imagineTK - Comments

Wow, how did all of you guys manage to almost fit the pitch perfectly? Your stadiums look amazing!

I don’t have that much time to play unfortunately, so at the moment I only create stadiums for my upcoming match and also can’t invest much time. So they are not perfect. But I have attached my folder.

Unfortunately I think we need to manually swap them each time. But it takes like 5 seconds before each match to open the folder and swap. For me that is fine.

Anyone still (or again) on FM24 2D mode? With the new image model from ChatGTP it is pretty easy to generate nice stadium backgrounds.

I just tried it today for the first time and I am pretty happy. So maybe realistic stadiums now in 2D FM24? 😉 

This is my prompt, feel free to use/improve it:

German (original)

Erstelle einen FM24 Match Background für den Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund aus einer exakt senkrechten Top-down-Perspektive. Das Bild soll die gleichen Proportionen wie ein Football-Manager-24-Spielhintergrund haben: Das Spielfeld muss sehr groß sein und etwa 80 bis 85 Prozent der Bildfläche einnehmen. Der Rasen bleibt mittig, rechteckig, symmetrisch und klar ausgerichtet. Die Werbebanden bilden direkt den Rand um das Spielfeld. Die Tribünen beginnen erst außerhalb der Werbebanden und sind nur als schmaler äußerer Rand sichtbar, nicht als großer Stadionbereich. Keine UI-Elemente, kein Spielstand, keine Buttons, keine Spieler, keine Marker. Links hinter dem Tor befindet sich die Dortmunder Heimkurve mit gelb-schwarzen Fans, Fahnen und Schals. Alle anderen Tribünenbereiche zeigen sitzende Dortmund-Fans ohne Fahnen. Keine Auswärtsfans. Die Heimkurve darf sichtbar und lebendig sein, aber identisch groß und breit wie die gegenüberliegende Tribüne. Achte besonders darauf, dass die Tribünen nur bis knapp hinter die Werbebanden reichen und das Spielfeld klar dominiert. Das Stadion soll als Signal Iduna Park erkennbar sein, mit gelb-schwarzer Farbgebung, gelben Dachträgern und passenden BVB-/Signal-Iduna-Park-Elementen. Realistischer FM24-kompatibler Stil, scharfe Linien, sauberer Rasen, hohe Detailgenauigkeit, 16:9 Format.

English translation

Create an FM24 match background for Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund from a perfectly vertical top-down perspective. The image should have the same proportions as a Football Manager 24 match background: the pitch must be very large and take up around 80 to 85 percent of the image. The grass must remain centered, rectangular, symmetrical, and clearly aligned. The advertising boards should form the direct border around the pitch. The stands should begin only outside the advertising boards and should be visible only as a narrow outer edge, not as a large stadium area. No UI elements, no scoreboard, no buttons, no players, no markers. On the left side behind the goal, there should be the Dortmund home end with yellow-and-black fans, flags, and scarves. All other stand areas should show seated Dortmund fans without flags. No away fans. The home end should look visible and lively, but it must be identical in size and width to the opposite stand. Pay special attention that the stands extend only slightly beyond the advertising boards and that the pitch clearly dominates the image. The stadium should be recognizable as Signal Iduna Park, with yellow-and-black colors, yellow roof supports, and suitable BVB / Signal Iduna Park elements. Realistic FM24-compatible style, sharp lines, clean grass, high level of detail, 16:9 format.

The face is not Laurent Busser, the face is Michael Reschke. I can not find an up to date photo of Laurent, but this might be him (comparing his face to the first pic in the database → the real Laurent Busser).

No idea about the outer boundary in black or grey. It's also annoying me, but haven't found a solution. Seems like some stadiums have these (it's always the same teams), but I did not find a solution how to remove these (checked all FM folders and everywhere in the editor).

This is why I only created BayArena in the end and one for my Leverkusen away matches (which also works if there is a black boundary in some stadium). I wanted to create a stadium for many clubs, but I couldn't find a way to get rid of the outer boundary.

Mine are optimized for a zoom setting which has the coaching benches on top of the window. You can find my BayArena file in the attachments. 

