Reply With Quotepaint.net or gimp.
There was another thread here, also about bitmaps for games, and there was a mention about a bitmap repository. You'll have to exercise some google-fu to find it. Probably find the actual site first.
So I made my first Android game which was fun. I did do all the gfx using primitive draw methods. Now going forward I should probably use bitmaps or something for my next project because primitives won't get me very far.
Now I know (or think I know) that most of the artsy industry is using Photoshop. But PS is extremely expensive and I'm not going to invest that much. What other more reasonable alternatives are out there? It also has to be one that has some online tutorials and such for a beginner and maybe a community using it.
paint.net or gimp.
There was another thread here, also about bitmaps for games, and there was a mention about a bitmap repository. You'll have to exercise some google-fu to find it. Probably find the actual site first.
Yeah, or for 3D objects, you can actually model them, apply the texture, and render, using something like Bryce or another cheap tool, in lieu of one of the more serious pro tools that runs into real money for a license. You can get some nifty effects out of messing with such tools' texture systems -- usually by stressing them to do extremely unnatural and unrealistic things, including various forms of animation you can dump out by frames.
So far as I know, freeware 3D modeling and rendering is still kind of awful in terms of usability, but you never know, maybe something is out there that is actually usable by someone who's not the programmer.
Danc at lost garden made a set of tiles for prototyping that he released for free a while ago. I actually saw a ios game for sale that looked like it WA using them. You can also get sprite dumps from a lot of older games if you go to fansites, if you have a specific style in mind.
There are tons of tiles and sprites here and I think they're all free to use:
http://www.reinerstilesets.de/
Here's Danc's free stuff:
http://www.lostgarden.com/search/lab...ame%20graphics
Deluxe Paint II!
:-)
Whoa...it's been a while since I read Lost Garden regularly, I had no idea that Danc was one of the SpryFox guys that just got ripped off in the Yeti Town scandal. Crazy stuff.
Thanks for the links. I can start playing with these until I learn to make my own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Shop_Pro
Aha...finally remembered the name. I started on this before moving to Photoshop, and it did lots of cool stuff for cheap. Now i understand over the years it lost a bit of it's magic(i could be wrong on this), but i was using Paint shop pro 8 and 9(about 5-7 years back?) and they were cheap(£20-£30) at the time and pretty fully featured and easy enough to use.
Two big tips from when I learned Paint.NET:Originally Posted by marxeil
1. Layers. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to alter an entire image, learn and use the layering features
2. Deselect. I don't know if this is as big a problem in GIMP or others, but Paint.NET always likes to sneak-select something off the screen or in another layer and it can drive you crazy trying to figure out why a tool isn't doing anything. Pretty much whack ESC before doing anything
Thanks again for all the answers. I'm giving gimp a try before I buy anything. Can it be used to paint something from scratch or just to manipulate existing images?
Sorry if I'm not making sense. The whole digitally creative process is new to me.
You can do both with Gimp. It's basically an open source version of Photoshop. There are few things that Gimp cannot do that Photoshop can do, but the interface isn't as refined. Creating digital art is very difficult.
While Photoshop is industry standard for some types of digital art creation, Gimp shouldn't hold you back if you're dedicated to learning.
IMO neither Photoshop nor Gimp should be used to create images from scratch, but then, IANAArtist.
You would want a pressure-sensitive tablet and pen plus art software. PS and GIMP are for after the image is made, not for making it, unless you're talking about geometrics like logos.
1) Gimp
2) Deluxer Paint 2
3) ImageMagick
I draw stuff using Gimp.
For pixel editing theres not really anything good. Deluxe Paint II for Amiga was the last good tool... there was around a version for Windows 2.0. You can still find it on abandonwarez sites.
A good pixel tool should enable all tools and features, on 256 colours. Most tools nowdays, like Gimp, work on RGB and disable features in 256 colours.
I use to have a set of small tools, to work with graphics, do stuff like create seamless textures (but theres gimp tutorials and plugins for that).
Another GREAT tool for game graphics creating is Imagemagick. With ImageMagick you can do all you can do with Gimp or Photoshop, but programatically from the console. If you have to glue 256 files togueter, and at the same time apply some filter, or do something more complex, IM will do it nicelly.
Whoa there! You just blew my mind.
Humm?
Well, if your game have 80 files, and for some reason you want to resize then, you may open one after another, and edit that on your favourite graphic program. Or do it with a simple command.
IM even have some funky stuff, like "Liquid Resize"
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/resize/
IM talk lot of different image formats, even PDF and "txt".
Combine, cut, you can do anything, everything with IM.
Sometimes (wen you are editing a single image, and you don't know what you want) is much better with a graphic editor, but if you have to process automatically, or want to repeat it with different parameters, is best to write a small script for IM.
