Century Gothic. Special text field 1, 2, 3 and the quote field have a colour overlay effect that, when enabled will change the font colour to the proper colour for a Klingon DOff.
This was done in Photoshop CS5 I can not guarentee that it will work in Elements or earlier versions. I do not know if it is compatible with GIMP or other similar programs.
As well here is anazonda's tutorial from the original topic on how to cut your character out:
If you want to see what it can look like, see my sig.
Download Duty Officer Signature by anazonda, where he and I worked on creating the duty officer signature that seem very prevalent around the forums now. Ive seen many different versions, and I love them all.
But ever since Season 6, I had been wanting to update it to bring it in line with the newer Duty Officer UI. Ive finally finished that now.
The template contains:
- Every rank from on the Federation side from Ensign to Fleet Admiral, including two special ranks: Deputy Director & Fleet Captain
- Every rank on the Klingon Side from Bekk to Dahar Master.
- All 24 Duty Officer Trait Icons
- Every Veteran Accolade icon up to 1000 days.
- Miscellaneous currency icons (Refined Dilithium, Dilithium Ore, EDCs, EC, Expertise, etc.)
- Some random medal icons
- Every Doff rarity overlay from Season 5 (Common Fed and Klink, Uncommon to Very Rare, and a Unique Gold overlay done in the Season 5 style)
- Every Doff rarity overlay from Season 6 (Common Fed and Klink, Uncommon to Very rare, incl. Unique and Ultra Violet)
- Federation Civilian, Tactical, Engineering, and Science backgrounds
- Klingon Civilian, Tactical, Engineering, and Science backgrounds
- Colour matched (to rarity border) name fields (incl. a proper gradient for the Fleet rarity, thanks to brackyews)
- All 12 commendation catagories (Including Marauding for the Klingons and Diplomacy for the Feds)
- Federation and Klingon Faction icons
- Federation and Klingon Profession icons
- 3 Special fields, where you can find the above mentioned veteran, medal or currency icons (or you can add you own if you like)
- a quote field
You can download it here: Download
Max size (500x 150): In progress, will update when finished.
Font used in text layers is Century Gothic. Special text field 1, 2, 3 and the quote field have a colour overlay effect that, when enabled will change the font colour to the proper colour for a Klingon DOff.
This was done in Photoshop CS5 I can not guarentee that it will work in Elements or earlier versions. I do not know if it is compatible with GIMP or other similar programs.
As well here is anazonda's tutorial from the original topic on how to cut your character out:
How to make a proper character avatar:
-Set your display settings to as high as possible.
-Take your character to ESD. (under the Bar on Qo'nos works for KDF)
-The big "white wall" outside Admiral quinns office. Move your back to it, and zoom in -relatively close (so you have a frame sufficiently above your characters chest).
-Press Prt Scr on your keyboard. The screenshot will now be saved in the Screenshots folder in the STO game folder. (Live).
-Open Photohsop, and then the picture.
-Doubble-click the layer in the layer box, and just press enter in the dialouge that appears. (To allow for transparency).
-Find the Channels-tab. It's usually in the same box as "Layers"
-Find the channel that has the highest contrast between light and dark colors, by clicking through the red, green and Blue channels. Usually it's the blue or green.
-Duplicate that channel, and click it, so it is selected.
-On your keyboard, hold Ctrl, and L. A box will now appear.
-There are 3 "indicators" and a level curve. Move the most left, and right closer together untill theres a really hard contrast between light and dark colors. It's gonna look odd... Ignore that.
-Once you feel you have the proper contrast (you may have to play around a little), press "OK".
-Select the magic wand tool (W). Set Tolerance 5 (depending on the contrast). Click on the area closest to your char that is white/bright. This should select a very large area.
-Now with the angular Marquee tool (M) set to "Add to Selection" (located as 4 icons just below the "Edit" menu option. Hoover your mouse over the 2'nd icon...) select all remaining areas that havn't been selected, and pretty much everything below the shoulders of your char.
-Select the Lasso Tool (L), and set it to "Substract from selection" (Located to the right of the "Add to selection").
-Zoom in close on the hair and carefully remove any selection inside the hair. (this takes time, patience and lots of Ctrl+Z).
-In the channels overview, re-select RGB, and click back to the normal layer overview.
-Once again zoom on on your char and move around the contours to see if you've missed any holes. If you find any, remove them.
-On your keyboard, Click DEL.
-You should now have a nicely cut out of your char, ready to use in my template.
If you want to see what it can look like, see my sig.
Post edited by amayakitsune on
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Comments
Also I suggest throwing a colour gradient on the Fleet Name layer to correspond with the Ultraviolet quality effect. Here are my initial settings to the layer effects, just experimenting quickly from memory:
- Change text layer to Smooth antialiasing (to enhance the legibility when adding the following effects)
- Add effect Gradient Overlay, all default settings
- Use Gradient Editor to set the Violet-Orange preset
- Change orange colour stop in the lower right to a nice sky blue, and change its Location to 60%
- Add effect Stroke, use Size 1, position Center, Opacity 24%, colour White.
