Star Trek Online - New Duty Officer Signature

Star Trek Online (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/index.php)

- Ten Forward (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/forumdisplay.php?f=129)

- - New Duty Officer Signature (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=380341)

New Duty Officer Signature

You guys may remember this topic:

Download Duty Officer Signature by anazonda, where he and I worked on creating the duty officer signature that seem very prevalent around the forums now. Ive seen many different versions, and I love them all.

But ever since Season 6, I had been wanting to update it to bring it in line with the newer Duty Officer UI. Ive finally finished that now.

The template contains:

- Every rank from on the Federation side from Ensign to Fleet Admiral, including two special ranks: Deputy Director & Fleet Captain
- Every rank on the Klingon Side from Bekk to Dahar Master.
- All 24 Duty Officer Trait Icons
- Every Veteran Accolade icon up to 1000 days.
- Miscellaneous currency icons (Refined Dilithium, Dilithium Ore, EDCs, EC, Expertise, etc.)
- Some random medal icons
- Every Doff rarity overlay from Season 5 (Common Fed and Klink, Uncommon to Very Rare, and a Unique Gold overlay done in the Season 5 style)
- Every Doff rarity overlay from Season 6 (Common Fed and Klink, Uncommon to Very rare, incl. Unique and Ultra Violet)
- Federation Civilian, Tactical, Engineering, and Science backgrounds
- Klingon Civilian, Tactical, Engineering, and Science backgrounds
- Colour matched (to rarity border) name fields (incl. a proper gradient for the Fleet rarity, thanks to brackyews)
- All 12 commendation catagories (Including Marauding for the Klingons and Diplomacy for the Feds)
- Federation and Klingon Faction icons
- Federation and Klingon Profession icons
- 3 Special fields, where you can find the above mentioned veteran, medal or currency icons (or you can add you own if you like)
- a quote field

You can download it here: Download

Max size (500x 150): In progress, will update when finished.

Font used in text layers is Century Gothic. Special text field 1, 2, 3 and the quote field have a colour overlay effect that, when enabled will change the font colour to the proper colour for a Klingon DOff.

This was done in Photoshop CS5 I can not guarentee that it will work in Elements or earlier versions. I do not know if it is compatible with GIMP or other similar programs.

As well here is anazonda's tutorial from the original topic on how to cut your character out:

Quote:

How to make a proper character avatar:

-Set your display settings to as high as possible.
-Take your character to ESD. (under the Bar on Qo'nos works for KDF)
-The big "white wall" outside Admiral quinns office. Move your back to it, and zoom in -relatively close (so you have a frame sufficiently above your characters chest).
-Press Prt Scr on your keyboard. The screenshot will now be saved in the Screenshots folder in the STO game folder. (Live).
-Open Photohsop, and then the picture.
-Doubble-click the layer in the layer box, and just press enter in the dialouge that appears. (To allow for transparency).
-Find the Channels-tab. It's usually in the same box as "Layers"
-Find the channel that has the highest contrast between light and dark colors, by clicking through the red, green and Blue channels. Usually it's the blue or green.
-Duplicate that channel, and click it, so it is selected.
-On your keyboard, hold Ctrl, and L. A box will now appear.
-There are 3 "indicators" and a level curve. Move the most left, and right closer together untill theres a really hard contrast between light and dark colors. It's gonna look odd... Ignore that.
-Once you feel you have the proper contrast (you may have to play around a little), press "OK".
-Select the magic wand tool (W). Set Tolerance 5 (depending on the contrast). Click on the area closest to your char that is white/bright. This should select a very large area.
-Now with the angular Marquee tool (M) set to "Add to Selection" (located as 4 icons just below the "Edit" menu option. Hoover your mouse over the 2'nd icon...) select all remaining areas that havn't been selected, and pretty much everything below the shoulders of your char.
-Select the Lasso Tool (L), and set it to "Substract from selection" (Located to the right of the "Add to selection").
-Zoom in close on the hair and carefully remove any selection inside the hair. (this takes time, patience and lots of Ctrl+Z).
-In the channels overview, re-select RGB, and click back to the normal layer overview.
-Once again zoom on on your char and move around the contours to see if you've missed any holes. If you find any, remove them.
-On your keyboard, Click DEL.
-You should now have a nicely cut out of your char, ready to use in my template.

If you want to see what it can look like, see my sig.

Thanks again for all this. I finally jumped in the old thread, and your prior Dropbox links are all offline now. That thread comes up higher in google searches, so linking it to this thread would help drive people to the newest version.

