PCE Pixel art tools?

[Jester82]

If I wanted to take a crack at creating pixel art for PCE games, is there a tool for windows out there I can download? Thanks all

[CrackTiger]

If I wanted to take a crack at creating pixel art for PCE games, is there a tool for windows out there I can download? Thanks all

Keep your RGB values in integers of 36.

Sprites of various sizes and 8 x 8 tiles each use a single palette of 15 visible colors.

16 palettes for sprites and 16 for tiles.

Best to base things around a 256 pixel-wide by 224-pixel tall screen size.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Tools? Grafx2 is free and can do PCX.

I like NeoPaint or PaintShopPro but they aren't free!

[OldMan]

If I wanted to take a crack at creating pixel art for PCE games, is there a tool for windows out there I can download?

Which version of windows?
Most of the suggested tools run under XP; not sure about anything later....

[elmer]

Tools? Grafx2 is free and can do PCX.

I like NeoPaint or PaintShopPro but they aren't free!

Most of the suggested tools run under XP; not sure about anything later....

Grafx2 runs Windows to at-least Win7 x64, and should (presumably) run under newer versions.

The project is still alive, so it gets compatibility-updates if nothing else.


NeoPaint is still sold, and works on the latest Windows.


PaintShopPro is still sold, and will work, depending upon to OS and the version of PSP.


And, once again, just to beat a dead horse, I'll mention what professional game-developers still use for pixel-based consoles ... Promotion. Which now has a "free" version.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I've been using NeoPaint and PSPX9 on Windows 10 and they both work great.

I've been using PSP since I was like 10, so I am most used to that one's interface.

Since I don't do a lot of actual graphics editing and mostly use it for palette diddling/cut/copy/etc., it does things I need.

ProMotion looks like it probably does good stuff for free, but the interface immediately makes me itchy.  It's got this weird flat-look to it that drives me nuts and doesn't seem to have a way to make it not do that. Everyone's mileage may vary there.    It might just be Windows 10's new GUI crap doing it.

I had to lol when I saw that "pixel perfect painting" was not part of the free package.  Makes it sound like it fucks your art up while you move the mouse around.   It seems to do pixel jigglies fine though.


All of these options are better than Photoshop for PCE, btw.

Photoshop fuckin inverts the damn PCX palettes, and screws life up, and causes earth to tip the wrong way, and people die.

[Gredler]

Photoshop 4lyfe

[Arkhan Asylum]

Photoshop 4lyfe

photoshop can't even spell PCX

[touko]

Gimp 2.6 (not above) .
grafx2 works fine on windows 8.1,it should works on win10 too .

[Galad]

Grafx2 is very straight forward and simple to work with and as was stated has PCX support.

[Psycho Punch]

Photoshop 4lyfe

The trick with the inverted palette export bug is to work preemptively with an inverted palette. Boolean logic 4lyfe...

[Gredler]

The trick with the inverted palette export bug is to work preemptively with an inverted palette. Boolean logic 4lyfe...

tbh it's not too hard to stick to specific colors, then use gimp to flip and order it.

I want to try promotion, but the tools I am familiar with in photoshop are such muscle memory it's hard to use anything else.

[Jester82]

Thank you everyone for the responses. Gonna check out a few of these programs and see what I can do.

[touko]

There is no better program for 8/16 bits pixels art,all is a question of interface and feeling .

[Siskan]

I recommend GraphicsGale. It became freeware last month too. It looks old on the surface but it's frequently updated and they even implemented a feature five days after I reqested it last year.

The main reason I like it is due to how the line tool and right-click works. They both sped up my work by quite a lot compared to other software. It also has convenient features for animation.

https://graphicsgale.com/us/

[Arkhan Asylum]

I recommend GraphicsGale. It became freeware last month too. It looks old on the surface but it's frequently updated and they even implemented a feature five days after I reqested it last year.

The main reason I like it is due to how the line tool and right-click works. They both sped up my work by quite a lot compared to other software. It also has convenient features for animation.

https://graphicsgale.com/us/

but it doesn't support PCX !

tbh it's not too hard to stick to specific colors, then use gimp to flip and order it.

The fact that you have to use a completely separate (large) paint program to invert a palette that wasn't supposed to be inverted is moronic.

