Your own inventory preview icons
How to add custom preview images by using a custom .inkatlas file
Summary
Uploaded: ??? by manavortex Last documented update: Mar 18 2024 by yellingintothevoid
This guide will teach you how to make custom inventory preview icons.
The guide below will teach you how to make preview icons. While it's a technically a subsection of the ArchiveXL item additions guide, you can use the steps below to make any kind of preview item.
Difficulty Level: You know how to read and can either edit images or make use of the corresponding guide. While the process is easy, it also is, unfortunately, quite tedious!
Wait, this is not what I want!
If you want to have gendered preview icons, check here.
For a script to generate inkatlas files, check The Magnificent Doctor Presto's github
To learn more about the files involved, check Game icons: .inkatlas files
The required files
If you downloaded the example project (Getting the files), the preview is already hooked up. Otherwise, download the template archive for your kind of template (kindly provided by Apart).
Go away with your examples, I'll do everything by hand!
Okay, you do you. Here's how:
You should now have a structure like this:
Taking preview pictures
You have two options on taking preview pictures. Both are relatively tedious, since you have to do it by hand.
You can find more detail about how to take preview pictures in Blender or In-game further down the section.
mana's workflow
Prerequisites
Photoshop or photopea.com
Taking photos
Strip V nekkid, then put on the Invisibility Cloak and the item you want to create previews of
Use AMM to spawn "Photo Studio: Wall Cover" from the Photo Studio Props
Set the appearance to
white (matte)
Switch to photo mode. Find a good angle and lighting for your item.
Use ACM to set the item's appearance to the darkest variant (e.g.
black
)Take a screenshot. You will use this for masking.
Switch the background color to
black
Use ACM to cycle through the item's appearances and take a screenshot of each
In Windows Explorer, find your item screenshots and move them to a folder
Re-name the png to the name of your future icon (e.g.
myItem_black
). You can also do this later.
Processing photos
Open the dark item on the white background in photoshop or photopea
Drag all the other pictures you took on top of it. The items must be in the same space!
In the Layers panel (bottom right)
create a group and put all the layers inside
Drag the layer of the white background picture to the top, and select it (click on it)
Press
W
to select the Magic Wand toolFrom the top bar, use the
Select Subject
buttonOptional: use the Select and Mask view to fine tune your selection
Confirm. You now have a selection that includes only your item.
In the Layers panel (bottom right),
select the group (folder) by clicking on it
create a layer mask by clicking on the icon that looks like the Japanese flag
The background will now be transparent
Use the Crop Tool (Keyboard shortcut:
C
) to crop a rectangular selection with your icon in the centerSelect the layers, right-click, and select "Quick Export as PNG"

You should now have a bunch of transparent pngs. Now, let's see about Hooking up the inkatlas.
Blender
You can export your mesh with all its materials to Blender and take your preview pictures there:

In-game
Overview of the Process
The idea is to combine mods that make V invisible and a ReShade filter called DepthAlpha.fx to create in-game screenshots of your item where the background is transparent. This means you don't have to spend a lot of time painstakingly removing the background manually in Photoshop. The screenshots taken with DepthAlpha.fx only need a little bit of cleanup (Creating The Actual Icon), but can be basically directly imported into the .xbm
file containing your icons.
Prerequisites
Invisible V by manavortex or the Invisibility Cap and Shoes by PinkyDude
Optional, but highly recommended:
DepthAlpha.fx (make sure to set up the depth buffer properly)
AppearanceCreatorMod or Equipment-EX
The Process
Preparation:
Start the game
Equip the invisibility garment and the item you want to create icons for.
To switch through appearances on-the-fly, you can use AppearanceCreatorMod while V is in the center of the camera.
Alternatively, you can save outfits for all colour variations of your outfit In Equipment-EX:

Lighting:
Taking the screenshots
To actually take the screenshot, position the Photo Mode camera so that it is rougly parallel to the bottom edge of your photo booth.
Set the Field of View to about 30 to prevent distortion when taking a closeup.
Move the camera so that the item fills the entirety of your screen without cutting off a part of it.
Switch to the pose tab and cycle through all appearances of your item and take a screenshot of each one (make sure you haven't skipped any!).
Photoshop
Fixing Jaggy Edges Left By DepthAlpha.fx
Open the first of your screenshots in Photoshop and drop all other screenshots of the item onto the one you've just opened.
Select the newly created Smart Objects, right click them and select "Rasterize Layers".
Select the first layer and hide all other layers.
Go to "Layer" in the menubar at the top of your screen on the left and select "Layer Mask" → "From Transparency".
Create a new colour fill layer and choose a colour that contrasts with your item.
Double click the layer mask on your first layer in the layers window to enter Select and Mask mode.
Make sure your View Mode is set to "On Layers" and play around with the "Global Refinements" until the outline of your item looks smooth.

Duplicate the Layer Mask onto your other layers.
From here on out, you can play around with a bunch of Adjustment Layers with Clipping Masks for each of your layers/appearances. I recommend some Levels Adjustments to set proper black and white points, as well as Black & White Adjustment Layers for items that are black, grey, silver or white and so on.
Once you're done with that, select each layer and its Adjustment Layers, right click them, and select "Convert to Smart Object".
Give each layer a meaningful name and save your image as a
.psd
.
Creating The Actual Icon
Open this
.psd
and import the Smart Objects of your icons into it. The.psd
is based on thepreview_icons.xbm
found in manavortex's Archive XL item additions and guide and can be easily used with projects based on the guide.With all layers selected in Photoshop, transform them so that the longest side is 158px.
Align each item to the centre of each grey square.
Hide all other layers except your icons.
Now save the image as a
.png
in the raw folder of your WolvenKit project.Import the
.png
into your WolvenKit project with theTEXG_Generic_UI
TextureGroup
setting and make sure that "Transparency from alpha channel" is enabled.

Hooking up the inkatlas
Open the file in WolvenKit.
Open the list
slots
.For the first two
inkTextureSlot
items, set the value forDepotPath
to the relative path of your xbm (tutorial\torso\my_custom_shirt\ops\preview_icons.xbm
):

Save the file. If it doesn't update, reload it (Hotkey:
Ctrl+R
)You now have a tab "PartMapping", where you can see which texture corresponds to which slot: select it on the left and check the
partsName
, which corresponds to the entry in the slot'sparts
array:


Congratulations! You now have preview icons!

Using it
You can now hook up your preview icon(s) to whatever mod you are making.
ArchiveXL: Add it to the .yaml
Check the code box below — the last three lines add a preview icon.
Please refer to the ArchiveXL guide for an explanation of the other properties, as this page will only hold information about preview icons.
atlasResourcePath
: relative path to your .inkatlas fileatlasPartName
: slot name in your .inkatlas file (which you can see in thePartsMapping
tab)
Again, please note that indent is crucial here, as it determines the node structure. The first line needs to have an indent of 0, the lines from $base
to icon
need to have two spaces, and the lines atlasResourcePath
and atlasPartName
need to have four.
That's it! Time to test!
If you run into any issues with your texture's transparency, please check the textures import/export guide!
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