Hero Lab/PCGen Character Sheets

DDK

Would be pretty epic if you could somehow allow the save files from Hero Lab or PCGen to be uploaded and parsed to be a displayable character sheet. Couple of button clicks, boom-chucka-lucka, character sheet all pretty and shiny-like on the site :)

robotfreedom

Now that would be the most useful thing! That would be my #1 priority for the devs. PCgen has an obsidian portal export filter, but I think it was for the old character sheets.

Would be great if it was done like DMgenie, where you just copy and pasted the stat block... Done!

SkidAce

Hero Lab will export a sheet in HTML. Haven't tried pasting that in yet....

twiggyleaf

Let us know how you get on with that, SkidAce!

twigs

Keryth987

So, does this work? I have Hero Lab as do my players, and the next campaign I plan on running (a ways down the line) will be using Savage Worlds, for which I can purchase the addon for Hero Lab, and it would make life so much easier if I could just upload the HTML sheets to OP

Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"Campaign of the Month - July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/

SkidAce

Not really. Maybe if you know how to clean up HTML.

Here is what it looks like pasted into the description block of a new character;

"Shylent Test":https://alfaysia.obsidianportal.com/characters/shylent-test

Here is the same character, EXPORTED to html, opened with chrome, and taken a screenshot of;

"Shylent Main":https://unconquered-kingdoms.obsidianportal.com/characters/shylent

So your call, I use HeroLab, but its looking like a straight export and paste into a character field doesn't work (for me).

Keryth987

Well, thats good to know. Thanks for the update SkidAce.

While it is a ways down the line for me, its good to know what I'll have to do to use Hero Lab with OP. Still alot easier than my fancy, manually entered Sheets on Shadows. While they look gorgeous (thanks PhoenexMark) they turned out to be more work to maintain than I planned on and therefore were not as up to date as I would have liked. Using HeroLab for my next campaign, even with this open, screenshot, post screen shot technique, I should be able to keep my PC's sheets on the site up to date weekly.

Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"Campaign of the Month - July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/

SkidAce

There are other style sheets, I use that one for the simplicity (and it fits in one screenshot!!!!!).

DaphneDiane

One thing you can try is "pandoc":http://pandoc.org/, -although it doesn't seem to escape + and - correctly, so I manually search and replace those to become + for plus and either − or - for minus- _edit_: encoding issues with + and - fixed in pandoc 1.14.1

I start with outputting the hero stat block to html and then using pandoc from the command line as:

bc. pandoc --from=html --to=textile -o output.txt input.html

where input.html was the html file and output.txt is the converted textile file that can be cut and paste into obsidian portal -after plus and minus characters are fixed.-

Unknown

Looking at the example that SkidAce posted, I don't think it is that bad honestly. Part of the issue is that some of the content exported is not needed on OP. You could simply outright remove this:


Shylent – created with Hero Lab®




If the output also includes these (which I am certain it probably does) they should also be removed:




Outside of that, comparing the two results that were presented I think the rest of it could (potentially) be cleaned up with a bit of CSS on the back end. I am not positive how exactly the actual output file looks. If someone were willing to send me over a raw file I might be able to figure out something a little more specific.

--
Alex
"Dragon Age: Requiem":https://da-requiem.obsidianportal.com/

NikMak

just a quick thumbs up for this topic from me, I really like where this is going!

Keryth987

Good point alex, but the version Skid used that was the load and screenshot and paste screen shot still looks...cleaner

Keelah Se'lai,
Keryth
"Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
"Campaign of the Month - July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/
"2013 Campaign of The Year":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/2013-coty-shadows-over-new-york/

Unknown

I am sure it does - again, as I do not use this system, I would need someone to send me a copy of the exact output it gives in order to make some CSS suggestions that could clean it up further and getting looking as nice if not better than the screencap.

SkidAce

I will see what I can do this evening after work. Send me your contact info.

Unknown

Heck, I don't mind popping it here:

alex.redeye[AT]gmail.com

Unknown

Just noticed the email in my Spam, so I will take a look over this and see what I can come up with.

SkidAce

Why in the world would "I" be treated as spam? How rude...


j/k

Unknown

I know, right, messed up. I am curious though, the template looks way more basic than the screen capture, is their any CSS that gets generated to go with the htm file?

SkidAce

I switched the character to a CSS table some months after posting the examples, so the second example is no longer a hero lab output. I can create a screenshotted one like I originally did if you need the comparison.

Unknown

Sure, might as well if that is roughly how folks want it to look as an end result.

GM_Morgan

Hi. Looking to use Hero Lab for generating characters. Any movement on this since this last post in June?

weasel0

Bump.

ChainsawXIV

Probably the easiest way to do this (which would still be quite a lot of work) would be to design a DST with an import option built in. You've have to create the sheet itself, and then add scripting to ingest the Hero Lab save file and populate the sheet with the data.

Totally possible in theory, but a moderately epic task.