Everytime I have to do it, I want to punch someone in the tip.

[Gredler]

Impossible to argue. I wonder why Photoshop palette tool isn't easier to limit and export color tables better.

It works great for millions of colors, but for 16 it chokes hahah

The pros outweigh the cons IMO, the inconvenience of gimp conversion is minimal compared to the tools I am able to use while working on the actual art. I am reliant on a lot of Photoshop great workflow enhancers like smart objects, simple and flexible layer system, animation, batch process, action macro system, saved brushes patterns and shapes, etc. I could go on and on about the things I can do in Photoshop but can't in gimp or grafx2 (likely due to lack of knowledge on my part not shortcoming in prpgrams.)

I have still not used PSP, but last night I spent a good hour with promotion, and I can right away see it's benefits for tile map generation. I am going to stick with it a bit and see what results I can crank out with it.


After watching some brief tutorials today it de-mystifies so much about promotion, excited to get back into it soon.

[elmer]

but it doesn't support PCX !

Is there any particular problem with that? 

Or is it just that PCEAS only comes with PCX support built in (which I really should fix)?

tbh it's not too hard to stick to specific colors, then use gimp to flip and order it.

The fact that you have to use a completely separate (large) paint program to invert a palette that wasn't supposed to be inverted is moronic.

Yeah ... I can't abide the way that PhotoShop screws with palettes.

IMHO, on these 8-bit & 16-bit systems, palettes are sacrosanct, and the tools should never automatically mess with them.

But ... I'm not an artist, and if you really want to use Photoshop then the palettes can always be remapped, at least for simple 16-color images like sprites.

But when you're working with multiple 16-color palettes (used on tile boundaries) within a single 256-color image ... then having the art-tool messing with the palette is grounds for war!

[CrackTiger]

Misc tools may be good for organizing things to implement after the actual pixelart is complete, but I don't think that anything is better overall for actually making the pixelart than photoshop.

Telegraphics' Count Colors filter is a must-have and let's you quickly measure the dimensions and number of colors of a selected area.

I use lots of layers for everything I'm working on and like having various revisions of pixelart and palettes of an element, while also being able to quickly see it mixed with other elements as it will be in-game and then isolate it again. I use a tablet pen less than ever now, but the way I can quickly trace an outline over a scan of a rough drawing or just free draw the rough shape and work around it in layers is priceless.

If you only do one type of pixelart or just simple stuff, something else might be better. But I doubt that photoshop can be beat for doing any kind and every level of detail/variety/etc, with PC Engine as the end target.

[Arkhan Asylum]

but it doesn't support PCX !

Is there any particular problem with that? 

Or is it just that PCEAS only comes with PCX support built in (which I really should fix)?

It's mostly that I am used to using them, and have been using that format since forever, in addition to utilities all floating around that use PCX.   It was coincidence that PCE also used PCX.  A nice one, though.   It's not a bad file format.

We had PC Paintbrush way-back-when.  I actually used that in DOSBox for awhile when I was doing Insanity.   When we got Windows 95, we got Paint Shop Pro, and it's never really done me wrong.

GraphicsGale, and Pixia, are both pretty nice pixel art programs, though.   

Since I don't actually do art though, I like NeoPaint and PSP.   They have better tooling/image fiddling features, and that's what I tend to need.    All that other layering/brush doodling stuff doesn't matter to me because it's like sitting a chimp down at a 300,000$ grand piano.   

Shit's gonna suck anyways.

Yeah ... I can't abide the way that PhotoShop screws with palettes.

IMHO, on these 8-bit & 16-bit systems, palettes are sacrosanct, and the tools should never automatically mess with them.

But ... I'm not an artist, and if you really want to use Photoshop then the palettes can always be remapped, at least for simple 16-color images like sprites.

But when you're working with multiple 16-color palettes (used on tile boundaries) within a single 256-color image ... then having the art-tool messing with the palette is grounds for war!

Why doesn't Photoshop, being such a popular, powerful "industry standard" program have a way to invert the palette?  GIMP has it.    I am aware and agree that PS is a powerful program and has all kinds of confusing nonsense to make art do things of the art variety, I just don't get why it does something so lame to palettes.   

