Loading Screen Images

Notes/Tips

Best effort to create an Oblivion-style loading screen at this time.

Loading screen images have a resolution of 1024x512. The odd aspect ratio should be okay when the image is displayed in-game. It's probably for supporting widescreen displays as the left and right sides will be clipped in-game on normal (4:3) aspect ratio displays.

The outer area of the loading screen has no colors; it is only composed of an outline of the starting image. The outlines are created with a find edges filter.

High luminance (white) portions of the starting image should be made transparent so that the underlying paper can be seen instead.

The outlines on the inner area are thicker than those of the outer area.

There are two regions where the opacity is reduced so that only the paper background is visible. One is for the "Loading..." bar, and the other is for the tip.

The inner border and paper textures can be gotten from a PhotoShop image included with Oblivion at \textures\menus\loading\load_troll.psd. Use an unpacker (see BSA_Unpacker_Tutorial) to extract this file from Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa.

Alpha channels are not used for the final image.

Loading screens are compressed using the DDS DXT5 format with no MIP-maps.

An image editor with good support for layers (PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro) is a must for creating loading screens.

Loading screens will only work if placed in Oblivion\Data\Textures\Menus\Loading. This is case-sensitive!

Normal values

These are the normal values that are found in the files that came with Oblivion.

Specifications	Values
Image Resolution	1024 x 512 pixels
Resolution	72 pixels/inch

Near-Perfect Loading Screens using Photoshop CS3

I've done this using Photoshop CS3, but it will work with lower versions as well.

1. import screenshot into photoshop

2. position screenshot on a seperate layer, above the layer containing the Bethesda-provided loading screen background.

2. hit Shift+Ctrl+U to desaturate image

3. Filter >> Stylize >> Find Edges

4. hit Shift+Ctrl+F to access the fade filter menu

5. in the fade filter menu, change mode to Color Dodge

6. Image >> Adjustments >> Gradient Map , and hit OK

7. Change the screenshot layer's blending mode to Linear Burn

8. Change the screenshot layer's opacity to 50%

9. Now for the last trick: Filter >> Sharpen >> Sharpen (and repeat that a second time)

Voila! You've got the Bethesda loading screen background.

Now, to generate the colored part of the loading screen (the part that's in the frame), position a second copy of the original screenshot over the layer we've just been working on, and delete all parts of it that are outside the frame. Now set this layer's blending mode to Hard Light, and set the opacity to 69%. And you're done.

Try playing around with the numbers if you don't like what you're getting. The source screenshot will affect outcome, as will the resolution at which you capture the source screenshot. Bethesda seemed to use a higher resolution which resulted in higher detail.

Image Creation Guide using Paint Shop Pro 10

You should start at this section unless you don't want to use Oblivion-style loading screens. In which case, you can skip to Loading_Screens#Modding_and_DDS_Conversion.

You'll most likely want to use screenshots from the game, but the HUD gets in the way. To toggle it off, enter the console with the Tilde key and enter tm. To get even better views, enter tfc to toggle the free cam. For some unknown reason, Oblivion comes default with screenshots disabled. To enable taking screenshots, open the Oblivion.ini file located in My Documents\My Games\Oblivion. Go to the Display section and change bAllowScreenShot to 1. Now you can take screenshots with the PrintScreen key.

Whatever image you use, make sure it's a bitmap or another loseless format before you begin. Using lossy formats like JPEG will give you blocky areas with the Find Edges filter.

More later...

Scripts

Scripts (or macros) can be used to automate the process of creating a load screen. Preferrably, they allow one to start with a screenshot from the game and turn that directly into an image in the same style as Oblivion's load screens.

Paint Shop Pro 10

File:Loading screen script.jpg

Output from the script.

Before you can run the script, you must open the load_troll.psd mentioned in the notes. Then load the image you want to convert to a load screen. You cannot have any other images open, or this probably won't work. Finally, run the script provided (File>Script>Run), and after a few seconds, you should have a pretty loading screen ready for conversion to DDS.

If you run the script in interactive mode (that's the default), you'll be prompted to set the luminance ramps for a couple parts of the image during the script execution. The first is for tweaking the outline "sensitivity"; more contrast here is usually best. The second is for the opacity of the colors in the center area. You may also want to tweak the saturation layer opacity for said colored center area. However, the defaults should work well for 90% of screenshots.

PhotoShop

Greybird made a Loading Screen Design Kit for Photoshop.

Modding and DDS Conversion

File:Loading screen editor.jpg

A custom loading screen in the CS.

This part isn't too hard, but you must follow the directions closely as it's easy to mess up. Once you have your image the way you want it to look in the game, you'll need to save it as a DDS file using one of the DDS_Tools. When you go to save as a DDS format file, you're presented with a plethora of options, but there are only a couple you'll need to change. One is to set the format to DXT5 as that is what the original loading screens use. The other is to set MIP-maps to No; they won't be needed for a non-3D texture and just add to the file size. Save the file to your Oblivion directory in Data\Textures\Menus\Loading, and make sure the filename begins with "load_". If you have to create the directories, make sure to match the case. If you aren't creating the directories, still make sure the case matches.

Now you only need to make the game recognize the new loading screen image. You'll need the Construction Set, of course. So, open that up. In the Object Window, go to Miscellaneous>LoadScreen. If you see a list of all the loading screens already in the game, you're in the right place. To add a new one, right-click and then select New. Give your new loading screen a unique ID first. It's usually your name, initials, or alias; the name of the mod; and the name of the object. This ensures that your ID is unique. Then add the image; this is rather straight-forward. The loading screen text is not required, but you can fill it in if you like. It's perfect for adding tips about a mod if you're not just modding the loading screens. If you want the loading screen to only show for a particular cell, add the cell to the form list by dragging it from the Cell edit dialog which is found under World>Cell. You're done, so hit OK and save.

File:Loading screen ingame.jpg

A custom loading screen in-game.

To test your loading screens, it's best to add a particular cell to the form list when you're editing. That way, you can just go to that cell and not have to wait for the loading screen to come up randomly. If the tip you entered shows but the image is the default Elven Armor one, you missed a step earlier and you'll need to go back over them.

If you would rather replace the loading screens, you have two options. One preserves other replacement textures, thus allowing a user to easily disable/enable your replacement mod. The other preserves the original textures while not working well with other mods and making disabling/enabling difficult.

The first way uses the CS to make a plugin in much the same way as adding new loading screens. However, instead of adding, you'll be editing the existing loading screens. Just change the textures to your own ones with unique filenames. Now your mod can be managed like other mods in the Data Files section of the launcher. The only downside is that many of the textures are repeated in several different types of loading screens. This method would be more time-consuming for the modder.

A quicker way is to just overwrite (essentially) the original textures by placing your new ones in the Data\Textures\Menus\Loading directory. You'll still need to convert to DDS, of course. But that's just about all there is to it. No ArchiveInvalidation editing is necessary. You don't even need to worry about case-sensitive paths. The problem is that any other mod that also replaces loading screens is going to conflict.