GraphicsGale help

[8-bit_madness]

Hello I'm new to these forums. I'm currently testing out a program called GraphicsGale (Free version) which I really like. Anyway I'm running the program on my Mac via parallels and I have a few questions. Firstly, I'm almost at the point where I want to start animating stuff for a game but I've read that the free version doesn't allow you to do this? Although some people have said that you can but you can't save them properly. Which is true? Also when creating tile maps do the sprites have to all be the same size? Like can I create a 16x16 image of some bricks and a 64x64 image of a tree, will that work? Also I'm having problems with copy and paste in this program. I know where the functions are but I can't seem to do this on my Mac. I think that this is because the program was originally designed for PC the commands are slightly different. How do I change this so that it will work on my Mac? I'm assuming it's file>preferences>key but I'm not seeing any options to change the commands and what's the difference between copy[32bpp] and copy display image? Thanks.

[32]

You can animate but the free version doesn't support gif export, I believe it supports batch exporting and sheet exporting though so it's easy enough to get around (though I do recommend buying it if you're enjoying it, great software for very cheap.) As far as I'm aware GraphicsGale has no support for any kind of tiling, so you're free to draw whatever you like at whatever size but you'll have to put it all together manually. The key bindings should indeed be where you're looking, the ones for copy paste are near the middle of the list under "edit." Copy copies whatever is on your currently selected layer, copy[32bpp] copies the image in full colour rather than indexed (I think), copy display image copies the image you see, the layers that are turned on.

[8-bit_madness]

^Thanks 32. I'll have another look. I know GraphicsGale is mainly for creating sprites not tilemaps. Though I'm nowhere up to that point yet, not really anyway. At the moment I'm just trying to make a few simple sprites etc to test out what will work for my game. Before I get into the nitty gritty. So while I'm still learning how this program works, what should I save the animated sprites as and how would I get around the lack of features in the free version? Thanks.

[32]

Just save as the native .gal format and you won't lose any data. When you need to take them to you game just go file>export and export as either multiple files or as a combined image depending on how you load them into your game. Once again not 100% certain they're available in the free version still but that's how I used to do it. If those options are locked off you can always manually copy-paste the frames into a sheet. That's really the only relevant limitation iirc and you probably wouldn't be exporting as gif for game use anyway.

[8-bit_madness]

Cool, nice to know. It really is a fantastic program.

[PsylentKnight]

There are tools like this that can convert the exported png files to a gif file. Its what I do.

MOD EDIT: Fixed the link for you

EDIT: Sorry, I always forget the syntax for clickable text and I forgot to even check if it works.

[8-bit_madness]

I'm not sure if it's my browser or something but that link isn't working.

[8-bit_madness]

Finally got the preferences working for copy and paste! Also I finally decided to buy get the full version. However there's still a few things that I'm having trouble with:

-How do you delete stuff (step by step) I know you go over it with your background colour but how do you select this? (I was using the selection tool & delete which is great for big edits but not so great for small edits)
-How does onion skin work (step by step) and do you need to set transparency for it to work?

Sorry about all the noob questions. I know there's a lot of videos out there but the videos seem to either skip important steps or are just speed pixel art videos which aren't particularly helpful. Thanks.

[32]

To change a shortcut go file>preferences>key, scroll down till you find the relevant one (edit - copy/ edit - paste) click on it, then click in the white box in the upper right corner above "delete," then press the key you want to bind. There is no eraser tool as far as I know, to erase you want to draw with your transparent colour, I always keep my transparent index in the bottom right corner of the palette so it's easy to find. If you're having trouble figuring out what your transparent colour is click on the "..." icon on your layer and turn transparency off, colour select it (using right click) and then turn transparency back on. I suggest always working in 8bit mode unless you happen to need more than 256 colours in order to make your indexes easily manageable.

Graphics gale has 2 types of transparency, layer and frame. Layer transparency basically lets you composite layers together but won't work for onion skin, you access this in the "..." menu in the layer window. Frame transparency is what you want for onion skin. This is the "..." icon on the frame window. Make sure each of your frames has transparency turned on, then click the onion skin button (the green running man) to activate. Click the arrow on the button to change the mode to either show the last frame, next frame or both frames. Under preferences>view>onion skin tick the "loop the first and the last" box to make the onion skin loop, this is good for cycles. You can also adjust the opacity of the onion skins here.

My personal suggestion is to set a shortcut for "frame - forward frame" and "frame - back frame" so you can scrub (flip through the images) and then use only frame forward or frame back on the onion skin and scrub to the opposite frame when you're in-betweening, having both on makes it pretty much impossible to see.

[8-bit_madness]

Sorry I edit a lot. I've fixed the preferences and thanks to your comment I was able to figure out how onion skin works. I was selecting the wrong transparency lol.