Granted, PSP doesn't have a button to fix it either, it... also doesn't fuck with your palette, so it's a bit of a not-necessary feature for the program.

Having the palette get fucked around with is completely balls when trying to deal with a PCX that has 6 palettes in it, for reasons just mentioned.   

I had a utility I made years ago to invert the palette instead of having to fire up gimp, but I think I accidentally deleted it and can't find source.   Maybe I will rewrite it and call it FuckYouAdobe.exe

I actually hate trying to use GIMP quite a bit though.  the interface fits the name of the program for sure.

[Gredler]

Why doesn't Photoshop, being such a popular, powerful "industry standard" program have a way to invert the palette?  GIMP has it.    I am aware and agree that PS is a powerful program and has all kinds of confusing nonsense to make art do things of the art variety, I just don't get why it does something so lame to palettes. 

Ultimately Photoshop is a photo editing program at heart, and it's main concern is more colors - not less. I agree that it would be great if they spent a bit of time making some features for pixel artists contrained by limited palettes. We are too minute of a group for it to be a feature worth approaching I suppose. They're worried about getting HDR tools for modern millions of colors functionality, not 16 color functionality.

There ARE ways to get proper photoshop PCX files to export - it's just way more work than it's worth in a actual art production pipeline. Long story short it involves creating palette files and applying them as cluts and use the palette manager to organize it - and I bet there are further options but I've not spent the time digging since I always get cabin-fever and want to just make art. It's possible, just a guessing game and a shitty workflow that's not worth its trouble when you can just toss it into gimp and adjust the actual palette. (save for web as gif is a simple shitty way to do it, etc)

I had a utility I made years ago to invert the palette instead of having to fire up gimp, but I think I accidentally deleted it and can't find source.   Maybe I will rewrite it and call it FuckYouAdobe.exe

I actually hate trying to use GIMP quite a bit though.  the interface fits the name of the program for sure.

Last night saving out some shit for DK I was thinking I should write a script to do it, but then though shit I almost always organize the palette manually not just reverse it.

I prefer to chunk it by color, going from dark to lightest each for easier tracking when swapping or animating colors in the palettes

But I doubt that photoshop can be beat for doing any kind and every level of detail/variety/etc, with PC Engine as the end target.

This is what I keep thinking, IS there something better? After a night with promotion, I have to say I feel a bit more open minded. If you have not checked it out, I would say its worth a looksie.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The thing is, PS doesn't need to "add features"

they need to do the one feature right.   It's a bug.   

This would impact a 256 color pcx just the same.  It inverts the entire palette and is wrong. 

[Gredler]

The thing is, PS doesn't need to "add features"

they need to do the one feature right.   It's a bug.   

This would impact a 256 color pcx just the same.  It inverts the entire palette and is wrong. 

I agree, the functionality you're talking about could be a bug and regardless if it's a bug or not should be changed/fixed.

I do think though they could add a feature to make this all moot and fine, palette management either in the index color conversion process or color table window which is accurate to palette assignment

[Siskan]

but it doesn't support PCX !

That's true but I just port it through another editor once I'm done with it. If I save hours on using GG I can spend a minute on converting to PCX.

[Gredler]

Pro Motion Official Tutorials are really helpful as well, I will walk through these with the program up when I get home, everything explained well!


http://www.cosmigo.com/pixel_animation_software/learn/videos

I highly suggest checking this program out, I'd love to have someone to talk to about it

[Psycho Punch]

The thing is, PS doesn't need to "add features"

they need to do the one feature right.   It's a bug.   

This would impact a 256 color pcx just the same.  It inverts the entire palette and is wrong. 

It's a pretty old bug that's for sure... I always make sure to work with an inverted 256 palette before saving to PCX anwyay (Index 255 is pretend #0, etc.), having another program in the pipeline everytime I want to update art would be extremely aggravating.

I'd ditch it if I was familiar with a better program, but unfortunately I'm not and I'm no artist anyway.

[DildoKKKobold]

I prefer to chunk it by color, going from dark to lightest each for easier tracking when swapping or animating colors in the palettes

This is super appreciated, btw.

