Character Creation HOWTO

1. Introduction
2. Getting a Bright Idea
3. Shooting a Character
4. DV Editing
- 4.1. Copying the Video To Your Computer
- 4.2. Cutting the Video
5. Using Contour
- 5.1. Creating Learning Samples
- 5.2. Teaching and Running Contour
6. Using The GIMP
7. Where Do You Go From Here?

1. Introduction

I'd like to meet the guy who invented beer, and see what he's working on now.

1.1. Purpose of this Document

This document describes how to create additional characters for OpenMortal. The process is slow, painful, non-trivial and requires a lot of work, so if you only have one free hour, you might as well quit now. Then again, if you are dedicated and have the resources, you might find that creating a character, and seeing it work in the game is in fact fun and rewarding.

1.2. Intended Audience

This document is indended for people who want to create additional characters for OpenMortal. It only cover the creation if natural characters, e.g. not animated or rendered characters, but real people. You don't need to be skilled in martial arts, expert in programming (although it probably helps if you are both .. just kidding!).

1.3. Revision History

Revision	Date	Author	Description
1.	2003-09-28	UPi	Initial version. Describes the creation process as of version 0.3
2.	2003-10-01	UPi	Finished the gimping part, added overview.
3.	2003-10-03	UPi	Added sample gif.

1.4. Overview of the Process

Get an idea of the character in your head.
Set up the recording equipment, and record every move of the character twice. Result: 5-10 minutes of DV video footage.
Copy the video to a computer. Result: ~2-4 GB uncut video file.
Cut the video file. Result: 60-90 seconds of cut video.
Export the cut video at 1/2 frame rate (12.5 frame per sec for PAL, 15 frame per sec for NTSC) as png. Result: 800-1200 png image files.
Create the learning samples for Contour. Result: learn_original.*.png and learn_foreground.*.png
Run contour. Result: 800-1200 contoured and cropped png image files and neural.log
Import the files into The GIMP. Result: one xcf file with 800-1200 layers.
Remove unnecessary layers, and do the labeling. Result: one xcf file with 280-350 layers.
Fix the images, align and retouch them.
[Final steps are done by the OpenMortal team: converting to a DAT file and coding]

1.5. Resources

2. Getting a Bright Idea

"Owl, I have an idea", said Pooh.
"Nice, fat, clever bear you are", said Owl.

This might seem trivial at first, but before you start recording, editing, processing, retouching, etc. a character, you have to create it in your mind. Think about the character a bit.

What does he look like? OK, obviously he will will look like you or someone you know... but does he think, act, move or behave the same?

What should the character wear? Some good outfit can greatly enhance the character. Are there any other weapons and tools that he uses?

Think about the characters nature and demeanor. Is ha a good guy or a bad guy? Or just plain confused? Can he actually do any martial arts, or is this his first time in a fight?

How is the character different from the other characters already in OpenMortal? Having a different backstory is cool, but is there something in the character that actually makes him unique?

Finally, how does he move? How does he do his kicks, punches, and other regular moves? What are the special moves of the character?

Once you know the answer to all these questions, you can move onto the next phase.

3. Shooting a Character

"He's dead, Jim."

For the people of Texas: it does not involve using a shotgun, and you should not attempt to involve one either.

Shooting is perhaps the most techinally difficult part of the character creation process. It's like always with content: garbage in - garbage out. If you mess up the recording (e.g. by insufficient lighting, bad camera settings or inadequate background) you will not be able to fix it in later stages, and the character will be dead before he makes it to his first fight.

3.1. Setting up

The first time I tried creating OpenMortal was in 2000. Back then, I didn't have a digital camcorder, only a camera. So we tried and tried to create characters from a large number of digital still images. Then we tried some more. You can imagine how difficult it was to do the falls.. Here's an image of a failed attempt of recording the fall.. My soul still screams in terror when I remember those days.