Just put it into art → shared_textures folder. It always needs to be named match_background.dds

Home match in BayArena

Away match in stadium with outer boundary

For those interested - this is what I created for my after-winter-update save

https://www.mediafire.com/file/31hv2yxw034ez3s/art.zip/file

Just copy & paste the art folder into your Football Manager 2024 folder and pick any match background.dds from the stadium folder and copy & paste it into the shared textures folder. It will show in game directly 

These areas around the ads in some stadiums don't make it easy unfortunately. I just tried Bayern, but there is not much space. If anyone knows how these areas can be deleted, that would be great.

I just checked a 2d home match of Sociedad. There is a green area around the ads, which makes it difficult to create a stadium as there is not much space (see Sociaded screenshot). Do you have the same? Do you know how to remove it?

This is what I do: I use the attached match_background pitch file and add left & right stadium images with 182 x 1800 pixels and on the bottom 2516 x 53 pixels. The top I leave blank, because I watch 2D with a zoom which has the coaching bench at the top. So I would not see a stadium stand anyway (see Union Berlin screenshot attached - I also attached this stadium as match background.dds)

Then I convert the file to a DDS file here: https://convertio.co/. Afterwards you can use it in the folder: Football Manager 2024 → art → shared textures. It needs to be named match_background.dds

I updated my personal skin in the last days, so I did not create any other stadium so far (except for the attached Union Berlin as this was my next match today). But as it was already mentioned here - the hardest part is finding good images. 

@Brommers9219

I have attached it now 🙂 I would also be very interested to hear how it looks on your Gaming TV. There is three stadiums: the match background is the large BayArena for max zoom. Then there is the BayArena small, which I used if I only zoom out to the coaching bench. The default stadium I currently use when I play away games. 

I'm still experimenting and will invest more time next week and also want to create more stadiums. Since I'm playing on a 13" MacBook, I'm now using a "smaller" BayArena. So I'm not zooming out in 2D to the maximum as in my first screenshot, but only to the point where the coach's bench exceeds the edge of the screen (I hope it's clear what I mean - see above in my screenshot. The first thing you see on top is the coaching bench). This makes the player icons a little bigger, which is better for my old eyes 😉

Does anyone have an idea how to use the different background with a config file? Currently I am renaming the stadium background I want to have before every match (depending on home or away). It is doable, but a little bit annoying.

Starting to look nicer

If someone would like to try, just copy & paste the attached art folder into your Football Manager 2024 folder. Then in 2D mode zoom out to the max! 

The attached BayArena is made for the pitch size of the BayArena. So in case you try it with another stadium, it might not perfectly match the ads on the sides & bottom and the coaching benches on top.

I play on a Macbook and have tested various screen resolutions. I think it would look the same, if you play on a larger monitor. But I am not a pro in this, so would be interesting to hear from others.

Thank you for the comment @Latrell yard man. Good to hear that I am not the only one interested in this. As I play with Leverkusen I am already happy to have the BayArena, but I would also like to create more stadiums. 

Next I will try to figure out, if several stadiums can be added with a config file. If not, then it is probably also not a big problem. Because if I change the match background.dds in the art folder, it will directly also adjust in FM24. 

Hi everyone,

I don't normally post here, so I apologise if this is the wrong section.

I'm still playing 2D and have always wanted to have a proper stadium environment for 2D again (last time was in FM17 or something). Today I finally figured out how to do it, but I'm really bad at graphic design.

I tried to create the BayArena for Bayer 04 Leverkusen (see attached). I know it looks like shit, but I hope there are more people interested in 2D stadiums and maybe that could be another thing besides faces, jerseys, logos etc. here at sortitoutsi?

It also doesn't seem to be known in the FM community that it's possible to change this. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've found many people asking about this over the last few years.

In the simatchviewer-pc.fmf I found the match_background.dds. If you add this to Football Manager 2024 → art → shared_textures → match_background.dds, you can add a background to the 2D engine that can be used to create a stadium.

I'm not an expert, but I think with the help of a config.xml it would even be possible to have the right 2D stadium for each club (theoretically)?

EDIT: Is someone able to provide the 2D stadium from FM17 (see attached FM 17 2D Stadium)? That would already be nice for now 🙂 

All right, this makes sense for players with a common name. But e.g. Turkish players in Germany & other countries (I think strangely not if the play in Turkey) somehow always have their full name as shirt name, not just the last name (e.g. Kerem Demirbay instead of just Demirbay). This is probably 95% wrong (I would only know Emre Can who uses his full name).