I spend 2-4 hours per day in Photoshop processing satellite imagery and data. Go ahead and learn on GIMP, but save your pennies and plan on using Photoshop eventually. It is vastly superior. You can also create images from scratch with the brush and other tools, there are some basic 3D functionss, and excellent tutorials and books. It's just more polished, more flexible, and more functional than GIMP. It supports batch processing for almost everything, and the algorithms are vastly superior to ImageMagick.
I am webmaster, I used to love photoshop. But since I moved to Gimp, I have not looked back. Both Photoshop and Gimp are to modify photos, not to do pixel art, so are not the best tool for the work. ImageMagick exist also as a api, so you can embed it on a game, so it preprocess or reprocess images on the fly.
I don't know why Manresa think Photoshop is superior, perhaps he must work in some way or mode that is only supported by Photoshop. Gimp is designed to work with RGB de 8 bits, and I have meet people that say need to work with RGB de 16 bits. But theres a build/mod of Gimp for that, so I dunno. What I know, is that the people using Photoshop are happy with Photoshop and don't really think need other stuff. So probably is a decent program. "Best" is too big a word, and I think depend on what you need. For the average joe, I suggest to use Gimp, since Photoshop cost 1200$.
Satellite imagery typically isn't 8 bit or even 16. I've seen a few flavors, including 24-bit and 11-bit. I genuinely don't know how Gimp would handle those.
Just now, the engine seems to work with sRGB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB
sRGB uses 16 bits per channel. So the resulting pixel has 32 bits in RGBA.
Its planed for this year to change to something that will support scRGB in engine [1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScRGB
scRGB uses 16 bits per channel. So the resulting pixel has 64 bits in RGBA.
[1]
http://www.gimpusers.com/forums/gimp...t#message64324
For pixel art, you want to use a very small palette, maybe only 16 colours. Adding new colours is against the quality of a pixel art image.
Tools like Photoshop or Gimp are not adecuate, but not because work on sRGB or scRGB, but because don't work in 256 colours.
Really?
I know I sound like a fanboi, but if you're serious about image processing, you use Photoshop, full stop. By all means learn on something else: Photoshop is just under $700, and impossible to justify if you're not using it for work. If you are using it for work, don't waste time and money on anything else, unless your needs are very specialized.ndexed Color mode
Indexed Color mode produces 8‑bit image files with up to 256 colors. When converting to indexed color, Photoshop builds a color lookup table (CLUT), which stores and indexes the colors in the image. If a color in the original image does not appear in the table, the program chooses the closest one or uses dithering to simulate the color using available colors.
Although its palette of colors is limited, indexed color can reduce file size yet maintain the visual quality needed for multimedia presentations, web pages, and the like. Limited editing is available in this mode. For extensive editing, you should convert temporarily to RGB mode. Indexed color files can be saved in Photoshop, BMP, DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine), GIF, Photoshop EPS, Large Document Format (PSB), PCX, Photoshop PDF, Photoshop Raw, Photoshop 2.0, PICT, PNG, Targa®, or TIFF formats.
I'd suggest (like others) paint.net as well as some great free 2D graphics with spritelib gpl.
Manresa: I think the point Teiman has repeatedly tried to make is in the quote you posted. "Limited editing is available in this mode."
For creating color-limited pixel art, modern tools like Gimp and Photoshop actively restrict the number of tools (literally tools, the things you select from the Toolbox that do shit to the image) you can use on pixel art. Therefore, Photoshop is not the ideal software for that application. It is possible, and Teiman has said, that no such software is currently produced and supported.
I have been using the same (legal) copy of Paint Shop Pro 4 since 1995 to create pixel art. I've never found anything better for that purpose.
Yea, I still use PSP 7 for casual image editing.
The new one is like £80, installs crapware and far less functional.
Not that I know which package is which, but there are an awful lot of artists doing original digital work from scratch. I bet they're not all using DOS-compatibility mode or DRI or whatever. There must be something out there now that's good for high-quality "paint" type work.
Oh yeah, it sucks. I think Corel bought it and now just use the name.
So, weirdly, these came up in the EA suxxors thread, and I remembered this thread. Figured I'd leave them here for posterity, or whatever.
Grafx2:
https://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
Pro Motion:
http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/ind...8Pro_Motion%29
Thanks, this is a great find.
I think painting in 256 colours is more like *drawing* and painting in photoshop with 2million colours is more like *painting*. Painting is Ok, is a fine art, but is different than drawing. What you can do and how you do it, with a limited palete and solid lines/colours is different.
Aesthetically with a palette you create a new "world". If in this world white people have a slight blue tint. It all made sense withing the "world of colour" you have invented. I don't think you can do that with painting, if in painting you make white people slightly blue, will look ill or poorly painted.
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