[Gredler]

I'd say I've put about 5 hours into free Pro Motion NG, and have to encourage again that any PCE artists try it out. I am picking it up a bit now, and am definitely seeing advantages over photoshop which I had never been able to say before. Setting up palettes is a bit shmarmy at first but that is an attribute of establishing workflows and environments, common practices. The team behind it seems responsive, and working towards people's requests and suggestions quickly.

Leaning more and more towards buying it

[Arkhan Asylum]

hahhhhhhh see photoshop sucks.

[Gredler]

Danm, you got me.

I do think I will buy this over the weekend. I feel constrained by the lack of layers, and I am super curious about the dither painting tools, and multi shade gradients. I love the auto dithering gradients.

Some things I miss from photoshop, which I hope are alleviated in the full version and familiarity:

- It's difficult to overlay sprites while working on tile maps. My workflow in photoshop includes having sprites 'floating' anywhere I position them, so I can see how the character and gameplay elements look over the tiles as I draw them, to make sure they don't blend together. In Pro Motion NG it seems like any art on the screen is part of the tile, not 'separate'. I am hoping I can put sprites on a layer and then hide them when exporting so that I can see how the colors play together while working but not affect the final art.

- Out of the box brush library. In photoshop you have a astronomically more robust brush library out of the gate. In addition to the library initially available, you have a ton of very accessible and easy to adjust controls for things like hue/saturation/value, size, scatter, rotation, angle, and more. You can also easly find packs of brushes that people have made you can take and use. I hope I get enlightened on how to do similar things in PMNG but right now photoshop wins in the brush catagory

- Smart objects. Being able to create a non destructive instance of a group of layers, perform adjustments and transformations, then bake that into a new object is super handy and nice esp when working on variances of a single asset

- Interface. It sucks not being able to quickly dock the palettes to eachother, and although you can quickly save and load 2 interfaces; photoshop lets you save and name as many as you want, and is much easier to quickly layout and adjust the interface to fit different image scales and needs.

The palette handling however, is so much beyond what photoshop focuses on that it encourages me to keep going and figuring the program out. I wont stop, cant stop, and am having fun doing it.

Here is a shot of me drawing some shit. Arkhan, look at this shit. You love this shit.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Looks neat to me.   I suck at art though so all I really care about is the palette molester.

[Gredler]

I want this feature. I want it. Pls.

Yeah probably going to buy this weekend


I used the "brightness mode" to do the image above, but "multi-shade mode" would'd have been better control of colors.... I want it!


Also, cool timelapse of Yacht Club Games crew working on nice stuff with promotion;

[ccovell]

I haven't mentioned those old fogey favourites on the Amiga, Deluxe Paint and Brilliance, but both of them have that useful Shade feature.  It's not multi-shade (ie: multiple gradients at once) but it does operate effectively on one gradient range at a time.

[Gredler]

I thought this was incredibly applicable to this conversation;

I like the part where he says ProMotion is the current "best" but could be "better" and that there is a developer out there working on modern tools to generate palatalized low resolution art using modern workflows and functionality.

[Vimtoman]

I use to use Deluxe paint 26 years ago making gfx for a few amiga groups.

Just found this online. Juki was me Ha Ha.

God someones done a good job cataloguing this lot .

http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/author.php?id=15399

[Arkhan Asylum]

I use to use Deluxe paint 26 years ago making gfx for a few amiga groups.

Just found this online. Juki was me Ha Ha.

God someones done a good job cataloguing this lot .

http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/author.php?id=15399

Amiga/C64 stuff seems to be some of the best documented stuff for any old computer scene.  It amazes me some of the obscure stuff I've run across like "who saved this, lolwtf"

but, that's a good thing really.

[Vimtoman]

Amiga/C64 stuff seems to be some of the best documented stuff for any old computer scene.  It amazes me some of the obscure stuff I've run across like "who saved this, lolwtf"

but, that's a good thing really.

I'm amazed how they got all this stuff.
I think I still have a disk with some of this on it but I guess its wiped off.

[Gredler]

Your work looks awesome dude, very cool thanks for sharing!!

Looks like ProMotion finally did a mega update!

I am excited to get into it again, after reading this change log - the DARK THEME is going to be fantastic!! the bright interface is rough on my crappy eyes.