But anyway, your file already helps a lot 🙂 

Your approach is already great I think! Before this file I used to edit the shirt names via ingame editor whenever my scouts recommended me a player with a wrong shirt name or when I saw there is something wrong when I saw the line up of another team before the match starts.

Do you think this is an issue which could be raised as a bug report in the Sports Interactive Community? Of course they can not have every shirt name right, but what I find most annoying is e.g. that Turkish players in Germany (where I usually play) always have the full name as a shirt name, which is 95% not correct (e.g. for Demirbay the shirt name is Kerem Demirbay). I do not know what causes this. 

Great work, thanks! That's actually the reason why I always buy the ingame editor. It is super annoying if the shirt names are wrong 😀 

@mons Seems like these and the others from the Bayer Leverkusen Youth Pack didn't make it into the current update. @Mustang13297 submitted these and they are on completed, so they should be in it, right? 

Like this? 

Hope this is fine. But sorry guys seems I'm really bad at cutting faces. I'll stick to providing sources in the future and let the pro's handle the cutting 

Couldn't find any image with better quality…

I don't have photoshop, but seems I can also do this with the free software on my Laptop. Hope this is fine now @weeniehutjr 

@mons What about these two? Couldn't find a better source and not sure which one is better. Always the one with higher KB/MB?

https://b04-ep-media-prod.azureedge.net/pickerimages-shop/29_sertdemir_hero_slider_ws_377696_XL.jpg

https://cdn.ligainsider.de/images/player/team/large/batuhan-zidan-sertdemir-bayer-04-leverkusen-2021-22.jpg

@Lebohang Mokoena @mons @weeniehutjr Thanks for the feedback. Yes, the Transfermarkt.de picture are a better quality, but they are also I guess one year old. Comparing the faces the players mostly look a lot younger than they do on the 2021 one's from bayer04.de. As in one year the face of a 16/17 year old changes quite a lot, I guess the newer the better is the way to go here. But first I'll do my research and hopefully upload great cuts for these in the upcoming days. Your advise should help me with that.

Thanks. I'll double check again for each player and then upload in the upcoming days. For Iker Bravo (and others) I will be able to provide a better cut then 🙂 However I guess this won't be doable for each U19 player as many of them are even difficult to find on Google Images. But I'll have a look.

Thanks. My problem with these are, that I can only find one source (https://www.bayer04.de/de-de/team/u19-jugend/bayer-04-leverkusen#unser-team). The images are not downloadable (at least I wouldn't know how), so I take a screenshot and use this. However when you click on the player even the source image is a bit blurry. So they won't be perfect again (sorry…). I have just uploaded Iker Bravo as an example.

I would like to upload cut outs for the new Bayer 04 Leverkusen U19 players, however I can't find them yet here. Will they be added soon or shall I post the faces in here?

All right, I'll wait then until I can find better one's in the future and stop uploading the Bayer 04 pics for now. Thanks

Even though the current one is still pretty new (U21 National Team) I think the latest one (Bayer 04 2021 / 22) looks better, because the skin color is super white on the National Team pic

Thanks for the feedback. Only did my first faces this morning, so I guess over the day there was already positive progress 😀 Will become better over time 😉 

Sure, I'll check thanks

Sounds good thanks. Yes, the Tim Mattern had a higher resolution. This morning I added a few more images for Bayer Leverkusen staff and most of them were 300 x 300 (e.g. Kamil Schiwietz - https://sortitoutsi.net/graphics/browse/1/1339299/timeline). So I was referring to these, but that's a really good point of removing the bit in bold and red and get a full size image 🙂 Doesn't work unfortunately for most of the other images for Bayer 04 which  I uploaded this morning, but I'll keep that in mind for the future 🙂 

@mons Thanks. Yes, remove.bg is what I used. But the original image was always mostly only 300 x 300, but then including the body & shirt, which I needed to cut off. So that's why I didn't manage to do 250x250. I don't have any graphics tool like photoshop, only what Apple provides with the Macbook image viewer.

EDIT: But I'll have a look at the thread for future uploads thanks 🙂