AuthorTopic: Pixel.tools editor allows artists to pixel together on the same image/animation.  (Read 39805 times)

Offline AlexHW

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ok, try it now. let me know if everything works.
That wacom plugin looks interesting- I'll have to look into that and see if I can implement it.

Offline Ai

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Everything works okay now: primary and secondary canvas update, changing zoom works for both, drawing on colordex updates correctly..
Hell, since you said everything, I'll try some other stuff:

* All items in select menu appear to work, when I manage to actually 'click' them instead of dragging the window around
* Actually, that's a general issue with using the menus, they detect drags rather eagerly, though I don't know if anything can be done about this on the Javascript end.
* Copy and paste work as expected, as does Insert clipart (well, I wasn't sure what to expect with Insert Clipart, but the way it works makes reasonable sense)
* I'm not sure I understand playback correctly .. I expected this to play my 2-frame animation, but it prompted me for a file.
* Actually, I see now that animation playback is controlled by a button on the Frames window, which appears to work fine.
* frame 'links' appear to work as intended, affecting the display if it is set to linked
* I found the frame/layer opacity control but I couldn't find a way to reorder frames, I guess this is either disabled or not implemented yet.
* Undo navigation works okay but occasionally causes the update of the primary viewport to be disabled (I THINK. If this is not the cause on its own, it may involve manipulating undo history and then changing primary viewport display mode to Frame). It can be reenabled by resizing the primary viewport.
* Magic wand -- allows me to freely drag around the selection. This is a GREAT tool, but not at all what I was expecting from the name or icon.
* Lasso works fine. I'd just like to suggest the option of using Winding aka Nonzero fill rule instead of even-odd (the result of this is that no selection ever has a hole in it.). This is natively supported by most polygon rasterizers I know of.
* The Tile, Remove Tile, and Collision tools don't function usefully. I guess I have to setup tiles first ;)
* Zoom tool works okay; I'm not sure precisely what hand is supposed to do -- Just control where the canvas is shown? If that's it, it's working fine.
* Clicking on the canvas to draw during animation is equivalent to using Hand tool. This is understandable, but nonetheless, kind of surprising and hilarious.
* Eraser and colorpicker work
* Magic eraser and brush work, I guess? Maybe I don't understand the colordex well enough yet, I get a sort of colordexy output but I don't seem to reliably be able to move towards one color or the other. I consider this PEBCAK.
* Palette scan works, in either mode
* Export seems to work okay, both PNG and GIF, as do Open and Save.
* Grid appears to work (it's just an overlay, right, it has no active function like snapping?)
* soo. I think that leaves Playback, and New from Playback, which I basically just don't understand so I can't meaningfully test.
* EDIT: Oh, and I saw that middle-click-to-pan was added a few weeks ago (looking at the PJ thread), so I tested that.. It doesn't work for me

Re: wacom plugin:

The unofficial plugin is designed to have the same api as the official, so hopefully there shouldn't be much work involved in supporting it fully. Installing it is already enough to get rid of the warning message.

EDIT: I see that, from your posts on PJ, colordex actually constructs an ordered adjacency graph of the colors. Dunno if that's good for anyone else, but that is the most straightforward explanation of actual colordex function from my POV.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2014, 12:43:08 pm by Ai »
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Offline AlexHW

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Okay, I re-enabled everything now. Check to see if the alexhw.com/pixeledit page still allows you to draw to the primary viewport and also if the secondary viewport updates as well.

About the middle mouse button- I haven't added that to this page- only added it to the pixel.tools page, so that's why it doesn't work for you. But if the primary/secondary viewports still works, I'll make the changes to the main site..
Thanks for testing all those other things, even though it wasn't entirely necessary- it's good to know those are functioning.
The playback prompts you for the file that you've saved (a file with a .pxl extension).. Because when you draw, it records each step, and when you save it out by going to file>save.. it will save all that data into a format that the editor can load. Choosing playback will load it up ready to replay the entire process you took creating the image, whereas choosing load will just load it up ready for continuing work on the image.
Yea, I could probably remove the drag ability of the menus so that it doesn't become an issue with clicking them.. Or maybe I can find a way to make it less troublesome, like having some stickiness to the drag so it doesn't drag right away.
actually, now that I think about it, I can probably fix it.. the buttons probably are somehow telling it to drag when they shouldn't be.
reordering frames is done by selecting the frames you want to reorder, and then clicking&dragging a frame's handle (the left opaque bit next to the frame)
not sure what the issue is with the undos.. might be related to undoing something that was on another layer, and that layer being hidden so it doesn't look as if anything changes..
grid should have snapping if you select something and hold ctrl while you move it.
what were you expecting form the magic wand tool?


« Last Edit: August 15, 2014, 02:11:34 pm by AlexHW »

Offline Ai

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Everything still works fine, except a Grid bug.

