Tutorial: cutting out an rs character

This is an old tutorial, as you can tell by the rs1 graphics! I just reposted it to answer a question I saw on here.

This way I can just post the link when someone has a question.

This is a simple tutorial meant to help people new to sig making with a basic operation. In this case we will be looking at how to knock the background out of a picture of your character.

In order to capture your character, simply hit printscreen on your keyboard. Then go into whatever image program you are using (mspaint, etc.) and hit PASTE.

Once you have your characters picture, follow these directions. IMPORTANT NOTE! This method only works if you captured the picture of your character (or other image) in an area with a single background color. There are other methods for more complex images...most of which involve manually cutting with an eraser.

This is made for Corel Photopaint...but your program will probably have similar options.

The first step is to crop your picture down to a usable size, so that only the part you really need shows. This can be done with the crop tool in most programs, as pictured below. Or, in mspaint I think you have to use a box selection (makes a little dashed box around the character), then hit cut, then paste the new smaller selection into your work area.

Now that you have it down to a small size, you need to go to your "mask menu" and click on the "magic wand" tool

Now just click anywhere in the background with the wand. Please notice that the wand's sensitivity can be adjusted. It works by detecting the HSB ...hue, saturation and brightness. This works on a sliding scale. Basically the scale says how picky you want to be. It is best not to be too exact, because then you tend to get a very pixelated image. But if you are not exact enough you get the selection bleeding into your character. Try experimenting. Around 10 usually works for me, but I don't know if all program have the same scale.

Now you will see that the background is surrounded by dotted lines, indicating a "mask." This allows you to make changes just to that area. However, it is not the background you are wanting to change. So you now go back to your "mask" menu and select "invert"

Now your character is masked. Go to the edit menu, select "cut"

then go to your signature background, or whatever you are pasting into , and select "paste." It is now a new selection. Or in some programs you can paste as a new object or layer. ...you now have a separate layer with just your character.

Good luck!

Well its easier because rs1 is 2D :lol:.

Rs2 chars are ALOT harder IMO.

Nice basic tut though :wink:

um,......yes, the point is the process. I am not going to retake a bunch of pictures just to answer the guy's question.

And I lost my text for the tutorial using individual color channels for cleaner detail masking. So this one will have to do.

Personally I am hoping he wants to work with something other than an rs character anyway. Who wants an rs char in their sig?

um,......yes, the point is the process. I am not going to retake a bunch of pictures just to answer the guy's question.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I lost my text for the tutorial using individual color channels for cleaner detail masking. So this one will have to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally I am hoping he wants to work with something other than an rs character anyway. Who wants an rs char in their sig?

Someone who likes RS? A rich RS person trying to show off their riches? :P

Since the start of the pixeling trend there is less call for actual rs chars. Besides, the new ones are fairly ugly (not that the others were pretty by any means), and are harder to animate due to the increase in colors.

ah the good old days...

Doh, couldn't find one of my favorites....

Ah, found the individual frames and re-did it...it is over the limits now , not going to mess with fixing it.

ROFL ttia, i remember like... all of those, fom when they were done ^^

lol those sigs are funny....

um,......yes, the point is the process. I am not going to retake a bunch of pictures just to answer the guy's question.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I lost my text for the tutorial using individual color channels for cleaner detail masking. So this one will have to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally I am hoping he wants to work with something other than an rs character anyway. Who wants an rs char in their sig?

:oops:

An old sig of mine!!!

truthfully it cant be that old if its rs2 :?

what i do for rs2 is make it so they are completely on grass because it is only a few shades of green, then fill in the grass white :P

lol i love the rs1 graphics, forgot how ugly it was :D

truthfully it cant be that old if its rs2 :?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

what i do for rs2 is make it so they are completely on grass because it is only a few shades of green, then fill in the grass white :P

Yeah I see your reasoning, but this was like when the beta for RS2 came out for f2p!

ya. I love those. Just one question. After looking through guides, i don't know how to animate. How do you?

Oh yeah, forgot to ask.

fR33 tsufs pleze

Haha, i like the 2nd and 4th ones, pretty cool, but uhh, the tut is kinda usless everyone knows how to do that, and it doesnt work for most things, only RSC characters.

If you understand the principle of the tutorial it's easy to figure out how to extract just about anything from a picture.