• As part of the relaunch of Skullheart, ALL previous threads have been archived. You can find them at the bottom of the forum in the Archives (2021) section. The archives are locked, so please use the new forum sections to create new discussion threads.

Mini Tutorial: Removing Backgrounds and Lifebars

Cellsai

BEEP BOOP BAN
Joined
Aug 31, 2013
Messages
2,041
Reaction score
4,744
Points
113
Location
Japan
Website
askminette.tumblr.com
Valentine Cerebella
If you're looking to get clean screenshots of the characters without any backgrounds cluttering the image, a quick hack I use is to replace the 2D backdrop for Class Notes with a plain white or black one and also remove all the UI elements.

To do this, first you need to unpack two files: levels-textures2d.gfs and ui-win.gfs.

Replace Backdrop:
Go into "levels-textures2d\temp\levels\textures\2D\stage_class_notes.dds" and replace this entirely with white or black. Whichever one you prefer to work with. Black has certain advantages later on, but is harder to separate the sprites from. I use this stage because it has very neutral lighting. Most of the other stages have colored and very obviously directed lighting.

Remove UI:
Some characters like Big Band are so big they cover parts of the User Interface like life bars and timer. These can interfere with your screencaps, so you can remove them. Go into "ui-win\temp\UIWin\Textures\TA_1001_1.dds". You'll want to open this in something like Photoshop so you can manipulate the Alpha Channels. To remove every part of the UI, just fill the entire Alpha Channel in with black. This will render almost the entire UI transparent.

There are some issues with this as a couple of the meters (super meter and undizzy) are created elsewhere and I haven't bothered to track them down yet. You can hack your way past this by setting your meters to 0 in training mode and then making your background black. This will ensure the meters and backdrop are the same color and thus invisible.

I'll hopefully have a more fun mod ready on the weekend. Been dragging my heels on finishing it for a loooong time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: old_gus
I already posted this elsewhere in this forum, but I figure having a bunch of easy to find specialist tutorial threads won't go amiss in here.
 
qRu6hEW.jpg

TpWKqDd.png


Wow wee now you have pictures for the end result! You also can't remove mugs afaik.