Avicii's Tips - how to create your own components on BC
Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2012 11:29 am
Hello all fellow Battle Chronicler users, I have had a request to give a detailed step through on how to make your own fancy components on Battle Chronicler. I know there is a slightly detailed description already on the Battle Chronicler website (LINK) but I will help simplify this more (hopefully).
Steps
Step One. Choosing your graphic or image
To some people this can be the hardest step, I know when I am looking for a certain picture or graphic I can be searching for a while. Basically my steps will let you find a picture to represent a spell, affect etc and use it on BC after all we all know the same ones can get boring and it is good to have a bit of uniqueness to represent your army. So for my example for everyone to see I will be creating markers/counters for two spells, Glittering Robes and Amber Spear, here are the original pictures I found online apologies for the size of the pictures.
Step Two. Removing the backgrounds and shaping the picture
This step is the main step to making the picture look like a component. Use any image editing software that allows you to clear backgrounds (there are millions out there all free to download), some of the more popular ones are Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop. However the dark horse for me which I didn't realize was very easy to use is Microsoft Word 2010 (not sure about older additions). Word has an extremely easy option to remove backgrounds on pictures here is a tutorial (LINK).
there is also a tricky negative with this however once the background is removed you can't save it straight from some programs purely because they will just add a new white background on the picture ( what a waste of time), however I only know word does this some others like paint shop pro will save the image without the background . The good news though... if you have Word you should have Microsoft Picture Manager, so from here you copy the image into MPM from Word and it will be Background free (it will look like it has a white background but it really is gone this time). Trial and error and it will pay off, I won't lie when I tried to make my first banishment (kamehameha) it took me and extremely long time to successfully save the image with no background. Saving the Image as .PNG works best but most other image types will work with BC if not just re-save as a different image type.
Step 3. Making the picture into a component
Now on Battle Chronicler click edit > Components on the drop down menu and a pop up will appear with all the components already created, click new and another pop up will appear now the creation begins. Be sure that once the picture is uploaded there is no sign of a background otherwise it may look a bit ugly. I'll step this one from top of the pop up to the bottom (picture displayed bellow):
1. Name - Clear cut
2. Category - these are the usual categories you see the skulls and markers in, my personal preference is to place mine in the special category
3 & 4 Themes and Tags - I have never used these
5. File Type - Choose Image
6. Type - Select counter, this is so it can be used in all turns
7. Shape - Keep it at its original shape i.e if it was a picture keep it as a rectangle
8. Width - I keep it at 6 x 6 purely because that is the general size, you can change the size when writing a report as most will know
9. Opacity - basically this is how see through the component is, I place mine about 70-80%.
10. Level - choose how high it will be on the board, I choose Cloud so it is above everything.
11. Border - 0.00 will take the border away
12. Image file - Upload the image
Step 4. Test and enjoy
Test your final result and see how it appears, if its settings aren't to your liking follow the steps again
If anyone has any questions about something I may not have covered please ask and I'll be glad to help, or if there is a certain component someone would like me to make I can do it quite easily and send it in component form. Also I would love for people to get back to me on components they may have made and share them on this thread so we can get a big collection of components for everyone to use and I will work on a zip file of High Elf BC components for all to download .
Hope this all helped, get to work all battle repers
Avicii
Steps
Step One. Choosing your graphic or image
To some people this can be the hardest step, I know when I am looking for a certain picture or graphic I can be searching for a while. Basically my steps will let you find a picture to represent a spell, affect etc and use it on BC after all we all know the same ones can get boring and it is good to have a bit of uniqueness to represent your army. So for my example for everyone to see I will be creating markers/counters for two spells, Glittering Robes and Amber Spear, here are the original pictures I found online apologies for the size of the pictures.
Step Two. Removing the backgrounds and shaping the picture
This step is the main step to making the picture look like a component. Use any image editing software that allows you to clear backgrounds (there are millions out there all free to download), some of the more popular ones are Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop. However the dark horse for me which I didn't realize was very easy to use is Microsoft Word 2010 (not sure about older additions). Word has an extremely easy option to remove backgrounds on pictures here is a tutorial (LINK).
there is also a tricky negative with this however once the background is removed you can't save it straight from some programs purely because they will just add a new white background on the picture ( what a waste of time), however I only know word does this some others like paint shop pro will save the image without the background . The good news though... if you have Word you should have Microsoft Picture Manager, so from here you copy the image into MPM from Word and it will be Background free (it will look like it has a white background but it really is gone this time). Trial and error and it will pay off, I won't lie when I tried to make my first banishment (kamehameha) it took me and extremely long time to successfully save the image with no background. Saving the Image as .PNG works best but most other image types will work with BC if not just re-save as a different image type.
Step 3. Making the picture into a component
Now on Battle Chronicler click edit > Components on the drop down menu and a pop up will appear with all the components already created, click new and another pop up will appear now the creation begins. Be sure that once the picture is uploaded there is no sign of a background otherwise it may look a bit ugly. I'll step this one from top of the pop up to the bottom (picture displayed bellow):
1. Name - Clear cut
2. Category - these are the usual categories you see the skulls and markers in, my personal preference is to place mine in the special category
3 & 4 Themes and Tags - I have never used these
5. File Type - Choose Image
6. Type - Select counter, this is so it can be used in all turns
7. Shape - Keep it at its original shape i.e if it was a picture keep it as a rectangle
8. Width - I keep it at 6 x 6 purely because that is the general size, you can change the size when writing a report as most will know
9. Opacity - basically this is how see through the component is, I place mine about 70-80%.
10. Level - choose how high it will be on the board, I choose Cloud so it is above everything.
11. Border - 0.00 will take the border away
12. Image file - Upload the image
Step 4. Test and enjoy
Test your final result and see how it appears, if its settings aren't to your liking follow the steps again
If anyone has any questions about something I may not have covered please ask and I'll be glad to help, or if there is a certain component someone would like me to make I can do it quite easily and send it in component form. Also I would love for people to get back to me on components they may have made and share them on this thread so we can get a big collection of components for everyone to use and I will work on a zip file of High Elf BC components for all to download .
Hope this all helped, get to work all battle repers
Avicii