Campaign Creations

I don't even know what a .act file is...

And when you ask for the palette file, do you mean the .pal file?

The first attachment is a .zip file containing the images I run through RetroGRP, these are unedited renders directly from Blender.
Second attachment is the one I had to move to one picture and reduce down to 256 color bitmap first for SFGRP.

Your raw images are not in the proper SC format, but you knew that and have said that.  Here are your .bmps in their current form.
[imgwh 640x480]http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/4093/take2w.jpg[/imgwh]  And you can see the palette is not anything as it should be for SCraft.

The easiest way (at least how I go about this) is to convert the images to a .gif as seen in the package.  Then with Rad Smaker Tools convert the .gif to .bmps using a Starcraft image with the proper palette.  You will see an image "master color 255" in the package I uploaded.  This is my background .bmp that I use to center .grps and use as the palette for rad smaker tools.

... moving forward.  Once the .gif is converted to the proper .bmps (incidentially one could copy/paste to a starcraft image which would be fine for something as small as 17 frames, but something like 1000 frames animations is totally out of the question.. hence rad smaker tools)

And the .bmps should look like this:  "Green being the best background color (index #1) if you want to avoid "holes")
[imgwh 640x482]http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/6601/take3w.jpg[/imgwh]

Now with these .bmps in the correct palette,  SFGRPConverter will churn out the correct .grp everytime.  I included a package that transforms your raw .bmps into the correct starcraft palette .bmps + compiled a .grp with these images.  The package also includes the .gif prior to rad smaker tools.

K.. gluck w/ your grp compiling.  If you want "better" colors, you are going to have to alter them via a global editor such as a .gif tool which works really well.  Tho letting rad smaker tools pick colors for you isn't bad if you have something close as you do. 

That's why I like paint shop pro - applying and converting raw bmps to sc format is a single button press for me. Even converting something to a transparent palette and color shifting it; all of my hours of fine tuning went into various scripts that automate the entire process with the press of a button.

If you guys ever get PSP I can explain how it's done.

That sounds like a fantastic setup Mesk and very effecient.  There sure are different ways to go about things.  RadSmaker tools just happens to be free and can convert to any palette at a push of a button too.

The bottom line is that Ardis is a very talented modeler and whatever method gets his slick models into SCraft so we can all play them is all that matters.    The step in which you build a .gif out of .bmps btw isn't necessary as smakertools can convert a set of .bmps to another set of .bmps as well.  I'm sure there are plenty of photo editing programs that can do the same job as my .gif program, but the .gif program allows me to mash and blend animations together as well as shift entire .grps.  This has been immensely handy in ripping graphics from other games.  A lot of times the resulting .grps will be very "jerky" in game from direct rips and not have very good transitions from say attacking to idle etc.  With the gif tool I have been able to make smoother .grps and perfectly centered ones too.  This was paramount in my case because I blended a special color disk into my latest mod.  If the color disk (.grp) wasn't dead nuts center, then the selection circle would have really looked like crap not directly smack ontop of the .grp.  Plus the ability to mash and blend animations has produced some fun hardcoded effects.  I'm not much of an artist, but they turned out quite respectable. 

K.. wow sorry for the novel and me going on about my own BS  .  I  just want to see this mod come to fruition as the modding community is really hurting for new material.

One last thing.  It is really important to use a vibrant color for you background.  In my case I have been using green, but a more unique color would be actually better since it is possible that this color could potentially be needed as a unit characteristic.  (Maybe you have a Madonna Unit that has a lime green jacket or headband?  )  The bright color background will prevent your converting software from picking a dark color on the unit as "background".  When I first started doing .grp work, some of my earlier works looked like swiss-cheese.  The Diablo Unit I ripped for Mesk for instance look like it went head to head vs. a machine gun.  Since the switch to the vibrant transparent color, this issue has vanished.

Look forward to seeing more of your models in SCraft.