Here you see several mistakes: The background is white, which meand that the shadows (which are of course a dark shade of gray) are hard to distinguish from the black parts of the character (the trunks and the hair). The person helping is not covered with the background color. The lighting is bad: the flash of the digital camera is reflecter right back at the camera, making everything look dark backlit. All in all, this attempt was quite terrible. I spent hours on retouching, re-editing, color balancing, etc. about a 150+ photos. The results were disappointingly low quality despite my best efforts.

Fast forward to 2002: I have come a long way. I got a digital camcorder, proper lighting, some blue cloth for background. After some playing around. I replaced the blue background with a green one. It simply worked better. Here's how I set up the recording "studio":

The proper recording setup. This is how it looks from above.

The most important points are:

There needs to be at least 4 meters of space for the actor.
Mats: Put something soft on the ground. A mat or something similar is best. Some of the moves, especially the "fall" and the "thrown" moves require the actor to hit the ground. Now there are two kinds of people as far as hitting the ground is concerned: "Judo experts" and "others". If you happen to be one of the "others", you'll be considerably less injured from falling if there is a mat under you to fall on.

Don't make the mat too soft, because the actor will sink into it, and it will appear as if he didn't have any feet.
Green stuff: Use simple, green material to cover the floor, the mats and the wall behind the actor. The material needs to be light both in color and weight. You can attach it to the mats and the wall either with sticky tape or with nails. If the material is in multiple strips, it might be good to stitch or saw them together.
Lighting: I used an 1500W video lamp. Regular indoor lights will not do! Even though most modern cameras can "adjust" to lower light conditions, the resulting image will be unclear, or noisy, both of which are flaws which cannot be fixed later. You can use multiple video lamps to eliminate some of the shadows. Mount the video lamps on tripods!
Shadows: Shadows are bad, because they make the contouring harder later. To eliminate some of the shadows, you can use multiple video lamps, or additional indoor lighting (don't expect much from this). Also make sure that the actor doesn't stand right next to the wall, but at least half a meter in front of it. This will lighten the back shadows a bit.
Camera: It should be right in the middle of the scene. If you don't have enough space, use wide-angle lens, available for most consumer MiniDV cameras. Mount the camera on a tripod and make sure that it records the entire scene (some parts of the area surrounding the green background will be used when the actor cannot keep it all inside. This typically happends with falls.

Setting up takes some time. Calculate at least one hour for setting up, and cleaning up after the recording.

3.2. Recording Checklist

First of all, don't forget to warm up and stretch. Some of the moves are difficult and you don't want to strain yourself.

Here is a list of the stuff that needs to be recorded:

