Question about BAM Files

[Guest Communist-Mage]

Hello everyone,

I am a complete novice trying to create a small mod involving a few custom spells. Currently I am using NearInfinity and attempting to edit some existing spell visuals to use for these spells.

My idea was to take the effects for False Dawn, and turn them black. I have located the two BAM files that are used in this spell animation, and also found the Post-Processing where I can add a filter to change the color of the animation. The issue I am running into, though, is that it seems like BAM files use a black background, which is completely transparent when the animation is used in game. So when I change the entire animation black, the effect is completely invisible in game. Is it possible to somehow flag these two BAM files to use a different color, such as white, to turn transparent in game? Or is this a simple limitation of the tools available and I will have to use a different color? 

Will really appreciate any assistance you can provide. Thank you all in advance!

[Graion Dilach]

While the EEs can use a different color for transparency, it is better to keep it on black. You can still recolor the anim to a really dark grey, like #040404.

[lynx]

It's definitely possible. I don't know about BAMv2, but in v1 the color of the first pixel in the palette defined the tranparency (usually pure green).

[CamDawg]

Yep. Traditionally the lime green (0.255.0), but one of the old BAM editors popularized teal as the background transparency color (0.127.127) so you'll see some of those as well.

Edited August 1, 2022 by CamDawg

[kjeron]

You're talking about two different things.

When the transparency index (usually green) is transparent, it is so automatically.

Black is made transparent explicitly by flags in the opcode/VVC/PRO/etc... that is calling the BAM file, though some of those were (and some may still be) hardcoded to always be on.  False Dawn has such flags set (both in the VVC and the PRO). It doesn't really matter which index it occupies.

The EE's allow every index to have their own alpha value, at least for some uses, so you can have a dark/black animation and still have transparency.  The darkness spell is a good example (SPWI228.SPL, BDDARK15.pro, BDDARKA.BAM). However,  AFAIK NI's BAM converter doesn't have an option to adjust the alpha value, aside from manually altering each color index.

[lynx]

14 hours ago, CamDawg said:

Yep. Traditionally the lime green (0.255.0), but one of the old BAM editors popularized teal as the background transparency color (0.127.127) so you'll see some of those as well.

Let's not turn this thread into another duck one.