Okay so this thread will be about... you're right, ICONS!

I made this thread to reply to some questions @Aherin asked me about making icons, so maybe it can help others with similar questions/issues.

Okay so Aherin asked me...

My first question: How did you manage to get  such nice bold defined outlines around the images? Is that some sort of filter? The icons I made for my summoned skills mod looked cool enough, but yours fit in much better with the cartoony style of torchlight. You still ended up using model screenshots as a base on yours right?

For armor icons I think they really need to look as close to the actual item as possible so, yes, I did use screenshots of the models themselves.  I did my screencaps in Blender but you can use the OGRE mesh viewer for this.

When you get in real close to a mesh, often you'll see texture "bleeding" in parts where color edges meet up, like this...



In the end the icons are really quite small, so you can actually skip correcting this bleeding. If you feel you really MUST fix it (like I did ) then go right ahead. Again, the finished icon is small, so no need to make it perfect.


Effects/Plug-ins used: masking, smudging, brightness/contrast

Then cut out just the part/s that you need.  Here it's on a white background just for presentation purposes...



For the outline effect I used a dropshadow plug-in (that's what GIMP has, other programs might actually have a "glow" plug-in).  Just keep adding it to itself until it's as strong as you'd like. Again because the icon is small, you'll want it a little thick/strong.


Additional Effects/Plug-ins vs. previous shot: some more brightness/contrast, unsharp mask

Finally angle it to how you want it to come out on the icon sheet (re-angling on the icon sheet itself may result in detail loss).



and you should be ready to paste it into your icon sheet. Once you have it on the icon sheet you'll probably need to do some final sharpening.

Thanks so much for this Phanjam. Time to give it a try