Pixelation
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sohashu on July 20, 2006, 10:14:24 am
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First off I know there are several different pallettes because of sometnig to do with tuning. Secondly, I would like to attain a pallette commonly used among people trying to use such a pallette.
And thirdly, could someone refresh me on the restrictions per 8x8 square.
I hate to ask so much, but I want to try and improve myself. Looking at some C64 stuff, I saw that it could look good, and I want to learn how to use colours in a smart way.
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SUMMON GERMAN SOUND-EFFECT
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And?? What was the point of that post?
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*appears from the depth of the 8bit limbo*
check this link, if you have more questions afterwards post again and i will answer your questions.
www.ptoing.net/html/c64info.htm (http://www.ptoing.net/html/c64info.htm)
(http://www.ptoing.net/c64pal.png)
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Thank you ptoing. To be quite honest, I expected all that information in that info thing to be inserted into here. A sort of C64 rant if you will.
Hopefully youll see work from me soon using this. And hopefully it will be half decent.
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No problem, thank Helm for summoning me. Also i updated the image above, might be helpful.
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Ive seen some C64 stuff from you before and really enjoyed looking at it. Thanks for posting that info ptoing it looks really fun, perhaps ill see if i can get a good C64 emulator.
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thaat is so awesome how the pallettes grey values go in twos.
i think ill be starting another c64 piece soon <.<
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Thank a bunch, Ptoing. Those greys are a bit tricky to figure out.
Since we're on the topic of palettes, does anyone know where to go to find the amiga palette or SNES palette? I've tried to do googles for them but I can't figure out the right words to use.
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oh yeah, could you spare us(me) some information about sprites and sprite restricitions with the c64? and any other things that might be along the lines of that(tiles, etc)
would be much appreciated.
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Since we're on the topic of palettes, does anyone know where to go to find the amiga palette or SNES palette? I've tried to do googles for them but I can't figure out the right words to use.
I don't think there really is an amiga palette. Same for SNES probably.
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These machines have bit limitations. Atari ST is if I remember, 4 bits per channel, Amiga 5? Snes is 5 too I think? Ptoing knows, ask him.
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The amiga has a 12 bit palette unstretched (pretty sure about the unstretched part) meaning that each RGB channel has 4 bits (16 values 0 to F).
The unstretched part means that the brightest colour is F0 not FF and that goes to all colours, the second hexvalue on pc would always be 0. I am about 90% sure about this, but i just wrote an email to the programmer of UAE (great amiga emulator) and i guess he should know. In it's most commonly used mode the A500 can produce 32 colours at 320x200.
The SNES has a 15 bit palette, 5 bits per channel. I am not entirely sure about the other specs the snes has, google is your friend.
The C64 has sprites with the size of 24x21, 8 hardware sprites which can be hacked into 8 sprites per scanline. There are either hires sprites which use the full res of the sprite and only have 1 colour + trans or multicolour sprites which have horizontally stretched pixels but can use 3 colours, there is something going on with shared colours for all the sprites tho and only 1 unique per sprite, i am not to sure about that either tho. I guess doing gameart for the C64 is kinda pointless unless you have a programmer who knows the C64 well enough to tickle something nice from it.
Didn't see Helm posted while i wrote my reply, The AtariST has a 9 bit palette (3 per channel) and it is definatelly unstretched in the normal ST model. And it can display 16 colours at 320x200 at once.
Also:
9 bit= 512 colours
12 bit= 4096 colours
15 bit= 32768 colours
basically 15 bit is already tons for normal pixelart, when it comes to transparency in games more is abviously better tho as you get quite harsh banding with low bitdepth :)
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Couldnt you use 2 wide pixels on top of one another to create a 2x2 pixel? Or is that sorta cheating? I just find it difficult to use the wide pixel as if it was a pixel. I don't really think so, but should I learn to deal?
And feel free to make this a place to post various tips and ramps and discuss in general using C64 and other system pallettes. Im sure it will help people understand using your colours creatively. I know it would help me.
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you mean haveing 2x2 instead of 2x1 pixels? Nah don't do that, try to do proper 2x1 widepixel stuff. what i often do is sketch out the picture rough in 320x200 using singlepixel, then resize to 160x200 and then back to 320x200 so you get a rough widepixel base to start from. then i fill in colours and start detailing with a widepixel brush in promotion. Every now and then i scale it back to 160x200, helpfull for dithering and stuff like that. It really is no big difference only the aa works a bit different in a few special cases.
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So I pixel in 160x200, and then resize to 320x200? Seems good. Thanks again.
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yeh pixel it in 160x200, but resize frequently to see if it looks right.
you have to get a feel for it.