start: This is shown at the beginning of the fight. The character prepares for the fight, or does something else funny that introduces him. The move needs to end with the character in his usual standing position! So, if the character starts facing the camera, he must finish sideways (facing his imaginary opponent).
stand: The character is not doing anything special, just standing. This doesn't mean he is motionless: most characters are bobbing a bit, jumping a bit, or some other ambient movement. Make sure the actor remembers his standing position, as he must return to this position after every move! One quite common mistake is to turn towards the camera after a move. Don't do it. You must start every move from this position, and return to this position after; otherwise the move will not integrate into the flow of the game correctly. In fact, if you don't start or finish a move in the standing position, it is best to start it all over.
Sorry if this seems a bit repetitive.
walk: Walk forward two full steps, then back. Repeat. If you are short on space, then start from as far back as you can. Start from your standing position, and return to it after this move.
turn: Turn around. This is more complicated than it sounds: you must turn so you are not with your back to the camera at the end, instead, you should arrive into a standing position that is like the mirror of your regular standing position!
falling: This move is played back when the player is uppercut, or falls for some other reason. Don't hurt yourself doing it, though! You don't need to leap into the air like in the game. Just take a step forward, assume your usual standing position, and let yourself fall back. If there are some mats, you won't get hurt. You can use your arms to break your fall, but it is less convincing that way. Also, close your eyes at the end. This will help make you look more deadish.
lay down: After falling down stay down for a moment. Don't start getting up immediately. We need at least a few frames of the character K.O.'d.
get up: Easy. Just be sure to arrive to your usual standing position after.
hurt: This is not yet integrated into the game, but it will be. It is now shown in the "Final Judgement" screen at the end of a match. The character pretends to be dizzy, or otherwise injured. No specific body part, just display a general air of great discomfort. In the final game version, after a long combo, the character will be "hurt".
won: This is used in two places: when the character is chosen in the character selection screen, or when the character wins a match (no surprise there, right?). Anything from a small victory dance to a cool acknowledgement of the other's defeat is in order. Depends on who you are. This is one of the few moves from which you don't return to the standing position!
block: The character is defending. Cover your face, turn away, look scared, or anything, but don't move away. After blocking the character should return to the same place he was before. This is a game balance issue.
crouching down: Go down to your knees or crouch. Don't use your hands for support or balance. This sequence will also be used for the jumps, and if you balance on your hand in the air it will be hardly convincing!
crouching: The character is crouching or kneeling. Some movement is optional (some characters move in this position, some don't. Up to you). This is the position that you need to return to after the couching punch and crouching kick.
crouching punch: Punch from your crouching or kneeling position. This is also used for the jumpin punch.
crouching kick: Kick from your crouching of kneeling position. This move is also used for the jumpkick. One of the difficult moves, it is easy to lose your balance if you are crouching on one leg. You have have a friend support your back, but be sure that his arm is wrapped in green (same color as the background), and that his hand doesn't get between the camera and the actor.
crouching punched: The character was hit (punched or kicked) in the head while in a crouching position. This is not used if you are in midair, so you can use the ground for support.
crouching kicked: The character was hit (punched or kicked) in the body while in a crouching position. See above.
fun (something): When the character is idle for too long, and gets bored, he might do something funny. You can have one or two 'fun' moves. You may not walk back or forward or make an attack while having 'fun' as it would interfere with the game balance.
threat (something): This is similar to the fun. You must do one fun and one threat move for each character.
high punch: Throw a punch to the head. Do not move forward too much. Be creative, it can be a simple punch, a slap, or anything, as long as you do it with your arm, and aim it at your opponent's head. Compare this with the 'elbow' move.
low punch: Punch to the body (chest of stomach). Do not move forward too much.
high kick: "High" means a kick either to the body or the head. See how high you can get without losing your balance too much.
low kick: A lick to the opponent's legs.
groin kick: Well, you know. Evil, dirty, and yet quite prominent in "America's Funniest Videos". Try to make it look different from your other kicks..
knee kick: The character will automatically do this move instead of the high or low kicks when he is close to the opponent. It doesn't need to be a knee kick as such, just a short-range attack with your leg.
elbow: This is done instead of the high punch when you are close to your opponent. It doesn't need to be an attack with your elbow, just a really short range attack (e.g. a headbutt will also do).
spin: A spinning attack. It can be a spinning kick, a spinning punch, a spinning slap, or, in some demented cases, a spinning headbutt..
leg sweep: Sweep his legs. You can use your legs (make it different from the low kick!), or your hands too.. Or some other means..
grenade: OK, so you don't actually throw a Shrapnel here. This is a codename for any projectile attack. You don't need to actually thrown an object, just pretending to 'cast' a magic fireball spell will also do. Be creative.
uppercut: Good old hard punch to the chin. (evil laughter) Be sure to make a wide arc. You can overdo it.
throw: This one is not implemented in the game yet, but you need to record it anyway, because version 0.4 will see the light of day, it will. Grab your opponent, and throw him over your head and behind your back. You can turn too.
high punched: You were hit in the head. Ouch. Make it look like your head snaps back from the attack. Do not step back too much. Again, you can make it a spectacular hurt move, of just a small thing, depending on how much of a terminator your character is supposed to be.
low punched: You were hit in the body.
groin kicked: You poor sod. Unless you are female. Then you can just laugh.
leg hurt: This is not the same as fall! You were just kicked in the legs, swept, or something like this. It is OK to stumble, lose your balance, flail with your arms, or just bend your legs a bit. Depends on your character.
thrown: Your opponent has picked you up, and you are thrown forward! Fall forward for this move, flailing!
special moves: You make these up for your character. Use your imagination. You can make 1-4 special moves. Any more is too much. Most characters have 2 special moves.

