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Kaylin's Tutorials
August 29, 2012
8:08 am
Jackson, New Jersey
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Jeff Made a post about this Last week in the How to post your Character thread, here's the link.

http://www.heromachine.com/for…..ter/#p9634

I haven't tried it myself yet, so I hope this helps get your text files posted

Quote: "People once believed, that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens, that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes the crow could bring that soul back to put the wrong things right." . ~~ Opening Narration from "The Crow" ~~
August 29, 2012
8:11 am
Kairula :)
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Thanks Kaldath! Smile

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here." -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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October 10, 2012
10:45 am
Kairula :)
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OK, here's a tutorial on how to create group shots on HM3.


First, you need to create all the members of your group as separate HeroMachine saves. At this stage, just leave them all in the default position so you can see them. We'll move them later. As an example, I'm going to use 3 of the Template characters in a group shot: Female Fantasy Warrior, Male Fantasy Warrior and Princess 2.
Female-Fantasy-Warrior.png
Male-Fantasy-Warrior.png
Princess-2.png
I've decided I want Female Fantasy Warrior (FFW) in the center of the trio, so I just save her and leave her as she is. Male Fantasy Warrior (MFW) needs to be on the left, so I need to move every item in that character over to the left. Most people's instinct would probably be to move "All Items", but that doesn't work. What you need to do instead is to move them in groups. Select a Body item, like the chestplate, and then select the "Body" option to group all the Body items. Now you can move them using the buttons and they should all move together.
move-items.png
Do the same for Head, FootRight, HandRight and any other categories, like Companions. Careful, though: some items overlap! For example, ItemRight is in Body and HandRight, so if you have any ItemRight objects, like MFW's shield, you'll need to select ItemRight and move it the same amount the other way, before moving HandRight. Neckwear is in Body and Head.
moved-item.png
I've moved MFW over so you can only just see him at the side of the screen. Now I can save him like that and do the same with Princess 2.
moved-item2.png
I've moved Princess 2 the same amount the opposite way, using the same technique. I think a good distance is about 240 pixels, which you can get by selecting the 20 option and moving 12 times.

Now I have my characters saved in the correct position, I need to put them together. I've got Princess 2 loaded at the moment, because I just finished moving her. Now I'll add MFW. On the "Load" screen, look at the bottom of the box, where it asks you if you want to keep the currently loaded items. This means "do you want to switch from the character you've got right now, to the one you're loading, or do you want to have them both loaded?" Normally you probably want to switch, but for a group shot we need them together, so select the box and make sure it has a cross in it.
multiple-load.png
Now you should have both the characters on the screen. Load up your third character the same way, making sure the box is checked.
multiple-load-result2.png
I chose to load up my middle character last, because she needs to be at the front. When you load two characters together, the new one loads on top of the current one. Make sure you start from the back and work forwards, or you'll have a lot of work to do fixing it.

At the moment, I can only really see one of my characters, and I need to check that the other two are alright. At the bottom of the screen, underneath their feet, there is a toolbar that allows you to change the display mode. Selecting the widescreen option removes all the toolbars and centers your characters, so you can see all of them.
widescreen.png
This is what it looks like. Now I can see all 3 of the characters side-by-side. I must have gone slightly wrong somewhere, though, because the outer two are missing a hand each! Oh well. You'll probably do better. To leave widescreen and go back to the normal view, just click on anything.
widescreen-result.png
Don't forget to create a record of your awesome tutorial-following skills! You can either take a screenshot in widescreen view, or select one of the Widescreen options when you Export the image. Also, remember to save!

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here." -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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October 12, 2012
2:18 pm
Just south of Gothenburg, Sweden
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Awesome! I've been wondering about that. Working with two characters on the screen at the same time is a pain Laugh

Thank you very much!

Ah, reasons. We all have them, at times.
October 13, 2012
8:04 pm
Chicagoland area
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Wow! Nice tutorial. I would have never thought of doing it like that.

You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
October 13, 2012
9:41 pm
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When I create groupshots, I typically create one character at a time then save the text. I open the main character / centerpiece first. Before I load the second character, I manually go into the text and make the adjustments to the X coordinates. For instance, adding or subtracting 240 pixels depending on whether I want the other character to stand to the left or the right.

This takes a little patience as you have to do it to every single Item. However, I find it easier. As an added bonus, I learned how to manually tweak large pictures by editing their attributes directly in the text. This is helpful when you have a high number of layers, patterns, and masking. HeroMachine can bog down, sometimes even lock up. And yes, definitely remember to save your creations as text!

All around me is anarchy, chaos, and mayhem.  My work here is done.
October 14, 2012
8:04 am
Texas
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Good advice all around. I always take my characters to Paint.net and group them there, I guess I'm to lazy to do it the other way.

April 7, 2013
8:28 am
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Kaylin, I just saw your group shot tutorial and I'm going to give it a try. I created 10 themed characters I would love to group and though it sounds like it requires a lot of patience and time, your method seems like the way to go. The 2 trios I made I did one character at a time and kept shifting back & forth between them. Acchhh, what a headache! One thing I'm not sure of; do you save after each character added? Also, it seems to not work if there is a background, (I edited this post after a little experimenting). Assuming the first character was the very bottom layer, I tried to remove the background items from the second so I could see the first character, but nothing happened.

May 6, 2013
2:59 pm
Kairula :)
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The way to do a background is to make it separately from the characters and then load it first, with the figures loading on top. It's probably best if you finish each "layer" of character or background separately, and then don't do too much tweaking once you've put them together. Also, there is a glitch that means if you add a new load on top of an existing character, the bottom layer of the new character is layer 1, and the old character gets pushed into negative numbers, which is mildly annoying as you can't move anything down a layer below 1. All you can do is move things up, which thankfully seems to work fine.

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here." -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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