* Grid bug report: I clicked to enable the grid, and it was shown. I selected Marquee tool and CTRL+Clicked. The grid disappeared and the primary viewport stopped responding (does not update, and actually does not draw at all, as evidenced in the secondary view which remains functional). Probably because of this, attempts to reset the selection in case that was the problem failed. Possibly the secondary canvas actually isn't updating.. as items appear in the undo history when I attempt to draw, even though they don't seem to actually be drawn.
* Now that I know to drag the side bit rather than the whole thumbnail, frame rearrangement is working fine for me
* I was expecting magic wand to be a tool for selecting contiguous or similar region(s) of color, much as it is in GIMP and Photoshop. This is rather reinforced by the appearance of an option 'contiguous' next to the color selector.
* Oh, file->playback is a history playback, ok, thanks.
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Offline AlexHW

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The magic wand should allow that functionality by toggling the contiguous button. There's no threshold setting for it though, so it only selects the exact same color.
About the grid bug.. What happens if you don't hold ctrl, and just make selections? Did you make a selection before ctrl clicked, or was there no selection made when you did it?
Could you have the console open when the bug occurs to see if any errors pop up when it happens?


EDIT: Okay, I modified something.. I'm wondering if you still get the bug now.. If you don't, then that means I'll have to go through all the files and change something. If it works, that means the issue happens due to using the same variable name for looping through certain things..
« Last Edit: August 16, 2014, 12:54:23 am by AlexHW »

Offline Ai

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The magic wand should allow that functionality by toggling the contiguous button. There's no threshold setting for it though, so it only selects the exact same color.
This is true, but it's also true that when you click near the current selection with contiguous on, you move the selection instead. I had tried toggling contiguous before but hadn't picked up that this was what I was doing different. Personally I don't understand the reason for this behaviour (rather than having contiguous ONLY make selections, and non-contiguous ONLY move them)

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About the grid bug.. What happens if you don't hold ctrl, and just make selections? Did you make a selection before ctrl clicked, or was there no selection made when you did it?
There was no selection IIRC.
Not pressing control worked fine.

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Could you have the console open when the bug occurs to see if any errors pop up when it happens?
Yes, there are no errors shown

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EDIT: Okay, I modified something.. I'm wondering if you still get the bug now.. If you don't, then that means I'll have to go through all the files and change something. If it works, that means the issue happens due to using the same variable name for looping through certain things..
The bug still occurs. I can be more specific -- it's reliably reproducable for me using these steps:

1. ensure Grid is enabled
2. select Marquee tool
3. make a reasonably large selection
4. Control-click on the selection -> grid disappears.

HTH.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline AlexHW

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hm.. thanks. I had someone else try it because they use linux, and it wasn't drawing for them- they had the previous problem where it would draw a short bit and then stop.. so, I think I'm going to have to pull out my old desktop and try to get linux on it so that I can hopefully reproduce this stuff as it appears to be a common issue on linux- that way I'll be able to hack away at it and hopefully figure a solution out. :(

Offline AlexHW

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OKAY!..
I tried a virtual machine like many people have been suggesting.. I managed to find the bug and fix it.
If you go to http://www.pixel.tools/ it should now work and you can draw on the canvas, etc..
the issue was:
Code: [Select]
ctx.setLineDash([0]);has to be this instead:
Code: [Select]
ctx.setLineDash([]);While fixing that, I found another bug with the colordex that was causing it to not work, so I fixed that. The colordex should now work as expected. In order to use it, you have to Hold ctrl and click to make the Circle on a color, and the Big square OFF of a color(in the transparent space), and drag the smaller square onto a color.. This will allow you to draw from transparent space.. If you already have color laid down and want to modify it without drawing into transparent space, make the big square on a color instead..
The confusion I have had in the past is thinking I need the big square ontop of a color and the little square off of the color.. Perhaps there is a more intuitive method, and if anyone has suggestions, feel free to share them!
ALSO.. if anyone does find other bugs, let me know! I haven't tested everything on linux.

Offline Ai

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That all works for me :D

Except the colordex, but I suspect I don't understand how to make that work properly anyway. I painted a 4 step gradient darkgreen - green - pastel orange - white across the colordex, but I only seem to be able to effect pixels that are currently green, and set them to either darkgreen or white according to the order of circle/square? Or strength setting in brush? Both seem to effect things, but anyhow, the point is that I cannot seem to get either of the intermediates: green, and pastel orange, out of a drawing operation.
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Offline AlexHW

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That all works for me :D

Except the colordex, but I suspect I don't understand how to make that work properly anyway. I painted a 4 step gradient darkgreen - green - pastel orange - white across the colordex, but I only seem to be able to effect pixels that are currently green, and set them to either darkgreen or white according to the order of circle/square? Or strength setting in brush? Both seem to effect things, but anyhow, the point is that I cannot seem to get either of the intermediates: green, and pastel orange, out of a drawing operation.

Good to hear it's drawing for you.
As to the Colordex.. Make sure your softness setting on your brush is adjusted so that the brush has a blurry edge in the little preview box. Also set the Steps for the brush. The steps essentially control how many intermediate colors get drawn while you make a stroke. The Softness controls how tight or spread out those steps/colors are.. The strength level controls the overall extent to push the colors..
Try fiddling with all those together to get the colordex working.