First Steps in Creation - Introduction

[Yellowrose]

I think one of the best pieces of advice I can give is the same advice I was given when I first started to create. Aussie Koala one of great past administrators at Zoo Admin advised me to start with something small for my first creation like a statue. Or even foliage which with some trees and plants you only need one image to start with.

so to begin your journey into creation there are a few tools you need to work with so from start to finish here is a list of tools you'll need.

1. A graphics program for working with images preferably one where you can work with layers, has a resizing feature and also the ability to decrease color depth of merged layer images.  A list of links for different graphics programs can be found here - http://zooadmin.org/DesignersTreehouse/index.php?topic=19.0

2. APE - Animal Projects Editor - once you have your images ready and you have icons made for your creation you will need APE to assemble your creation and get the unique 8 character internal name APE applies to your creation. A.P.E 3.2 can be downloaded here at the Treehouse HERE

3. 7zip or Winzip or other compression software to be able to both open and rezip your file once all required editing and rotation fixes are done. 7zip can be downloaded at https://www.7-zip.org/

4. Zoot 1.1 - this little program is awesome for many things but for a beginner designer we are just going to concentrate on using it to fix rotations for your creation. Zoot can be downloaded at the Treehouse HERE

5. A Hex Editor such as Winhex or HxD which is a free hex editor I use. As creation progresses on to other things this will be needed for making your paths with another tutorial written by Cricket that explains how to make a path using an existing path. (when I do the path tutorial I will be supplying a base path that can be downloaded and used for making paths) HxD Free Hex Editor can be downloaded Here

Here are a couple other links to image manipulation software. these are great for resizing an image or converting an image format from jpg to png or png to jpg. Something to remember when saving your images. Always save as a png format first png keeps the quality of the image without losing detail. JPG should only be used for a screenshot of your item due to it's smaller file size. Jpg format images when saved time and time again beginning to lose their quality and start to pixelate so I usually will save even an in game screenshot after I have cropped it as a png image first and then save it as a jpg second for posting then if I need another copy of the screenshot I will open the png version and save as a jpg. It may be a little tedious but doing this helps to keep quality even with screenshots and the images don't degrade in quality.

http://zooadmin.org/DesignersTreehouse/index.php?topic=20.0