3.3. More on Recording

It is a good idea to record many characters at the same time. It is more fun, you can draw ideas from and encourage each other. On the great recording session of 2002, we recorded 10 OpenMortal characters in one shot!

Tips for the director:

Try to make sure that the actor stays in front of the green area. This is not always possible, though, so don't make this priority 1.
Do every movement twice. During the editing phase you may realize that you missed some error during recording, and it's good to have a backup. Some moves are especially difficult, so it's good to have two versions to choose from.
Be patient with the actor. OK, this is how every book on directing should start...
Always make sure that the actor returns to his normal stance after a move. If he doesn't, it's going to be hard to integrate the move into flow of the game.
Don't let the actor look at you or the camera. The actor should look in the direction of the imaginary opponent.
If the actor has difficulties with a move, ask someone to help him! Use some extra green cloth to "mask" the other guy's presence. This is also how you give "foreign objects" to the actor (e.g. weapons).

Tips for the actor:

Stretch and warm up before the shooting.
Don't lose your nerve. You can do it. It's hard, the video lamp is burning your face off, and the director is asking you to do impossible things, but it will be all over in 7 minutes.
Don't look at the director or the camera. Keep looking sideways, where your "opponent" should be.
Try to imagine what your character would do, how your character would think or react. Keep your moves simple but fun. Be original.
It is a good idea to do your moves slower than in real life. This makes a number of moves easier. Don't worry: the playback speed will be adjusted, it will appear normal.

Tips for the cameraman:

Keep the damn camera steady. The zoom and camera position must not change during recording. If the actor moves out of view, too bad, but never change the camera! The actor should stay the same distance from the camera at all times, so he appears the same height (in pixels) in every frame.
Keep your mouth shut unless you thing the actor has moved out of the picture. In this case, tell the director, not the actor. Poor actor has enough people barking orders at him as it is.

After the recording you will be left with a 5 to 10-minute DV footage per character. The size of this thing is horribly large, in the order of Gigabytes. The next steps ensure that it get smaller, and usable in the game.

3.4. Sample Video

Since recording is THE most important part of the character creation, I decided to include an example video here. It is 3.4MB in size, and I have compressed it horribly, so only download it if you want to learn the recording, because it will be useless for anything else.

4. DV Editing

"Most editors are failed writers--but so are most writers" - T.S. Eliot

OK, so in the previous step you produced the footage. It's large, full of recorded mistakes, and interlaces - quite useless for the game. In this step you deinterlace the footage, and remove the useless parts, leaving a cut version, which should contain only the parts that you need.

4.1. Copying the Video To Your Computer

Linux users: Transfer the footage from the camera to the computer is usually painless. I used a program called dvgrab which works from the command line, and does the job just fine. See the documentation of dvgrab for details (e.g. kernel modules that need to be loaded..)

Windows users: Usually the firewire/video editing card comes with some software drivers and GUI programs that can grab from a DV camera. Consult your hardware documentation.

4.2. Cutting the Video

Most nonlinear video editors (such as MainActor or kino) can be used to splice the footage, and remove the useless parts. In the previous step you recorded every move twice, now is the time to see which one came out best, and remove the other. You may also remove the second part of a move if it is the same as the first part, played backwards. This saves some work later on.
After you're done editing, export the video into image files (e.g. png format) at half framerate. The half framerate for PAL cameras is 12.5 frames per second, for NTSC cameras it is 15. At this point you end up with somewhere around 1000 pictures. Don't forget to deinterlace the images, this should be a feature of any video editor.

5. Using Contour

"I DO NOT HAVE A GUT! I have... contours." - Frasier

OK, I'll start with the frankness. Contour sucks! It is hard to use, the results are crappy and it is slow as hell.

Trouble is, I don't know of a better tool.

Here's what you have to do to make Contour work.

5.1. Creating Learning Samples

The learning samples are, simply put, some pairs of images which are designed to show Contour what is the foreground and what is the background. Based on these learning samples, Contour will try to extrapolate the rest of the images by itself.