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aye snes was 256 fixed colours on-screen from a palette of 32768 colours. You could switch the 256 very fast, or just part of the palette could be switched out... which made for some very nice sunsets in secret of mana 2 as the scenery tiles would switch out their palette leaving the sprites to stay in tact.
One question I have for the c64 boffins:
On the spectrum the limit was 2 colours per 8x8px block, was there rules like this for the c64? How does one go about making realistic c64 art?
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On the spectrum the limit was 2 colours per 8x8px block, was there rules like this for the c64?
Dunno how many times we've mentioned this so far:
multicolor mode : 3 colors plus universal color per 8x8 character, widepixels (so effectively, 4x8). The universal can be any of the 16 colors, but has to be the same for all characters. 160x200 so to speak
hi-res mode: 2 colors from 16 for every 8x8 character, single-pixel. 320x200
There's a million -hacked- demoscene modes that overcome lots of these limitations, I'm sure a certain german will enlighten you if you ask.
How does one go about making realistic c64 art?
If you mean realistic-looking art on the c64: painfully
If you mean could-run-on-c64-realistic art: just follow restrictions.
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Dunno how many times we've mentioned this so far:
multicolor mode : 3 colors plus universal color per 8x8 character, widepixels (so effectively, 4x8). The universal can be any of the 16 colors, but has to be the same for all characters. 160x200 so to speak
hi-res mode: 2 colors from 16 for every 8x8 character, single-pixel. 320x200
There's a million -hacked- demoscene modes that overcome lots of these limitations, I'm sure a certain german will enlighten you if you ask.
Cheers! maybe all this info could be collected and made into a sticky one day? :) I'm sure theres someone out there hankering to do it. :D
If you mean realistic-looking art on the c64: painfully
err, a bit too literal there :noob:
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http://www.naveedkhugiani.com/articles/c64gfxmodes/c64gfxmodes.html
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thanks everyone, you have made me see the light :D
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Glad to see the topic around again. I think this is helpful for anyone trying to improve, just because it teaches you to look at the darkness or lightness and not the hue.
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I believe this topic should be pinned.
Or all the stuff put into tools, tips, and tutorials.
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I thought that maybe it should be pinned, but then I realized we could just reference to this topic if anyone asked.
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I'm not sure, do they have autopruning on this forum... I suppose its small enough that they have it turned off, so we need not worry.
Everyone would probably disagree wth me, plus I realize myself that it would be a dumb idea, but have a subforum in pixel art dedicated to c64 (maybe ZX as well, I bet Gas would be happy). If any moderators read this btw, is there any kind of formal legislation for something like that, because I could write a proposal and we could take a democratic vote.
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have a subforum in pixel art dedicated to c64 (maybe ZX as well, I bet Gas would be happy).
Do you think that the main 'pixel art' forum gets enough traffic to warrant such a division?
If it was done, it should be a more general 'retro' forum, for works that have harsh/technical restrictions
(doublewidth pixels as in C64 or CPC, doubleheight pixels as in Amiga or CPC, color limit per 'cell' as in C64 or ZXSpectrum, restricted color choice as well as restricted num of colors as in CPC, ZXSpectrum, C64..)
If any moderators read this btw, is there any kind of formal legislation for something like that, because I could write a proposal and we could take a democratic vote.
I believe the admins agree that democracy is not how to run a board.
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There is no autopruning I know of, only a manual "delete posts not posted in since X days" and noone is gonna do that anytime soon if ever, we have 1 gig of space and text does not take up much space anyway.
And democracy in a forum is ok to a certain extent, but for something like this nah. Pretty much what Ai said there, the board would not get much traffic, and there wont be a retro board either, next thing you know people want a Iso board and stuff like that. The old pixelation had a animation board at one point and that did not make much sense either, so there.
We don't even havd a wip and finished board anymore.
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I think, having tried the opposite, we are going to be returning to a more streamlined Pixelation this time around. We'll grow when we need to grow, not grow inspite of ourselves.
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Say, is there some neat trick to validate this 3 + 1 colours per 4x8 tile (or 2 colours per 8x8 for highres) or are you guys doing it manually? I'm using Promotion and my hope is that such a trick might be hidden there somewhere. I heard someone mentioning a c64-only graphic prog - tiamat or something. Could someone point a link to it please?
Thank's and bye.
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I'm almost sure it is called Thiamantes. Or Thimantes. Anyway, I just create an 8x8 selection and run trough the image (on Photoshop).
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It's Timanthes. You were close Filax - close enough for me to finally google it.
(It can be found here -> http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=30789).
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I quite like GangEd for C64 graphics.
http://www.thegang.nu/releases.php?year=2005&type=4
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Although I might be late to the party, perhaps I have something useful to contribute. Here is a set of four C64 palettes created by various people.
http://virtual.dyc.edu/~peppermint/temporary/C64_Palettes.zip