Category Archives: HeroMachine 3

HM3: Fantasy armor 3

I've just updated the Tops-MaleFantasyArmor set for HeroMachine 3, to include the following sixteen new items:

Let me know if you see any weirdness. These are all from user-submitted suggestions, which I am still working my way through. These were just the ones that started with a number, I haven't even gotten to the "A"s yet :-/

HM3: Armor addendum

I just posted a handful of new armors to the HeroMachine 3 Tops-Male-Fantasy-Armor set. The two things in particular I'd like your feedback on are the shading and patterning on this one (uses the 30% shadow integrated into the object, pattern doesn't go on the metal borders or skulls):

And the chainmail effect on this one (chain links are color2), namely, does it work and look good like this or should I do the links throughout the entire shirt:

Thanks! As usual, if you don't see the new items, clear your cache in your browser.

HM3: Fantasy armor, first pass

I've just posted the first 14 items in the still-under-development "Tops-Male-Fantasy-Armor" set for your early adopting pleasure to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha:

These are basically the twelve existing Fantasy Armor pieces from HM2 (though not the Expansion), minus the last two shoulder pads which are, for all intents and purposes, available in Shoulder-Right.

Two things I'd like to get your feedback on regards patterning and shading. I included semi-transparent shading on a couple of the armors, which overlay the controllable colors. Do you like that, or would you rather I made those areas solid black (line color)? Or leave them off entirely?

Regarding patterning, right now the patterns cover the entire item. I could restrict that, so for instance you wouldn't get pattern on the shoulder pads or whatnot. The catch is that anything that's color1 gets a pattern to it. So I'd have to rejigger how the colors are set up in the item to make that happen.

Anyway, let me know what you thing. I am now moving on to the many (many) fine suggestions posted by you all to complete the set. That's going to take a while, but I'll probably release them in stages as I get them done so you don't have to wait till the very end when it's all completely finished.

HM3: Armor up

It looks like the vote is to do Fantasy Armor next. As usual the plan is to convert as many of the 2.5 items in that set over as possible, and to kick it up several notches by including as many of your suggestions as I can. So by all means, please feel free to request in the comments to this post any specific upper-body armor you want to see in the program.

Comments with links to actual images of what you mean will be much more helpful than just plain text descriptions, although certainly those will be good to have as well. It's just a lot easier to visualize what you mean if I have something to look at.

Thanks in advance for your great feedback, it's suggestions and requests like these that make the program worth doing!

Hand holding

Your Helpful Thursday guide for today is "How to Put an Item in Your Character's Hand", a question I frequently get from new users. The basic steps are:

handsequence
  1. Put whatever item you want to go in that hand on the canvas, positioned over the hand where you want it to go.
  2. With that item the active one, click the Mask button:
    mask-button
  3. Click on the hand you want to put the item into. Done!

Please feel free to ask any questions you like in comments, about this or any other topic.

HM3: The music plays on

I've just uploaded the (probably) final update to the ItemRight-Music set in HeroMachine 3 Alpha, including:

music2

I was thinking about doing a big floor harp, bagpipes, and a tambourine, but just couldn't get anything that looked good when drawn. So this will probably be it for now.

Next -- either Fantasy Armor or Rifles. Pipe up with which you'd prefer, and once we settle on one I'll make a separate post asking for specific items in that set you'd want to see.

HM3: Prize items

I've wrapped up several outstanding contest prizes and have posted all but one to the live HeroMachine 3 app. First up, two of our winners -- DiCicatriz (Character Contest 30) and SuperFan1 (Friday Night Fights) -- decided to have portraits done of themselves, and they now live in Head-Winners:

superfan-dicicatris

Kyle decided to go with the classic Viking helmet in Headgear-Standard for his Character Contest 29 victory:

kyle-viking-helmet-hm

Finally, Hakoon has approved his British-flag guitar, but it's not actually available in ItemRight-Music yet, as I'm still working on the set. But this is what it looks like:

hakoon-rough

Thanks to those guys for picking great prizes, I hope everyone enjoys them. And if you've won a contest but I haven't drawn your prize yet, never fear, I am working on them!

HM3: Kaldath's FNF prize

Kaldath and I have finished his Friday Night Fights semi-final prize, a faerie dragonlet now live in Companions-Standard. Enjoy!

Note that the eyes are blank so you can place any eye you like behind the figure for the proper orientation and effect.

Patterns and Open Help Thread

People still have a hard time with patterning and masking in HeroMachine 3, so I wanted to take a quick moment to show how to get custom patterns on your items. Also, if you have any questions about anything else HeroMachine related -- like how to get a particular effect, for instance -- just chime in in the comments and either I or one of the other folks here will try to lend a hand.

You can use any item in the program for a pattern, not just the ones in the default Pattern tab. First, pick the item you want to apply the pattern to (a basic male body in this case), then the pattern you want to put onto it. In the sample, I've picked the actual Patterns Standard set.

patternmenu

Next, choose the actual item you want to be the pattern, then color and scale it how you want to be sure it covers everything. Here I had to scale the leopard pattern up quite a bit to cover up to the neckline and feet. I also made the colors somewhat transparent so they'd look more like fur.

leopard1

Finally, click the pattern item to make sure it's the active one. Next click the Mask tool and then -- and this is important -- click on the item you are trying to apply the pattern to, not the pattern itself. In this case, that means I clicked on the Leopard skin pattern, then clicked Mask, then clicked on the Body.

leopard2

That's it! You can do this with flags (in the Background-Shapes set) to get a patriotic looking character, or anything else, really.

Feel free to post your "Help!" requests in the comments.

Caption Contest 72 Prize

Danny and I have finished his prize for winning Caption Contest 72, a Confederate cap:

rebhat2

It's live now in the HeroMachine 3 Headgear-Standard set.