Side View D&D Minis Tokens Tutorial

[Xorn]

Okay, this is just a quick rundown of how to turn the D&D minis in their gallery, (or anything else you have a shot of) into a pretty handy transparent mini. We're going to turn Lord Soth (from the Giants of Legend set) into a mini that I can use with FG2. Now I set my minis to 100 pixel scale, but you can set them to whatever you like. Going below 50 for a medium size creature you can't really tell what it is anymore, as a warning. (I used 50 pixel/square maps, but all my tokens are 100 pixel/square scale. I just lock token scale and I'm good to go.)

Setup (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/setup.jpg)
Get whatever graphics program you use opened up, and I like to set it up side-by-side with the miniatures gallery. Once you get going, you can complete a mini/token in about 30 seconds or less, so having them side by side becomes pretty handy. I'm using PSP, but the free GiMP can do everything this program can. I highly recommend making a custom toolbar to cover all of our steps, it speeds things up greatly.

Step 1: Copy Image (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step1.jpg)
First copy the mini you're going to do. As I'm starting on Giants of Legend today, we'll use Lord Soth. He's medium size, so I'm going to be making a 100 pixel tall token out of him. (More on that in the Resize step).

Step 2: Paste As New Image (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step2.jpg)
Next I paste the image into PSP.

Step 3: Promote Background Layer (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step3.jpg)
I click Promote Background Layer (so that there's no background--if I delete anything now it leaves transparent pixels behind it).

Step 4: Delete Background White (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step4.jpg)
Using the Magic Wand (with 5 tolerance) I click on the background and delete it till I get everything. Sometimes really light weapons will get snagged, and I use the Freehand tool to trim around them before pushing delete. This happens on maybe one mini from a whole set. I made a before and after for this step.

Step 5: Select All (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step5.jpg)
Now that I've trimmed out all the background, select all of the image in preparation for the next step.

Step 6: Select Similar (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step6.jpg)
Now I select similar pixels, set to remove any pixel from the selection that was transparent. The resulting selection is shown. (All I have to do is click OK, it remembers the settings.)

Step 7: Copy (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step7.jpg)
Click copy, to copy what I have selected.

Step 8: Paste As New Image (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step8.jpg)
Now I paste my clipboard as a new image again; this has removed any excess space from the mini, so it will fill the square nicely.

Step 9: Resize (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step9.jpg)
Next I resize the image, and this is the most involved step. If 100 pixels is Medium, then 75 is Small and 200 is large. Determine if the creature is "tall" or "wide" and set the height or width to 100 (for medium), respectively. Lord Soth is humanoid, so obviously I set his height to 100 (keeping aspect ratio on). Had this been say... the Basilisk later in the set, that looks like it should be wider than tall, so I'd set the width to 100 instead. The important thing--when I set the height of Lord Soth to 100, if his width is more than 100, then I turn off aspect ratio and squish it to 100. You need your token to fit in the square well. This mostly occurs with large creatures, but occasionally dragons and such (with their wings out) will look... odd. Usually anything like that I just skew to 200x200 and move on. You'll find what works for you.

Step 10: Save (https://www.eugee.net/tutorial/step10.jpg)
Last step, save the token as a PNG (which doesn't need a transparent color set) in the host folder, and you now have a token ready to go. I have a campaign called DDM that I save all my new tokens in, then as I actually use them for an adventure I copy them into that campaigns token folder.

I've had several people asking for a copy of my minis--I'm not comfortable sending these tokens to anyone, as I created them from copyrighted images, but now you can make them yourself!

[Foen]

Thanks Xorn, good tips and I'm already using a similar technique (since you mentioned it the other day).

Cheers

Stuart

[Xorn]

No problem. I've put in 6 sets now (the first 5 plus Dun of Dread), and I'm starting to put in Deathknell now. :)

I've got two monitors, so I have a DVD playing on one screen, and I'm furiously making tokens on the other. :) Once you get the rhythm down it's really fast.

Copy, click the paste, click the layer promote, click and delete the white, click select all, click select similar, click okay, click copy, click paste, click resize, enter a value, click okay, click save, type the name and hit enter. Close those images and grab the next. I'd say I'm resizing within 10 seconds of the first copy. :)

So as long as my movie isn't too interesting, I can put a set in before an hour passes. :)

[Griogre]

A great walk through, by Xorn. I'm using Paint .NET and do about the same things in a little different order. It's a free app also and I like it *much* better than GIMP. I actually use two programs IrfanView and Paint .NET. I could do it just in Paint but I like IrfanView better for cropping because you can move the selection lines around and easily see the size/dimensions of the area selected. My steps if you want to use Paint .NET & IrfanView.

1) Open Webpage, Open IrfanView, Open Paint .NET.
2) Copy graphic, paste IrfanView.
3) Check to see if image needs cropping, if so tweak area until happy. Copy Crop.
4) Paste into New Image Paint .NET.
5) Color select white background, and delete it - which makes the former backgound area transparent.
6) Resize.
7) Save.

Xorn is dead on about the time, it took me far longer to type this than to do a figure. It's very fast.

