[Nico]

I suspect he's converting the palettes frame per frame, like I used to do?

[DaBrain]

That's it, after I recolored them by hand, to get optimal use of the 256 colors.

It's a really stupid job... doing 100 times the same thing.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by DaBrain
That's it, after I recolored them by hand, to get optimal use of the 256 colors.

It's a really stupid job... doing 100 times the same thing.

Why not use bright (http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/TextureSpecifications / http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/TextureSpecifications/bright181.zip)?  Insofar as my eyes can see, it does a perfect job creating an optimal palette - there's almost / no detail loss converting most stuff.

[Bobboau]

bright kicks ass, I've used it a lot myself, the only time it gets flaky is when you have to do a long animations with lots of color variation and there is a short but very visable part of the animation that has an unusual color.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Bobboau
bright kicks ass, I've used it a lot myself, the only time it gets flaky is when you have to do a long animations with lots of color variation and there is a short but very visable part of the animation that has an unusual color.

Arguably more of a problem with the single-palette animation format, though.  Did anyone ever try to implement avi cbanis with the SCP?

[Singh]

hmm. I just saw the flame and have some feedback: although it looks good, perhaps it wouldbe better for it to fade to black/red instead of white? It just doesn't seem like a flame more than a gas leak. See the FS1 intro for an example of a ship on fire - it should be something like that :/

[Nico]

Originally posted by aldo_14


Why not use bright (http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/TextureSpecifications / http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/TextureSpecifications/bright181.zip)?  Insofar as my eyes can see, it does a perfect job creating an optimal palette - there's almost / no detail loss converting most stuff.

The man has photoshop, the man should use... and there Nico becomes helpless for his photoshop version is french
You can record what you're doing in toshop ( probably in the history tab, don't have PS running right now ), then in the file menu, you can apply automatically those modifications to a set of files ( batch conversion I believe it's called, in english ).

[aldo_14]

I think bright is just as, maybe more, effective as Photoshop, though.  Plus it's easy as hell to setup a bat file......  I'm sure I ddin't / don't get as good results colour reducing maps with PS.....

[Ransom]

Hmm, is it just me or is the second shockwave zip corrupted? (the blue stock remake one, that is)

[DaBrain]

It works for me.
Try again. It's more FS1 style, I think.

[Psychonaut]

After my reply yesterday i tried to get into this ani-stuff myself.  But what can i say. Thats not really fun. Maybe i didn´t find the right tools, but converting ani files foreward and backward and foreward and backward....just to get the pcx-files out of it was really frustrating. (And yes i know how to use the search key, but i didn´t find any useful hints).  Maybe there is a tutorial, that i didn´t find.  I would be thankful for ani(y) help.

Greetings, Psychonaut

[DaBrain]

So you want to extract the PCX files ?

You should visit this site:
http://www.descent-network.com/descman/

[Psychonaut]

So i see the anibuilder and the aniview-tool. Is there anything else, what i need? Maybe my thinking is too simple, but i thought, to get in this stuff slowly, just try to modify some existing anis.  Get the pcx, change them a bit and compile them to an ani again. It seems, that it isn´t that simple, isn´t it.

[DaBrain]

Uhm, you shouldn't do that.

All frames of ANIs share the same (256)color palette.

If you alter them, they will need a new palette, so you will loose quality 2x.

Like opening a jpg, and saving it as jpg.



After your work every frame has to use the same palette. Keep that in mind. Try not to use many colors.



Btw for everybody thinking the flak ANI is too long, or too big:
Rename it to "ExpMissilehit1.ani" and create some copies.
ExpMissilehit1_1.ani, ExpMissilehit1_2.ani, ExpMissilehit1_3.ani

Might look better for this effect. (Especially the flaklaunch looks great.)

[Krackers87]

I downloaded the shockwave .zip and it was corrupt, i dled it again but it no longer exists....

[DaBrain]

Try this link:

http://mitglied.lycos.de/da56brain/shockwave01.rar

[DaBrain]

Is there any effect you really hate ?

The next on I'm on is the super-stuttery nebula smoke ANI, but lets see what I'll do after it.

[wolfdog]

Didn't have time to test the effects yet.. but I did have time to put all the files in a single archive and upload them.. as you requested.. Click

[DaBrain]

Thanks
It's really crap to create something and nobody is able to get it.

[Deepblue]

Ugh. I wish someone would find a way to make it so that you could use alpha blending with 0, 0, 255 because I want to make a smoke trail with BLACK smoke. Thick, black smoke.