Each learning sample consists of two png images: one will be called learn_original.x.png, the other learn_foreground.x.png. In these filenames, x denotes an integer, starting from 0 up. The original files are simply cut from one of the png files which were produced in the previous phase. Only cut the important part of the file, do not include too much useless background, and nothing from the environment. The foreground file has to be the same dimensions as the original file, but it has to be black and white: black marks the background, white marks the foreground.

You need to create at least two such samples, which means at least four files:

learn_original.0.png
learn_foreground.0.png
learn_original.1.png
learn_foreground.1.png

All of these files should be placed in the same directory as the 1000 png files. Here are example learning samples:


learn_original.0.png	learn_foreground.0.png

learn_original.1.png	learn_foreground.1.png

It is vital that the samples are of good quality. If you make the edges too rough, Contour will actually learn to include parts of the background or remove parts of the foreground! So strain your eyes, or adjust the gamma of your display.

Try to choose a typical and an atypical sample. If the learning doesn't work, you might need to choose some other images to learn from. It is usually bad to use more than two learning samples.

5.2. Teaching and Running Contour

So you have this directory with all the png files, the learning samples and everything! Great!

Now you need to fire up Contour. First open the directory which contains your files. Next, choose the "Create Neural Net" item from the menu. A dialog such as this one will appear:

The learning process is extermely slow. It might take several minutes until the result is acceptable.

Next you have to fine-tune some parameters: these parameters are the treshold (from what level is the output considered "foreground"), and some blurring (used for smoothing the contour). Experiment to see what parameters work best with your images. Remember, once you start the "Run Directory", these parameters will be used for every image!

Once the learning is satisfactory, click on stop, and choose "Run Directory" from the menu. Here you need to choose a "source" directory (make it the same as the directory where the learning samples and the png's are), and a destination directory (create an empty directory for that). Click "Start". Once this is started it cannot be stopped!

The neural network will run for every image in the source directory, and produce a cropped output image in the destination directory.

6. Using The GIMP

"The Gimp is a very complicated program for users and developers alike" - First sentence of the GIMP documentation.

The GIMP is the "GNU Image Manipulation Program", a free, extendable and scriptable image editor (think "PhotoShop").

The objective of this phase is to further decrease the number of images, and to "fix" those images that were messed up by Contour.

In order to complete all the steps that are required here, you will need a copy of The GIMP, and also the Perl extensions to the GIMP, also known as Gimp-Perl. The GIMP itself is available for Windows and Linux (as well as many other UNIX-like operating systems), however the Gimp-Perl is only available for Linux. This will be a problem for Windows users in step 6.1.

The GIMP can be downloaded from http://gimp.org/download.html for Linux, or http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/#download for Windows. The GIMP and Gimp-Perl are now part of most recent Linux distributions, so you can probably install it from your CD's or get the package from your distribution's local mirror. For tutorials about The GIMP, see this page.

Before you continue:

Your computer will need a lot of RAM to process all the 1000 images. 512MB is the bare minimum.
In the GIMP, set the Tile Cache Size to as large as you can. E.g. if you have 512MB of RAM, set it to 450MB.

6.1. Using The GIMP

Although introductions and tutorials for The GIMP are abundant, and some of them are quite well-written, I will nonetheless venture to write a short guide here. I will specialize on GIMP functions that are the most useful for creators of OpenMortal characters.

Loading and saving. The GIMP's native file format is called xcf. While you work, you will need to save your image as an xcf file. Saving in other formats will cause the loss of information (e.g. layers). Under linux, you can save the file compressed by specifying an .xcf.bz2 or an .xcf.gz extension. Compression can take a while on slower computers, but can save some disk space. (Actually I am told that you can save as .xcf.gz on Windows if you have a program called Minigzip installed) Although recent version of The GIMP are quite stable, you are encourage do save your work often.