Yeah, when I did color correction for those infinity graphics from p_q a part of my process was to turn that gray background into something like bright pink or green. This let me isolate the black spots. But you can render straight 0,0,0 black out of a rendering program and typically avoid that problem, it's very different from converting graphics from another name.

I have them pretty well centered in my sprite setup in Blender. All I have to do to make a sprite for it is import the model I'm working on and parent it to the rig (for lack of a better word), center the model then hit animate. Problems I'm having now are... My damn model keeps turning greenish-grey on me and I can't figure out why. Second problem is contrast. When I scale the model down like that, a lot of the details and borders between colors get eaten up when I scale down and when I use the Sharpen tool to bring some of those details back, it turns my models green...

But this looks like something I should worry about later on, otherwise I won't have time to get anything else working. This was why I ended up quitting on my mod the first time, spent too much time trying to figure out how to get my sprites to look better/decent that it took away from the time actually working on the mod itself. Also a few glitchy units that won't be appearing in this mod. Next step is coming up with basic models for the buildings so I can script the ones that need customs scripts so I can start working on them. For now I'm more concerned about making sure everything has a custom sprite to match their scripts.

I was planning to have a working release with just one of the factions up and running before the end of the year, but I spent too much time worrying about the sprites looking just right that I won't make that goal now.

Yes, I'd say these are your 2 issues:
1. Getting colors that are "close enough" to the SC palette with your renders.
2. Converting your raw renders into the SC Unit palette. 

#2 You can either use RadSmakerTools or talk to mesk about PaintshopPro.  But the .bmps you uploaded are clearly not correct.

Don't set any deadlines for yourself, especially when you are relatively new to this; you usually don't make them and it's just something else to worry about. Take your time and take on each problem individually.

Okay, so I'm about to start messing with buildings and addons in the following ways:
-One building having multiple addons at the same time.
-Two different buildings being able to build the same addons.
-Addons that fight (defensive structures basically)
-Addons that produce units

Any advice on what I should do regarding this before I start screwing with buildings? Any hard-coded stuff I should worry about or anything? Right now I can tell that I'm going to have to script custom buildings for each of these addons before I can get them to function.

EDIT: Also, after the buildings are set up, I should have what I need to make a somewhat functional version of the mod I can release with just one faction working for you guys to try out.

Buildings making multiple addons... I doubt that will work due to how requirements for addons are handled, but I haven't tried it.

The other stuff should be fine.

Buildings are typically gay to play around with.

I think I've seen a mod before that had buildings with multiple addons and it only was a problem setting them up if the buildings were trying to move around, but since I don't plan to have buildings use the lift off feature (at least not at the moment), it should be fine.

Well, like I said, I haven't tried it. It will probably involve plenty of firegraft trickery.

Oh dear... I've gone and made a mess of things. Now I've got the buildings with multiple addons up, but now I've got some buildings deciding they won't deactivate when I detach from them and it's not even consistent which buildings do that.

EDIT: Instead of multiple addons, I may just make the two buildings upgrade and script them to have weapons like what the addons would have had and make sub-menus for the upgrades and units. This will depend on whether I can fix the problems I'm having now.

Can a building upgrade + have an attack?  The AI for sure won't be able to run any upgrades from these buildings due to the AI order needed.  Definitely a building can upgrade while it's add-on attacks however as my own mod PEAI actually demonstrates this with the Tesla globe + various upgrades at altar. 

*experiments by giving photon cannon zealot leg enhancement upgrade.

Edit:
hmm a quick test shows that while the leg enhancement was able to research,  the research bar came to a complete halt once the weapon fired.  The research bar did not resume after weapon stopped and had to be canceled.  Not sure if I read what it is you wanted to do correctly, but that apparently doesn't work.

It's an interesting method to enable a sort of "do not allow the building to be damaged during research" scenario map if you set a close proximity "defensive" attack that disabled research. Just a random thought- I think scenario, not strategy