[MUA1] Tutorial in making custom loading screens in MUA

[iammingy]

As some of you may have notice, the loading screens in the IGB files are out of scale in MUA. Though the textures are 2048x1024 (pixels^2), they are actually images of 1817.6x1024 being scaled by 1.6/1.42 in width only.

The math: 1817.6 x 1.6/1.42 = 2048.

When the files are loaded, the game shrink the BMP from 2048x1024 back to the 1817.6x1024 scale. Don't ask me why because I don't know why.
If you don't believe this, shrink the BMP by multiplying 1.42/1.6 to the width of the BMP, then you will see that the loading screen looks "better" than before.


So, how do you make custom loading screens?

1. Find an image that has high resolution (800 in height is enough) or any that doesn't looks so low-res when reszied to larger pixels. Let's use this pic of Carnage for example:

480x408



2. Open the file with your favorite image/photo editor. Resize the image to height 1024 preserving the aspect ratio. (This means both the height and width will expand at the same ratio.)

1205x1024



3. Notice that the pic is now very low-res with lots of stagger-edges on every line you see!?!?! You can rescue this using the blur tool. Increase the blur strength from 1 (stepwise) until you are sastisfied with the staggerred-lines without too much loss in quality. Do whatever you want to do to get better image quality (eg. adjusting contrast, brightness, etc.) before going to next step. You can save your file here if you think you have done alot of work. Carnage looks not so bad with blurr strength of 6:

still 1205x1024



4. Now having the best image quality you can get, resize the image only in width to the 1.6/1.42 scale without preserving the aspect ratio. (This means height will not expand when width is expanded.) In the Carnage example, the width should be 1357.7 or 1358.

The math: 1205 x 1.6/1.42 = 1357.7

1358x1024



5. Start a new image with 2048x1024 and copy your image onto this new empty image.  Since the Carnage pic is black on the left, I choose the background to be black and I place him to the right. I also added another image on the left just to imitate the MUA loading screen style. Do whatever you want to decorate the loading screen before going to next step.

2048x1024 (I shrinked it in this pic)



6. Flip the image veritically and change the channels from RGB to BGR (which can be done in Photoshop or easier in IrfanView). Save your file to 32-bit (or 24-bit) BMP.

2048x1024 (I shrinked it in this pic)



7. Edit your CFG entry for SkinnerUI for the offsets of the loading screen IGB file. Since I am a nice guy (am I? ), I have provided the offsets for 0901.igb (from \Activision\Marvel - Ultimate Alliance\textures\loading), which is the loading screen for Spider-man:

0901.igb,DXT1,2048,1024,356177,1024,512,94033,512,256,28497,256,128,12113,128,64,8017,64,32,1404761,32,16,1405785,16,8,1406041,8,4,1406105,4,2,1406121.

I am not sure if the game wants the really small ones, but I have tracked the offsets all the way from 2048x1024 down to 4x2...@_@


8. Load 0901.igb in SkinnerUI and import your loading screen BMP file. Rename this new file generated from SkinnerUI so that it doesn't overwrite files in the "loading" folder. Place this loading screen IGB file in the "loading" folder. If it isn't named with the character numbers (eg. 0901 for Spider-man), then the probablity of seeing that loading screen is roughly about 1/(number of loading screens in the "loading" folder)...

This is what it looks like in the game:




----------------------------------------------------



How did I find the 1.6/1.42 scaling factor?

Compare this wallpaper from the MUA VIP community:

1280x1024


With this loading screen from MUA:
(This my favorite costume of Storm in the game! Nope, I don't have Mohawk hair. )

2048x1024



The wallpaper uses the same piece of art as the loading screen! So, I cropped out the black parts:

1280x720



Now, compare the width and height of the loading screen to the wallpaper I cropped:

Width of loading screen = W x Width of cropped wallpaper
2048 = W x 1280
W = 1.6

Height of loading screen = H x Height of cropped wallpaper
1024 = H x 720
H = 1.42

W != H

Width and height don't expand at the same rate. In this case, the width is expanding by 1.6/1.42 pixels for every 1 pixel increase in height.

[DJay Saint]

Actually, the game uses a 16:9 ratio when at 1280x720.  The screen shot from the VIP community is a 4:3 ratio.  Comparing the loading screen from MUA (which is a 2:1) is like comparing apples to oranges.  The wallpaper is made to fit classic style computer monitors, while the loading screen is made to fit new widescreen monitors.  If you take the highest possible 16:9 widescreen resolution with a 1024 height, you will get a 1820 width.  While your "math" is nice, you are off.  You did it the hard way.  I just didn't realize the game was in 16:9.  I thought it was 16:10.  The "scale" factor of the loading screens is actually 1.125:1.  Although this math is moot, your beginning loading screen image should be a 1820x1024, stretched out to a 2048x1024 when done.

1.  Make a 1820x1024 image.
2.  Resize to 2048x1024 (do NOT scale the proportions).
3.  Flip the blue and red channel (In Adobe Photoshop, use the channel mixer.  In the red channel, set the red value to 0, blue value to 100.  In the blue channel, set the blue value to 0, red value to 100).
4.  Flip image vertically.
5.  Save as a 32-bit .bmp file if using MUAskinner, or a DXT1 .dds file if manually inserting screens.
6.  Insert .bmp into MUAskinner, or chop off the 127 byte .dds header from the .dds image, insert into offsets.
7.  Have fun.

