[PS] Quest Icons

[tibmaker]

Ahoy there!

As part of a request, I am writing this tutorial for those whom happen to be wondering how to make their own quest icons in Elder Scrolls Oblivion. This will also show you how to even add transparency to your icons. You will need PhotoShop, and the NVIDIA DDS tools.

MAKING IT
First of all, all quest icons, and icons of items are 64 by 64 pixels. I suggest never going out of this range, unless you want the game to preform strangely or stretch them. You can start by making your icon whatever you want to be, as long as it is 64 by 64 pixels.

OPTIONAL
If you want to add on transparency at this stage, merge everything down to 1 layer (and make sure there isn't a background layer, just transparent checkers). Press and hold CTRL and then click on that merged layer. Then, over on the layers palette, click on the small "Add Layer Mask" icon to create an alpha mask. You will notice no immediate effect, but you will see it created a new black and white layer to the right side of your current one. Note that this is the only way of making alpha maps compatible with the game. Refer to below image:



SAVING IT
Now, the other part, saving. Click File->Save As. Go to D3D/DDS in the file format. Then, you must know where to place your icon. In the Oblivion DATA folder, it should go in Textures/menus/icons/quest/. You can save it as anything you'd like. Now, press okay, and you should get a dialogue box that appears regarding the DDS settings. Everything should be default settings, and "DXT3 ARGB (Explicit Alpha)" for the drop down menu. Also select "No MIP Maps" for icons do not have any. Hit Save/Okay. Refer to below image if you have any questions:


USING IT IN TES
With your icon ready to go, you will have to assign it to a quest by clicking on the icon button and navigating to it. This is pretty self explainitory, so I gone ahead and assigned it to one of my quests. Note you will not see the alpha within the editor! You can see a little how below:


INGAME
Here it is ingame:


Enjoy,
tibmaker

[Razorwing]

Cool, thankyou so much!

I thought of two questions. First, as far as I can tell, Bethesda has three sets of icons; one set in "textures\menus", another in "textures\menus50" and the last in "textures\menus80". The ones in menus50 seem to be 32x32 pixels, while the ones in the other two seem to be 64x64. (I didn't check all of them) I'm not sure what the overall difference is between those two, but my best guess is menus50 is used when playing on lower resolutions. What's your ideas on that?

Second, I've never used Photoshop, but I have a nifty little program called DXTBmp which I use a lot. One just:
- creates an image with black as the background color in a graphics program
- starts up DXTBmp
- Alpha > Create Alpha Channel (Black)
- Alpha > Apply Alpha to Image
- File > Save As > DDS Texture

This works for ordinary textures in Oblivion; I'm not a 100% sure it does for icons, but it should. If it does, and I'm halfway sure it does, I imagine it can be a lifesaver for those who are unfamiliar with Photoshop. What do you think of it being an alternative method in that part of the icon making process?

[tibmaker]

From what I can tell, it uses the same icon on all resolutions. I tried on 800x600, 640x480, and 1024x768. All seem to use the same icon from just the menu folder. As far as your DXTBmp goes, you should be able to get the same thing. Just know that the alpha map is a grayscale where white is visible, and black is transparent. So if you have your BMP, and you apply another alpha map BMP, it should work when you export as DXT3 with 0 MIPs.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by tibmaker
From what I can tell, it uses the same icon on all resolutions. I tried on 800x600, 640x480, and 1024x768. All seem to use the same icon from just the menu folder. As far as your DXTBmp goes, you should be able to get the same thing. Just know that the alpha map is a grayscale where white is visible, and black is transparent. So if you have your BMP, and you apply another alpha map BMP, it should work when you export as DXT3 with 0 MIPs.

Cool, thanks for clarifying that!
Is it ok if I move your tut to our FAQ board, where we keep other tutorials? =)

[tibmaker]

Go ahead.

[Zarf]

Haha, sweet. Silgrad Tower could have it's own quest icons for the quest line. :-D

[Razorwing]

We could have a whole host of them - Redoran, Hlaalu, Morag Tong etc