How to swap out a character's stance

Here is a video with a tutorial on how to swap out a character's stance (or any sprites) without breaking the file.

Before anyone asks the Symbiote Spiderman I have used in this video and tutorial is someone else's WIP and can not be shared.




What you need:

1. The character file
2. The sprite(s) being added/swapped
3. A gif extractor (a free online one that works is https://ezgif.com/ )
4. An image editor (a great free one is gimp https://www.gimp.org/ )
5. Fighter Factory Classic and Fighter Factory 3 (get them here: http://fighterfactory.virtualltek.com/ )
6. Mugen to test when complete


Tutorial part 1 - Extracting the frames from the animation

1. Go to ezgif.com
2. Click "Split"
3. Choose your file
4. Click "Open"
5. Click "Upload"
6. Click "Download"



Tutorial part 2 - Fixing the sprites to allow the palette

1. Extract the sprites
2. Extract 1 sprite from your character file as PCX (for some reason in the video fighter factory classic would not save the PCX, so I used fighter factory 3)
3. Open the extracted sprite from the character file in gimp
4. Choose the "color picker" tool to choose a color by clicking it
5. Choose the background color of the sprite extracted from the character
6. Choose the "bucket fill" tool
7. Set threshold to "0"
8. Open 1 frame of the new stance in gimp
9. On the frame of the new stance sprite click "Image"
10. "Mode"  > Click "RGB"
11. Click the "select by color" tool
12 Right click the background of the new stance frame
13. "Edit" > "Fill with foreground color"
14. Click "Image" > "Mode"  > Click "Indexed"
15. Maximum number of colors 256
16. Click "Convert"
17. Click "File"
18. Click "Export"
19. Repeat steps 8-18 until all sprites are complete


Tutorial part 3 - Applying the character's color palette to the sprites

1. Open Fighter Factory Classic
2. Open the character file
3. Move to a sprite with the default character palette
4. Click "Palettes"
5. Click "Add"
6. Open your new stance sprites
7. Checkmark "use the same name"
8. Click "Apply the palette on the images"
9. Type a name for a file
10. Click Save


Tutorial part 4 - Adding the sprites to the character file

1. Open the character in fighter factory Classic (already open from before)
2. Go to the sprites file
3. Scroll to the last stance sprite
4. Click "Add"
5. Group "0", Image "???" (sequential last sprite +1)
6. Click "Shared Palette"
7. Choose all the new stance sprites
8. Click "ok"
9. Align the new sprites to match the character's other sprites  ***This is not in the video***
10. Click "Sprites"  ***This is not in the video***
11. Click "Save"  ***This is not in the video***



***This is not in the video***
Tutorial part 5 - Adding the sprites to your Stance anim (Animation number 0)

1. In Fighter Factory go to the Animations file
2. Scroll to Animation number 0
3. Replace the sprites in the anim with your new stance sprites
4. Play the animation to make sure the animation is correct timing
5. Ensure all CLSN are corrected
6. Click "Animations"
7. Click "Save"


There you have it. Not hard work, but a LOT of work.



Extra Resources:

New Stances by Demunlawin: https://mugenmultiverse.forumotion.com/t6918-alternate-mugen-character-standing-poses-with-animation

New Stances by Gartanham: https://mugenmultiverse.forumotion.com/t11843-new-stance-for-mugen-chars-by-gartanham#140806

Great tutorial,this will be interesting and useful to make original chars
Thanks

No problem.

Everyone please use the tutorial, and feel free to ask any questions in the Help section of the forum.

https://mugenmultiverse.forumotion.com/f10-mugen-help



*********************
Example help forum post:
*********************

Subject:
Help adding new stance  to "character name"

Body of the message:
I am trying to add new stance to "character name"
Here is the stance: (copy link of the stance)
Here is the character: (copy link of the character)
I tried using this tutorial: (copy link to tutorial)

Now ask your question(s):
I am stuck on step ???  
or
I did this and now it looks like this (attach screenshot) what happened, and how do I fix?
or
Whatever question you have, but please be as clear as possible, and as detailed as possible

for me my problem is my version of Elektra...no idea version that in @gartanham stance.

This still isn't the help section of the forum but I will quickly answer here.
Please use the help section forum, and the suggested template above in the future.


So you are trying to swap Elektra


Gartanham just replied as well on the other thread:

gartanham wrote:

My version is older than the latest updates, so this should be the error ...

Here is Gartanham's:


I imagine you are using the newest version (the one recently fixed):



Notice the color difference. You can try applying the classic palette to the sprites, but still looks a little off. I think somewhere along the line the colors got changed just a bit on Electra and caused that.

2 simple ways of fixing it:
Always back up your work before trying anything

1. Edit the Sprites
a. Edit each frame to the new color palette to match the sprites
b. Apply the character's color palette before adding them to the SFF

2. Using Palettes
a. Create a palette for the new sprites
b. Apply the palette to the sprites
c. Create a new palette using the actual character colors
d. Apply that palette to the new stance sprites before adding them to the SFF