[iammingy]

Thanks, I will try that and look the differences!

[iammingy]

I have just found the conversion factor for XML2 loading screens! I am not sure whether you MUA modders are interested or not, but I think XML2 modders are!   The DDS/BMP texture extracted from the loading screen IGB file is 512x512, but it is *approximately* 627x512 horizontally compressed to 512x512. It's not 4:3 for some reason... @_@

Example: X-man's loading screen, which is packed in the PC version for some reason... but I am happy about it! ^^"

\Activision\X-Men Legends 2\Textures\loading\X-man.IGB

Offsets:
x_man.IGB,DXT3,512,512,93428,256,256,27892,128,128,5980,64,64,23756,32,32,22364,16,16,23500,8,8,23420.

1. Texture extracted + vertically flipped:
512*512


2. Texture horizontally expanded to 683x512:
627*512




To make your loading screen for XML2:

1. Resize your image proportionally (preserving the aspect ratio) to 627*512.

2. Resize the width (without preserving the aspect ratio) to 512*512.

3. Vertically flip the image and save as a BMP file.

4. Insert the loading screen into X-man.IGB via SkinnerUI using the offsets I provided above!



How did I know that? I just compared the scale with these official ones I found (from Peyo's thread):

I wish they were bigger... :drool1:

[DJay Saint]

Like I said earlier, you are doing this the long and hard way (gathering images and comparing scale, etc... most images on the net are resized for desktops, and therefore cannot be accurately judged for something like this).  The easiest way to figure out the actual image size that needs to be compressed down to whatever file size makes you happy (in XML2, it's 512x512, and MUA, it's 2048x1024), you need to figure out the native aspect ratio of the game.  Being that MUA was 16:9, I was easily able to conclude the image size as stated in my above post.  Being that XML2 is presented in 4:3 aspect ratio, I used the same conclusions and found the image width should've been 682.667, or 683 (682 proportions better because it is an even number) with the 512 height (a scale factor of 1.333:1).  Still, good find.  Though if you had asked, I could've told you.   

[iammingy]

No, if you scale the image to 682 x 512 (4:3), the image doesn't look right. That's why I did it the hard way.

EDIT: Oh, I am not complaining about the MUA loading screens. Your method was smart! Originally, I used 683*512 while writing my post above, but the more I look at the pic, the more I feel that it doesn't look right. So, I did it the stupid way: looked for images on the net and compared the scale... lol

[DJay Saint]

That's exactly how I did those Cyclops loading screens for MUA and I haven't heard a complaint yet.  Let me recheck.  I'm going off of notes I wrote when I was working on this stuff, and it's been months since I've actually done modding for MUA XML2.

[iammingy]

Crap! I even found "weirder" things...
The offical loading screens for the PC version aren't 512*512; 3403.igb is ~512*482 but 3803.igb is ~512*515 ... My SkinnerUI couldn't decompile these files.... I was lucky that I got X-man's decompile. @_@

For 3403.igb:
If I resize the image from 512*482 to 512*512 without aspect ratio, then resize to 682*512 without aspect ratio, the image is in scale with the original artwork by Gangus.

Some quick cap's from texturefinder:

3803:


3403:

[DJay Saint]

0.o

Cyclop's was 512x512, which I resized to 682x512 FTW.  Albeit pixelated all to hell, it looked correct.  After spending hours cleaning it up, it was good enough to throw in MUA.  I'll look at more and see what's up.  I know Raven did some goofy things in their time, but not having everything a uniform size is really a bad technical error on their part if it is that way.  If nothing else, just for the sake of making more content for the game.  *shrugs*

[Kingdom]

Resiszing, editing, and everything leading up to the skinner is easy.  The main problem I have is actually entering the right offsets to load an igb.  If I type them out at the cfg edit tab, then the program still crashes when I attempt to load 0901.  If I copy the offsets to the cfg view tab, then  it refuses to save and change muaskinner.cfg.  I have no managed to open/import/export a single file.  All I manage is finding new ways to crash the skinner.  It's frustrating...

[iammingy]

Don't use cfg edit, use cfg view. Then, muaskinner.cfg should be opened with Notepad. (Ignore Skinner at this moment.) Delete all the default entries that came with the Skinner. Input the offsets and you can keep these from now on. After you are done with the CFG file, just click "save", then you'd save it just like any other text files except the extension is *.cfg

Notepad shouldn't freeze at this stage.

Now, go back to Skinner and load your loading screen 0901.igb file.

[Kingdom]

Okasy, I figured out the problem.  The file was saved in my sytem program folder, which doesn't allow for editing.  I moved the program, and successfully created a loadscreen (thanks btw).  How do you rename a file before accepting it, though? I accidently overwrote the spiderman loadscreen.

[iammingy]

It should be backed up automatically into a file called 0901.igb.bak

[jonchang]

Thanks for writing a detailed explanation!

[TEGC Rocco]

I am very glad you took the time to do this, but I do not quite get it. it might be easy to understand if you did a video tutorial.