Keyboard accelerators. Most operations in the gimp are invoked by pressing the right mouse button inside the image window and thus invoking the image menu. However,you can assign a keystroke to any menu item, by hovering the mouse over a menu item, and pressing the keys. Keystrokes can be single keys (e.g. A, or F1), or a combination (Ctrl+Shift+A). It saves a lot of time to customize keystrokes to suit your needs. The combinations that I use most often are:
[IMG: Layers in the GIMP]

Ctrl+S: Save current image. (File menu of an image)
Ctrl+Z: Undo (use it if you made a mistake. By default you can undo the last 5 steps, but you can change this in the Preferences menu)
Ctrl+Shift+A: Clear selection. (Selection menu of an image)
R: Rectangular selection
F: Freehand selection
A: Alpha to selection (I customized this one, you find it in the Layers menu of an image)
Shift+E: Eraser (Tools / Paint Tools menu)
M: Move (Tools / Transform menu)
Ctrl+X: Delete current layer (works both on the Layers window and the image window)
Shift+C: Crop (Tools/Transform menu)

Working with layers. Layers provide much of The GIMP's power and flexibility. They can be combined in many ways to create a composite image. The Layers window can be opened by pressing Ctrl+L in the image window. One thing that is not so intuitive about working with layers is that the visible layer is not always the active layer.

The active layer is highlighted in the layers list. Every drawing action (e.g. erasing, filling, brushes, etc) is carried out on the active layer. If you don't see the result of something you do, that might be because the active layer is currently not visible. (There could be other reasons, but this one is the most common.) You can choose the active layer by clicking on the name of any layer in the layer list.
There can be many layers visible at the same time. Layers which are visible have a small eye icon to the left of them.
Clicking on the eye (or the place of the eye) will toggle the visibility of the layer.
Shift+clicking at the eye will make that layer the only layer visible.
Shift+clicking at the eye again will make every layer visible (messy!).

6.2. Importing the png Images Into The GIMP

So, you made it this far. You have the GIMP, you have Gimp-Perl (or maybe you don't - Windows users read below), and you have ran Contour for all your 1000 png files. Excellent!

Contour has created, along with the output png files, a data file called contour.log. I have written a small Gimp-Perl script which will read this log, read the image files, and put them in one huge GIMP image. This script can be downloaded from here. The script must be copied into your gimp plugin directory (this is set when you install the gimp).

Install the script (you will need to restart The GIMP if it was already running), and start it from "Xtns/Perl-Fu/Mortal load". Enter the path to the directory where the contoured images and contour.log reside. After a lot of waiting, a new window will appear. It will be empty. Don't panic! If you open the Layers dialog, you will see that it holds all your precious images, each in it's own layer, but none of them are visible by default.

6.3. Removing Unnecessary Layers and Labeling Moves

First thing to do once you have importad the image is to save it. This will take a while, given the size and number of layers.

Once this is done, you can start the first and most important job: removing unnecessary layers and labeling them correctly. This is important for many reasons: it will save disk space, memory and download time for gamers, it will save you time (you won't have to fix and retouch so many layers), and it will make integrating the character into the game easier.

You need to remove layers which are not part of the any move (in theory you could've done this while editing the video, but nevertheless there will be a few dozen or maybe even hundred off frames).
Even frames which are part of a move are not always necessary: if two adjacent layers look similar remove one with extreme prejudice. You can even remove two out of three frames on especially slow or unimportant parts, it is up to you.
Also, of there are some moves where the second part is the same or similar as the first, played backwards. Usually kicks, punches, blocking etc. are like this. In this case you can remove the entire second part of the move, saving a large amount of space!
You can rename a layer by double-clicking the name. Do this to mark the first layer of every move as such (see below for more about this).

Once you are done removing these unwanted frames, you should be down from the initial 1000-1300 frames to around 300-350.

Here is a table which shows the number of layers each current OpenMortal character uses. When creating new characters, try to make the number of layers similar to these values. In particular, kneeling (referred to as "crouching" earlier in this document) should always be 4 layers, because it is used by the jumping algorithm. If a move of your characters is particularly simple, make it fewer layers, if it is long and overdone, you can use more.