Tweak to taste.
Cheers eh.
The only reason I havent posted in that topic, is I didnt want to necro the topic, its been a long time since there was a post in it.
I'll look in to adding the ultra-violet gradient. The only reason I'm using the font smoothing I am (I think Im on Strong... not looking at it at the moment) is because it seems like thats whats closest to in game. (Ive added it in. Looks pretty good, thanks for the tip..)
I also have gotten the 900 and 1000 day accolade icons, and I am working on getting those in now.
Thanks for that, and thanks for your hard work and for sharing it with the community.
EDIT: Also... I'm working on a version of the sig that takes up the entire 500x150 limit for signature images. Requires a lot of scaling stuff up, so it may take some time.
Resizing the graphic to 500x125 seems to have worked out fine as well, but I didn't do a resharpen pass. I'll grab your new file when it's ready, thanks.
Oh right it's September now, not August.
Hopefully by the 25th century they have invented technology to automatically lock threads at 31 days. :cool:
Resizing it up works just fine, I just need to go through and see what sizing every thin up look like and see what doesnt need it.
Brackynews, could you look at the fleet rarity name that in the link in my first post, and tell me what you think?
Colouring looks great! Maybe remove the Stroke effect if you prefer not to change the antialiasing? That way it still looks sharp and high contrast. I just wanted a very small highlight edge at the bottom of the letters and Stroke isn't that fine tunable. Like I said I'm just going from memory without a screenshot.
Also I shaved off edge pixels from a couple of the trait icons. Shroud and Efficient for sure. And I made the Fleet Credits and Admiral rank a few pixels smaller.
If the signature allowed for image hotlinks I would be very tempted to make my webserver send a different one on each request. Ah well.
Made some tweaks to the fleet name again. Used an outer glow, with a mirrored gradient so the bottom is outlined in a sky-ish blue and the top is pretty much left alone. Changed the font smoothing on the Fleet Name to compensate for the muddy lettering at the size.
In regard to different ones, I'm considering just making a gif (if thats even allowed) for my multiple characters.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=382561
Its not as up to date as mine, but feel free to use either. Its a bit funny that I got mine up the day before... lol.
As an update: Ive made a bit of progress on the 500x150 version of the sig in this topic. I dont plan on releasing it until I am fully satisfied with the basic design and layout, so that will take some time.
I have a few tweaks that have been bugging me (wich is why it's taking time)....
Most noteably, I want to make font layers switchable between Fed and KDF in an instant, and PS just dosen't want to play ball...
^^
Im going to update my original post with this.
But now each of the 3 special text fields and the quote field have a colour overlay effect and can be swapped between Federation and Klingon font colouring.
Yea, but mine wasn't set up with that in mind, so the texts are spread across several layers, and the overlay is a tad twitchy (I want to make it a single click change).
Are you online?
In STO? No, not at the moment.
But very cool anyways.
Registered: Oct/2009 , LTS : Feb/2011
Fleets: Warriors of the Phoenix, Kirian Industries[/SIGPIC]
Three years and still no Captain Klaa hair...
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Well you are welcome to give a shot at contacting either of us... we might end up having time to help you with that.
That said: My variant at least, is somewhat compatible with Gimp, so you can download that for free (its opensource freeware), and that will allow you to make your own.
You can certainly try GIMP or Id be willing to create a sig from the template for you. I only say that I cant guarentee it wont work in other versions or programs because I cant test for all of them reliably, and dont want people getting upset because it didnt work.
EDIT: Anazonda, Im jumping into STO, you seemed like you wanted to talk.
Thank for the template.
The control panel says no animated GIFs.
Though realistically, I agree.
Thanks a bunch! I almost resorted to trying to make my own template, I'm glad I didn't have to!
If the [IMG]tags acknowledge a PHP file, like they do on some boards, then you could use a rotator script and just cycle through JPGs. Technically that would not be an animated GIF.
500 years in the future and we still look like schmucks when getting our ID photos taken...
Just so you know, the DA page is not mine, that is anazondas. Mine is only linked in the first post of this topic.
Either way, everyone involved has done great work.
500 years in the future and we still look like schmucks when getting our ID photos taken...
No video tutorial, sorry. Its fairly easy to sort through the layers and such, the only thing that might cause issues is the picture, but there a text tutorial for cutting out your character headshot in the first post in this topic.
Mine is a bit more updated from when I last looked at anazonda's template. I am probably biased toward my own work, but I think mine looks a little cleaner as well.
Yea, I could go through and add in all the Accolade icons and such... but thats work that I just dont have the patience for, so I let others do that, and start them off with a basic assortment of some stuff that I use for my characters.
Like I said, it wasn't hard. I just pulled the accolade symbol off STOwiki, resized it properly, and popped it into the folder. Still, it takes some intuiting. Perhaps include instructions on how to select traits and what all have you. I only figured it out because of the PS class I took a while back.