[Xorn]

Don't watch Dave Chappelle, Season 1, if you want to get any work done, by the way. :D

[Bran]

Hey, thanks for this awesome tutorial. I was trying out this method to see if I could do it (havent bought FG yet but am really thinking about it). I did one mini, and I think it turned out really well. I do still have a tiny bit of white around the edge of parts of the mini. I dont really know much about photo shop type software (im using paint .net). Is there a way I can tweak the magic wand tool to get those last little bits of white?

Thanks!

[Griogre]

In Paint.NET when you select the Magic Wand there is a tolerance setting which defaults to 50%. The lower the tolerance the closer the color has to match where you clicked the wand. You can drag the bar down to like 10-15% when deleting the background because it is pretty uniform. Maybe you have the tolerance set too high?

[Xorn]

In Paint.NET when you select the Magic Wand there is a tolerance setting which defaults to 50%. The lower the tolerance the closer the color has to match where you clicked the wand. You can drag the bar down to like 10-15% when deleting the background because it is pretty uniform. Maybe you have the tolerance set too high?

Yeah I have my tolerance set to 5%, actually.

[Bran]

Thanks! That did the trick!

I appreciate the help!

[Tenian]

How did you handle creatures that should be larger than the base 100x100 in the earlier sets?

For example Harbinger has an umber hulk in it. Umber hulks should be Large (i.e. 200 x 200 if medium is 100 x 100), but the image is only 100 x 132 on wizard's page.

When I resize it to be the correct scale, it ends up looking poor. Is there a trick to make this look decent when upscaled?

[Xorn]

Bear in mind that my map scale is 50 px/sq, and it's rare that I'm even zoomed in closer than that. The earlier sets were much lower resolution pictures, so there was a little blur when I sized them, but I'm zoomed in close enough to take advantage of the 100 pixel base scale that I don't mind.

I could have done them all at 50 pixel scale and they would have matched the maps then, but that means 38 pixel small tokens, and they just start to turn into blobs then.

[Tenian]

Yeah I've noticed the early sets are sort of disappointing resolution wise. I was just hoping there was some magic upscaling trick that would sharpen the images.

[Griogre]

Unfortuanetly not. Better art programs will "upsize" better than poorer ones (they usually have better algorithms) but it's usually never a good thing to have to resize larger. You might try going to a denser DPI like 150+ which may give the interpolation algorithm(s) more to work with. This may or may not help.

Partly for this reason I am trying 50 pixel squares for medium monsters. However, like Xorn says this can make smaller creatures a blur. My solution has been to use medium size for smalls also - they still take up a square and most are short anyway - I just leave them short. If they are not short I add a little space above the figure to make them short.

The real issue here is the pics on the WotC site are not at a common scale. They were taken to show off the minis so they tried to fill the frame of the picture when they took the shot so basically the large, medium and small creatures are pretty close in size.

[Mojobacca]

I don't have Photoshop, but I download GiMP to try this. When you "Promote Layer", how do you do that in GiMP? I don't see any selection like that there and I'm not sure exactly WHAT the "Promote Layer" option does either. Man, I feel about useless when it comes to image editing...

[Xorn]

I know very little of GiMP except that I've been told it can do basically anything PSP or PS can do. Hopefully someone can answer that one for ya. You might ask on the Dundjinni forums, there's a person there that is a GiMP master. (cisticola)

[Foen]

Hmm, I struggled with GiMP (or The GiMP) for a couple of years before giving in and buying Paint Shop Pro ... sorry, but I can't help you (I couldn't help myself either).

Foen

[Mojobacca]

Ah well. I'll keep my struggle going for a bit and probably cave in before the wall wins.

[Griogre]

Yeah, I didn't like GIMP either, so I switched to Paint.NET another free program. I think it has a *much* better interface. It is not as powerful either, but it was not like I was going to fully utilize GIMP's power anyway. :p

[Mojobacca]

Awesome! A friend of mine offered to let me use his PSP 9 and I got it to work! It is fast and easy, but I do have one question about a step I didn't quite understand.

"Step 6: Select Similar
Now I select similar pixels, set to remove any pixel from the selection that was transparent. The resulting selection is shown. (All I have to do is click OK, it remembers the settings.)"

I don't think I'm fully grasping what you mean here. Is this using the wand again or is there a command I'm not seeing that you're supposed to use? My tokens all have that white border around it from where the Magic Wand didn't get all of them and I understand why that works like that. I'm sorry to keep sounding slow, but if you could explain that one step to me, it would make my nice looking tokens look even more incredible!

[Foen]

The 'select similar' command is the magic wand - you can adjust how it works by changing the tolerance so that it leaves less white behind, but it may accidentally select pieces of the picture if you set the tolerance too high.

Foen

Edit: Ignore the stoopid comment above. Obviously this dorf needs to keep his mouth shut when he doesn't know what he's talking about.

[Xorn]

Actually no, Select Similar is in the Selection menu of PSP, and I have it set to contract a selection (remember I just did Select All) down to any pixel with a value (anything non-transparent). Then I copy & paste the selection to a new image. This makes the resulting image have no empty space around the edges.