	Zoli	UPi	Cumi	Sirpi	Ulmar	Maci	Bence	Descant	Grizli
start	21	18	18	20	30	23	23	13	14
stand	4	5	4	7	6	5	4	4	6
walk	13	14	14	13	12	14	12	10	15
turn	9	8	8	9	8	9	8	9	9
falling	11	17	12	14	14	12	18	16	15
laying	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
getup	14	16	19	16	20	18	12	15	16
hurt	16	12	9	13	13	13	8	7	9
swept	6	6	6	13	9	8	8	10	16
won	11	19	26	10	14	17	8	20	20
block	5	5	4	5	6	5	5	5	6
kneeling	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
onknees	1	4	1	4	4	4	4	4	5
kneelingpunch	7	5	4	5	6	5	5	5	5
kneelingkick	4	5	5	6	5	6	-	5	5
fun	7	5	7	8	7	9	5	13	9
threat	9	6	6	9	5	8	6	7	12
highpunch	5	4	4	5	11	5	6	5	9
lowpunch	6	6	5	6	10	6	5	6	6
highkick	8	6	6	7	6	7	7	7	6
lowkick	6	5	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
groinkick	6	6	6	7	7	10	6	6	7
kneekick	6	7	6	7	7	7	6	6	8
elbow	5	7	5	6	7	6	7	5	12
spin	11	10	-	14	11	11	10	-	17
grenade	15	18	7	9	10	10	11	10	10
uppercut	9	8	8	8	9	8	7	7	17
throw	16	15	24	22	34	15	22	23	19
highpunched	9	6	5	5	6	8	5	5	11
lowpunched	4	5	5	5	7	6	6	6	6
groinkicked	13	19	17	9	8	14	8	9	8
kneelingpunched	4	4	4	4	5	8	4	5	5
kneelingkicked	3	7	5	6	6	6	5	5	4
thrown	4	13	7	14	10	12	8	8	14
specpunch	13	-	27	13	-	-	14	19	6
funb	-	3	-	12	-	-	-	11	-
sweep	-	7	14	9	10	8	7	11	15
cranekick	-	9	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
burninghands	-	13	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
kneelingfire	-	12	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
spit	-	-	5	-	-	-	-	-	-
junk	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-
junkb	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-
specsomething	-	-	-	-	9	-	-	-	-
scissorkick	-	-	-	-	-	15	-	-	-
pierce	-	-	-	-	-	-	8	-	-
knife	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	17	-
hipshot	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	9	-
nunchaku	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	15
stomp	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	11
Total	286	340	314	331	345	329	289	334	379

While you are removing the unwanted layers, label the layers. This means that for the first layer of every move, rename it to match the name of the move. You can see on the screenshot at the beginning of this chapter, how this was done for STAND and WALK in Grizli's case. Please use the names in this table (make up names for unique special moves).

6.4. Fixing Bad Contours

Every now and then, Contour will mess up. It might be that the picture is too dark or blurred in certain places, or something else that messes up the detection, but it will happen, and will happen a lot. To fix the mistakes of contour, you can use these tools:

Use the Eraser (Shift+E) tool to remove pieces of the background that were not removed by Contour. The eraser's shape and size is always that of the current brush, and the default brush in GIMP is huge. Choose a smaller round brush, and you can do erasing pretty well. Zooming in (using the '=' key, zoom out with the '-' key) also helps. If you make a mistake, you can undo it with Ctrl+Z, or with the anti-eraser (see below).
Use the Anti-eraser add parts to the foreground that were removed by Contour. You can do this by selecting the Eraser tool, and pressing the Ctrl key while you click and drag the mouse. The comments about brushes and zooming above apply to the anti-eraser as well.
Sometimes the detection can't determine the position of the characters within the background. These will be degenerate frames where the entire image is included. This happens a lot when the actor isn't entirely behind the green material. If this happens, the following steps must be taken:

Using the freehand selection tool (F key), select the character roughly.
Activate the crop tool (Shift+C), and choose "Current layer only". Click within the selection, then from the new window click on "From selection" and then "Crop".
Finish cleaning up the frame with the eraser (and anti-eraser)

Fixing and cleaning up 300-or-so frames is time consuming, but the result will be much nicer. Even if you don't use the eraser to fix the frames, you must fix the degenerate frames.

