Graphics Gale - Q and A

[32]

I wonder if anyone knows if there is or is a way to set up a short cut to switch to the next/previous brush in GraphicsGale? I had a look but I couldn't find one. That and getting the zoom, move and eyedropper tools to only activate while the button is pressed are the features I miss most from working in photoshop I think. Suppose I could look into setting up macros, never done that with an external program before though, any suggestions?

[cels]

Is Graphics Gale still the most commonly used and one of the best pixel art animation programs out there?

I can't answer either of those questions.
But yes, GG is wonderful for animation.
If you need help feel free to post some questions about it.

Thanks a lot for the offer! I really am struggling, to be honest.

I'm working on this piece and I'm trying to do a bunch of different stuff with no success.

- I want to animate a looping rain animation. I figure the best way to do this is to use some sort of tiles or a grid for a layer with transparent background, so that I won't have to manually animate each drop of rain over the whole screen. I've managed to divide the piece into tiles, but I'm stuck.

- I want to animate a looping water flow animation as well. This should probably be a separate layer, I suppose.

- I need a separate layer of raindrops hitting the nearest structure on the right.

- If I can figure out how it works, I was thinking of doing an occasional flash of lightning, which would require covering the whole piece with a high contrast version, while possibly animating the lightning over several frames.

For example, the whole animation might be 20 frames, with 5 loops of 4 different frames. And in the final sequence of 4 frames, there could be a lightning animation. Not sure how the lightning would affect the layer of raindrops though.

So far, I've managed to add frames to my animation and I've added layers. But they don't seem to... do anything. Whatever changes I make, they all apply to all layers and all frames. Unless there's a good tutorial out there, I'd really appreciate some pointers.

[PixelPiledriver]

I wonder if anyone knows if there is or is a way to set up a short cut to switch to the next/previous brush in GraphicsGale? I had a look but I couldn't find one.

There isn't one.
If you can find a way to do this I'd love to know.

That and getting the zoom, move and eyedropper tools to only activate while the button is pressed are the features I miss most

Move - Hold Ctrl and Left Click drag
Eyedopper - tap Right Click
Zoom - I just have mine set to 'A'

So far, I've managed to add frames to my animation and I've added layers. But they don't seem to... do anything. Whatever changes I make, they all apply to all layers and all frames.

That's pretty crazy....
Can you provide a screenshot or video?

[32]

Didn't know about the move one, that's super helpful thanks. Been using the right click forever but I'm not a huge fan of the pen buttons when I'm using my wacom, smallest issue really.  Obviously the zooms have a short cut haha, I'll set that up now.

I'll have a look into it today and let you know if I come up with anything.

[PixelPiledriver]

So far, I've managed to add frames to my animation and I've added layers. But they don't seem to... do anything. Whatever changes I make, they all apply to all layers and all frames.
That's pretty crazy....
Can you provide a screenshot or video?

Or upload your file to GoogleDrive or something, and I'll take a look at it.

- I want to animate a looping rain animation. I figure the best way to do this is to use some sort of tiles or a grid for a layer with transparent background, so that I won't have to manually animate each drop of rain over the whole screen. I've managed to divide the piece into tiles, but I'm stuck.

- I want to animate a looping water flow animation as well. This should probably be a separate layer, I suppose.

- I need a separate layer of raindrops hitting the nearest structure on the right.

- If I can figure out how it works, I was thinking of doing an occasional flash of lightning, which would require covering the whole piece with a high contrast version, while possibly animating the lightning over several frames.

For something like this I might do everything separately and then combine all the different parts. --> test how they will overlap and interact of course, reference the image.
You can composite small animations by exporting a sheet of all the frames and then pasting them together.
Or you could use Flash.
There's a series of steps for doing that, so let me know if that's something you want to do.

I've also done a bit of Q and A about GG on my stream a few times.
It can be a bit easier to learn some things in real time.
We could set that up if there's interest.

[32]

Okay so this program seems to do the trick http://www.autohotkey.com/

Very simple after a bit of tutorial reading even with my super limited scripting knowledge. My script only works full screen cause I keep the palette window on the right but if you kept it on the left I imagine it'd work windowed. It just uses basic coordinates to locate the box, you'll have to figure out the co-ordinates for your layout but it comes with a little program that helps with it, relevant tutorials here.

Code: [Select]

#IfWinActive, GraphicsGale
{
p::
SetDefaultMouseSpeed, 0
MouseGetPos x, y
MouseClick, left,  1750,  239
Send, {DOWN}
MouseMove %x%, %y%
return
}

#IfWinActive, GraphicsGale
{
o::
SetDefaultMouseSpeed, 0
MouseGetPos x, y
MouseClick, left,  1750,  239
Send, {UP}
MouseMove %x%, %y%
return
}Where 'p' and 'o' are my shortcuts.

[cels]

Turns out I was talking about ProMotion, not Graphics Gale. But I've downloaded GraphicsGale now, and the good news is that I'm just as lost as I was before. So I still need lots of help

Thanks for starting this thread!

For something like this I might do everything separately and then combine all the different parts. --> test how they will overlap and interact of course, reference the image.
You can composite small animations by exporting a sheet of all the frames and then pasting them together.
Or you could use Flash.
There's a series of steps for doing that, so let me know if that's something you want to do.

Well, I'd rather not learn to use Flash. If it's possible to just do it with GraphicsGale, by combining different images, then that would be awesome.

Is there a special tile tool for GraphicsGale? I couldn't find one. For example, if I want to cover a 200x200 pixel background with 20x20 pixel rain tiles, even on a transparent background, I wouldn't know how to do it a single frame, much less an animation with several frames. Or would I need to make a separate 20x20 pixel gif and then import that into a 200x200 pixel image?

I've also done a bit of Q and A about GG on my stream a few times.
It can be a bit easier to learn some things in real time.
We could set that up if there's interest.

I'd very much appreciate something like that. The question would just be whether I'd be available when you set it up.


By the way, I'm working on a picture with 24 different colours. But the palette window on the right has like a million random colours. Is there any way I can get the palette window to only show the colours I'm using?

EDIT: Ok, I'm starting to figure things out now.
8 frames, 3 layers here. Of course, I still need to work with this and avoid choppy animations, but I'm starting to understand the software now.

[PixelPiledriver]

I'll be streaming for most of today.
https://www.picarto.tv/live/channel.php?watch=PixelPiledriver

Will answer some of your other questions later.

[Conzeit]

cels: for tiling you actually might want to go with promotion. not sure about animation but promotion is setup so you can set a tile size, and from there the program will figure out what your tileset is, once you've done that you can edit any instance of the tile and it'll update.

I imagine the same would work across frames if you animated, so very useful for your sea thing.

I've always been lazy about doing AA, but it's a must for doing freelance work...so I'm looking for easy ways to do it in ggale. right now I think just taking the basic color and going to image/Blur with a black bg is creating alright results that I can refine.  Anybody know if ggale has got any form of drawing with AA?

 I tried to figure out the "paint modes" (just found out ggale has em after years of using it) but no idea how they work.

[PixelPiledriver]

I tried to figure out the "paint modes" (just found out ggale has em after years of using it) but no idea how they work.

They're for working with alpha channels.
Here's some quick info.





I use this stuff quite a bit for various things.
Here's some crap I've made in GG with alpha channels.













There's some quirks to using it compared to other drawing programs.
So maybe I'll post stuff about that later.


Also thanks for the Autohotkey script 32! 
Will give that a whirl.

Is there a special tile tool for GraphicsGale?

GG doesn't support tiles. 
Use other software, like Promotion, as mentioned above.