Am I the only one on here using ProMotion? I'd love to hear more about the other artist's habits and flows

[FraGMarE]

Glorious Photoshop Master Race!  XD

[NecroPhile]

Alien Crush escapee boss in Xymati?  The spidery reminds me of the walking skull spider things too.

Whatever they are, they look awesome.

[Gredler]

Not a valid pce color tho, right? 255,168 129. But yeah, even owning Pro Motion NG I find myself gravitating back into photoshop with almost every asset I work on :/

[FraGMarE]

Not a valid pce color tho, right? 255,168 129. But yeah, even owning Pro Motion NG I find myself gravitating back into photoshop with almost every asset I work on :/

Right, was in the middle of editing stuff.  The closest PCE color would be 255/182/144

[esteban]

Glorious Photoshop Master Race!  XD

God.

Damn.

Gorgeous.

[Gredler]

Right, was in the middle of editing stuff.  The closest PCE color would be 255/182/144

It was my understanding it needed to be divisible by 36 to be valid, so would 255 and 182 be invalid? I wish  we could clamp available colors to valid colors in photoshop across the full spectrum, not just either 256 colors or the full 16bit gamut Promotion is kinda good about it, but still 256 or full gamut and f that


Also I didn't mention how cool the alien head thing looks, nice dude

[Phase]

We use steps of 36 because it's "close enough". It would be closer to use 36.43 stepping, but I've never had a problem with the toolchain correctly converting colors in steps of 36 so I just stick with it. If you want to be dead-on, a closer list would be:

0 36 73 109 146 182 219 255

but these would be converted the same as doing steps of 36.

from https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=21600.0
reply #13

[Gredler]

We use steps of 36 because it's "close enough". It would be closer to use 36.43 stepping, but I've never had a problem with the toolchain correctly converting colors in steps of 36 so I just stick with it. If you want to be dead-on, a closer list would be:

0 36 73 109 146 182 219 255

but these would be converted the same as doing steps of 36.

from https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=21600.0
reply #13

Thanks dude, great pull. Those values should be engrained somewhere on some sort of stone tablets ;p

Either way, I am still thinking Photoshop is unmatched if you have a good handle on it  for static images. I can't speak to the workflow for animation as I haven't used promotion for that, only done it through Photoshop.

Also, has anyone tried doing bakes using maya/max and or zbrush for intricate animations and 3d shapes?

I was surprised when I found out that's what George Simmons did for the NHL and Madden games for the 16 bit entries

[CrackTiger]

I like inbetweening in photoshop. Being able to use opacity to view multiple frames at once and flip back and forth between frames the same as animation paper on a light table.

I just use Microsoft Gif Animator to test frames and timing. I prefer having complete control over each test frame in PS and only fiddling with timing after that.

[Gredler]

I like inbetweening in photoshop. Being able to use opacity to view multiple frames at once and flip back and forth between frames the same as animation paper on a light table.

I just use Microsoft Gif Animator to test frames and timing. I prefer having complete control over each test frame in PS and only fiddling with timing after that.

Have you experimented with the timeline palette/window in photoshop? I am not sure what version you're on but the current one is great. You can set the duration for each frame and play the animation with a hotkey, and you can also flip between frames with hotkeys so you can flipbook animate pretty easily in it. You can even edit full videos if you've not tried it's pretty funny how powerfull it is - almost unnecessarily so, who edits video in photoshop?

[FraGMarE]

Right, was in the middle of editing stuff.  The closest PCE color would be 255/182/144

It was my understanding it needed to be divisible by 36 to be valid, so would 255 and 182 be invalid? I wish  we could clamp available colors to valid colors in photoshop across the full spectrum, not just either 256 colors or the full 16bit gamut Promotion is kinda good about it, but still 256 or full gamut and f that


Also I didn't mention how cool the alien head thing looks, nice dude

Photoshart does allow you to clamp the RGB values to 9-bit color.  You go to 'Posterize' and input a value of 8.  Iirc, it will use RGB values of 0, 36, 72, 109, 145, 182, 218, and 255

[FraGMarE]

Also, editing or creating a post on this forum from a mobile device is a FUCKING NIGHTMARE