6.5. Aligning The Images

This simply means that the layers should be shifted in a way that the character will start every move from the same origo. Every move should be aligned to the start move (or the onknees move in case of the kneeling punch and kneeling kick).

To move a group of layers together, you need to click just right of the "eye" icon on every layer. Another icon (four arrows) will appear, and this means that the layer is now grouped. If you move any layer with the move tool (M key), the grouped layers will move with it. So, if you group every layer of a move, you can move and align them together (layers within the move will be properly aligned by Contour).

Here the Kick is not aligned with the Stand.

The best way to align the images is to

Make the first frame of the STAND move visible.
Then you view the rest of the moves one by one, and make sure that each starts at the correct position. They do not need to end at the same position of course (e.g. walking forward will naturally end much further to the right).
If the move is not aligned with the STAND (best way to measure is checking the position of the feet and the head), they need to be grouped together, moved to the correct location, and ungrouped.

For example, in this image, the "HIGH KICK" is not aligned with the standing position (shown in the background.) The images which belong to the high kick are already grouped together (observe the arrows icon next to the eye icons), and ready to be moved to the left, and a bit down.

The following moves do not need to start at the START position:

onknees: needs to start at the end of the kneeling move.
kneelingpunch and kneelingkick: needs to start at the beginning of onknees move.
laying: needs to be aligned with the end of the falling move.
getup: needs to be aligned with the laying move.
start: the end of the start move needs to be aligned with the beginning of the stand move. (Naturally!)

6.6. Adding Special Effects

The GIMP offers a huge array of filters and other transformations that you can apply to the poor character. Here are some ideas:

Draw wings or horns on him.
Color him to a red-yellow gradient.
Bump map him with a sponge-like patter to make it look like he's an alien with pores.
Apply the unsharp mask to enhance the contrast and make him look stronger.
Oilify the character to make him look like a painting.

The list goes on... Before you add any special effects, make sure to make a copy of the original! It is not nevessary to add special effects to a character to make him interesting. Since OpenMortal features real people, the idea is to make each character unique and original by making their demeanor different from the rest.

Also be aware of the "Filter all layers" menu at the top of the Filters menu... You can check the animation with the Filter/Animation/Playback menu item.

6.7. Saving the Result

Once you are done with all this stuff, save the xcf file. The rest of the steps should not be saved into the xcf file as they are not reversable and result in some loss of the original content. If you need to change the character later, you will need the xcf file intact, and replay the following steps:

In the Preferences dialog, set the Scaling method (available in the Environment group) to Cubic.
Scale the entire image (via the Image/Scale Image menu item) so that the standing character is 300 pixels tall. If you kept the camera steady during the recording, the character will appear 300 pixels tall for every frame.
Change the image's mode to indexed (via the Image/Mode/Indexedmenu item). Set the number of color to 63. the algorithm to "Floyd-Steinberg (normal) and disable the dithering of transparency.
Save the image as a gif file with the File/Save as menu. Do not overwrite the xcf file!!! The gif exporter will ask if you want to merge the visible layers or save your character as an animation (naturally), and whether frame disposal should be cumilative or 1 frame/layer.

You are DONE!! The result is a gif file which is about 3MB in size. You can watch it by opening it in a web browser.

Here is an example of what the result should look like.

7. Where Do You Go From Here?

You've Come A Long Way, Baby - Fatboy Slim

So you have successfully created a character's animation! And you only had to work on it for hours! So what now?

Answer is, the rest of the process is even more complicated and less intuitive than it has been so far. It involves using the MortalEditor to mark the head, torso and legs of each frame (a semi-automated process), check the hits, and create some code which makes the character work inside the game. If you want to do it yourself - fine, there are enough examples (the rest of the characters) to learn how to do it. But you shouldn't have to.

For now, your work is finished. You need to send me the gif file, along with a description of the character (name, age, etc., and what his special moves are supposed to work like). I will add the character to the game, and return it to you, ready to be played. To send me the character, please go to the Character Upload Page.

If you have questions or comments regarding this documentation or the character creation procedure, please feel invited to ask for help at the OpenMortal Help Forum.