how do I make a decal ?

[Tweedy]

I've been trying to learn decent skinning for a couple of days now, i have done some editing in fireworks but I can't work out how to make an image work as a decal. can anyone help ?

[HurricaneAndrew]

I know that it has to be a .tga file and it has to be a certain size and resolution, but I'm not sure of the rest.

[Mr. AS]

24 (iirc) bit .tga non rle compressed

if 24 bit doesn't work try 32 bit/8 bit but i'd try 24 bit first

[Badnik96]

needs to be 64x64 or a multiple of it

[MassimoV]

If you want to make a square one, I think you might be able to make it a bmp.

[J]

Decals have to be 64x64 in size, and must be a .bmp file OR if you plan to give it transparency via an alpha layer, then you must save it as a .tga file.

If your using Photoshop, you don't need to worry about it being 24 or 32 bit, as it will automatically set it to that for you.

[Mr. AS]

Decals have to be 64x64 in size

they can also be any power of 2 (128x128, 256x256, etc.)

[Tweedy]

thnks guys, I'll just try that now

[Clickbeetle]

If you're only interested in decent skinning, just click the "export paint template" button in the bot lab and skin your bot in some painty program (Gimp and Paint.NET are the most popular free ones on here).  RA2 has a fairly atrocious graphics-resizing method and decals will generally look awful unless you make them cover one whole side of the bot.  It looks much better if you resize in an outside program.  Plus you don't need to worry about getting the decal size and format just right.  I hardly ever use decals; really the only time I think they could be useful is if you're skinning a whole bunch of similar bots or if you're putting weapon slots on (because it's hard to guess where slots should go in an outside program).