Character Sprite creation question

[Pagerron]

First of all, I love love love RPG Maker XP. I just downloaded the free trial, feeling a bit of inspiration from this idea of a contest using it, and I was really taken aback by the quality and ease of this program. In just the first two days, I have used it for about eight hours or so. Mainly I've just been messing around with different events, and I created a custom title screen, uploaded original music, original sound effects, and just had a ball seeing what it can do.

Here's my problem:

I was trying to create an original character sprite. What I did was I copied a sprite set from the game's system data to Microsoft Paint (so I would have the approximate sizes of the character graphics right) and erased the game's graphics to create my own.

After I did so, I wanted to save. Microsoft Paint informed me that anything that was transparent would be lost in the save.

Well, I didn't want all of that work to go to waste, so I saved.

When I imported it into the game, my little graphic walks around fine, but there is the annoying white box all the way around him (which of course used to be transparent).

How do I create a character sprite set leaving the transparent section transparent?

Thanks for your help. Before writing this thread, I did a search and found little information about this. I appreciate it guys. Have a great night!

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Character Sprite creation question

While you're importing, it'll show you a preview graphic. If you click on the empty space of the graphic, it'll make that color transparent.

[Pagerron]

Re: Character Sprite creation question

Can it really be that easy! I feel dumb. Thanks Draygone. Awesome. I'm going to try it out.

I just did, and I guess that you make whatever color is the background into appearing as if it's transparent. If the background is pure white, and the player has any white pixels, then those will also appear to be transparent.

I guess then, that when you create a new character sprite, you need to make sure that the background color isn't one of the colors assigned to the actual character graphic.

Thank you Draygone!!!

Yay!!


Did I mention that RPG Maker XP is great?

[Wavelength]

Re: Character Sprite creation question

Yup, Draygone gave you the most universal solution, and I'm glad you were able to get it to work! I think you can also have actual "transparent" pixels in certain types of graphics. I don't think that BMP's let you do this, but offhand I do think it will work with PNG's, for example.

But yes, either way you have to be careful not to use your "background color" in any of your actual graphics!