Also I suggest throwing a colour gradient on the Fleet Name layer to correspond with the Ultraviolet quality effect. Here are my initial settings to the layer effects, just experimenting quickly from memory:
- Change text layer to Smooth antialiasing (to enhance the legibility when adding the following effects)
- Add effect Gradient Overlay, all default settings
- Use Gradient Editor to set the Violet-Orange preset
- Change orange colour stop in the lower right to a nice sky blue, and change its Location to 60%
- Add effect Stroke, use Size 1, position Center, Opacity 24%, colour White.
Tweak to taste.

Cheers eh. :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by brackynews (Post 5640961)

The only reason I havent posted in that topic, is I didnt want to necro the topic, its been a long time since there was a post in it.

I'll look in to adding the ultra-violet gradient. The only reason I'm using the font smoothing I am (I think Im on Strong... not looking at it at the moment) is because it seems like thats whats closest to in game. (Ive added it in. Looks pretty good, thanks for the tip..)

I also have gotten the 900 and 1000 day accolade icons, and I am working on getting those in now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by amayakitsune (Post 5641831)

The only reason I havent posted in that topic, is I didnt want to necro the topic, its been a long time since there was a post in it.

Thanks for that, and thanks for your hard work and for sharing it with the community.

Those of you who are 900 or 1000 day subscribers can now use those icons, as Ive added them in to the Special 1 icon group. The download link in the first post will download an updated version now.

EDIT: Also... I'm working on a version of the sig that takes up the entire 500x150 limit for signature images. Requires a lot of scaling stuff up, so it may take some time.

Yes I think the font smoothing change is only a factor with the specific effects I used, like a centered stroke outline. Otherwise some letters were getting muddy.
Resizing the graphic to 500x125 seems to have worked out fine as well, but I didn't do a resharpen pass. I'll grab your new file when it's ready, thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by amayakitsune (Post 5641831)

The only reason I havent posted in that topic, is I didnt want to necro the topic, its been a long time since there was a post in it.

Oh right it's September now, not August. ;) Wishful thinking on my part.
Hopefully by the 25th century they have invented technology to automatically lock threads at 31 days. :cool:

Quote:

Originally Posted by brackynews (Post 5642631)

Yes I think the font smoothing change is only a factor with the specific effects I used, like a centered stroke outline. Otherwise some letters were getting muddy.
Resizing the graphic to 500x125 seems to have worked out fine as well.

Oh right it's September now, not August. ;) Wishful thinking on my part.
Hopefully by the 25th century they have invented technology to automatically lock threads at 31 days. :cool:

Resizing it up works just fine, I just need to go through and see what sizing every thin up look like and see what doesnt need it.

Brackynews, could you look at the fleet rarity name that in the link in my first post, and tell me what you think?

Quote:

Originally Posted by amayakitsune (Post 5642731)

Brackynews, could you look at the fleet rarity name that in the link in my first post, and tell me what you think?

Colouring looks great! Maybe remove the Stroke effect if you prefer not to change the antialiasing? That way it still looks sharp and high contrast. I just wanted a very small highlight edge at the bottom of the letters and Stroke isn't that fine tunable. Like I said I'm just going from memory without a screenshot. :)

Also I shaved off edge pixels from a couple of the trait icons. Shroud and Efficient for sure. And I made the Fleet Credits and Admiral rank a few pixels smaller.

If the signature allowed for image hotlinks I would be very tempted to make my webserver send a different one on each request. Ah well. :D (This is why I experimented with right-aligning my @name.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by brackynews (Post 5642771)

Colouring looks great! Maybe remove the Stroke effect if you prefer not to change the antialiasing? That way it still looks sharp and high contrast. I just wanted a very small highlight edge at the bottom of the letters and Stroke isn't that fine tunable. Like I said I'm just going from memory without a screenshot. :)

Also I shaved off edge pixels from a couple of the trait icons. Shroud and Efficient for sure. And I made the Fleet Credits and Admiral rank a few pixels smaller.

If the signature allowed for image hotlinks I would be very tempted to make my webserver send a different one on each request. (This is why I right-aligned my @name.) Ah well. :D

Made some tweaks to the fleet name again. Used an outer glow, with a mirrored gradient so the bottom is outlined in a sky-ish blue and the top is pretty much left alone. Changed the font smoothing on the Fleet Name to compensate for the muddy lettering at the size.

In regard to different ones, I'm considering just making a gif (if thats even allowed) for my multiple characters.

I try not to double post (I wish edits bumped the topic) but it looks like anazonda had posted a version of his sig here:

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/sh...d.php?t=382561

Its not as up to date as mine, but feel free to use either. Its a bit funny that I got mine up the day before... lol.

As an update: Ive made a bit of progress on the 500x150 version of the sig in this topic. I dont plan on releasing it until I am fully satisfied with the basic design and layout, so that will take some time.