Custom Icons

Icons are 40 x 40 pixels, TGA files with an alpha channel to determine transparency. Please note that you must save TGA files with alpha channels as 32 bit. I also use the RLE compression option to lower file size.

Icons are used to denote classes, items, spells, feats and domains.

Some icons have a version with and without a border, classes are an example of this.

I use photoshop to edit icons, but i am sure this applies to other programs as well. I am using Photoshop CS2 on a mac, but i will translate the shortcuts for windows users who are more likely to read this.

Setting up a working area

 * I start off with a file from the game, mainly to ensure the border or frame matches. You can find the icons in the c:\Program Files\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\UI\Default\images\icons and c:\Program Files\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\UI\Default\images\icons_x1. The file names make it pretty clear which icons are for what. After i find one i want to use as a starting point i open it in photoshop.


 * The alpha channel is hard to work with as it is, so i want to change it to photoshops version. I go to the "Layers" Menu and select "New..." -> "Layer from Background" and hit ok.


 * I then open up the "Channels Palette" usually found in the same set of tabs as the layers palette or from the "window" menu. I then Ctrl-Click the alpha channel to make it a selection, by doing this the whiter something is the more selected it is. Then i go to the selection menu and choose select inverse. Then ensure you are back on the combined RGB channels, go to the layers palette and make sure the layer is selected and hit delete. Now the image is transparent just like the alpha channel is.


 * 40x40 pixels is too small an image to really do illustration in, so i upsample the image to 400x400 pixels in size.

The finished Working Area File, the white and gray grid indicates transparent portions of the image.