[J.P.]

I modified it.

This time it is in AVI format and it is incredibly smaller. about 1/15-14 of the original size(not pixels. data size).

New Subspace Vortex

Wadya think???

Can you put that in the game or is there one more thing I need to do?

Hmmm. I'd better fix that link - Karajorma

[karajorma]

Looks good to me. I'll let the more artistically inclined have their say though.

[StratComm]

Much better.  Just shrink the size of the effect relative to the size of the image so that the thing can fade all the way to black at the edges, and then see about turning it into an ani of eff effect.  You might try PM'ing lightspeed or DaBrain if you need pointers, as I think both of them have experience making animations for Freespace.

EDIT: You can't stick an avi into Freespace as a texture, so you'll need to extract all of the frames into seperate images.  From there, it's just a matter of making an eff file.

[J.P.]

I downloaded ani-builder and made a series of PCX images. I tried to put it in ani-builder.

I got this error:

ERROR: First frame has an incompatible PCX header (should be version 5, 8bits per pixel)

???

[StratComm]

Each frame needs to be an 8-bit pcx file, and my guess is you didn't reduce the color depth before you saved.  The .ani format adds another wrinkle; each frame must use the same pallate as the first, so you're going to get some quality loss regardless of how you go about it.  Someone with more photoshop experience than me could tell you how to get the same pallate onto each file before you try to compile the ani, though.

[starfox]

Bravo ! looking good

[DaBrain]

Originally posted by StratComm
Each frame needs to be an 8-bit pcx file, and my guess is you didn't reduce the color depth before you saved.  The .ani format adds another wrinkle; each frame must use the same pallate as the first, so you're going to get some quality loss regardless of how you go about it.  Someone with more photoshop experience than me could tell you how to get the same pallate onto each file before you try to compile the ani, though.

That's easy. Just create a new image. A ver very large one.
Now copy all, or at least one per five frames into this.
Reduce the colordepth to 8-bit and save the palette.

Now use the palette for all frames.


Or use Bright(search) to do the job. Sometimes the result is better if you do it all by hand though.

I.e. if you see heavy banding, which can be solved by replacing one or two colors in the palette.


I'd recommend the use of EFF (dds frames) to you though.
The quality will be better, as your effect has too many colors/gradients for an 8-bit format.
(Well, perhaps not per frame, but for all frames.)

[J.P.]

I wouldn't know how to make an EFF file. I must sound stupid to you guys, but it's true.

I am now going through all of the pcx frames and setting them to Indexed color in photoshop. I think it's working in ani-builder.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by J.P.
I wouldn't know how to make an EFF file. I must sound stupid to you guys, but it's true.

Not stupid in the slightest. EFF is a new format to FS2_Open so it's hardly surprising if people don't know how to use it.

[J.P.]

I got it to work.

W00T!!!

Wadya think???

Is it possible to add some fog or something near the center of the vortex? I mean something that would make the ship blend better with the white and look as if light is being cast onto it.

[DaBrain]

I've PMed you all the things you need to know about EFF.

Looks nice.



I think real fog is not possible, but perhaps some glowpoints on the vortex model.

That would look great if I think about it.

I think that's a special task for StratComm.


Edit: BTW you should use JPGs for the shots you post here.

[J.P.]

Yeah, sorry about posting the bmp. I was so excited I opened up paint and saved the image.

And thanks for the pm. That was some good info.

[Deepblue]

Gorgeous.

[J.P.]

Thanks.

I am putting the .ANI file up for you guys to use.

Warp

[taylor]

Looks great J.P.!  I really like it in-game.  The extra large white, compared to the original, makes a lot of difference in the effect.

Few things though...

It really needs to have the width/height be powers of two though (ie. 512x512), otherwise it's slower and wastes memory.  At that size, with 75 frames and as an ANI it's using 37.5megs of memory.  There will be a code update in the near future which will hopefully cut that size in half for ANIs but DXT5 would be half the memory size right now if you made an EFF out of it.

*Really* need to cut down on the number of frames too.  It's way too slow in game, especially with small ships.  About 2.5 seconds play-through is the top of where it needs to be I think (Lightspeed or DaBrain might have a better idea of that number though).  For that speed you would need to cut it down to about 38 frames at the most, or go 30fps with it if you can't cut it down that much).

[DaBrain]

There is no need to use DXT5. S3TC takes up only half of the memory while it looks almost the same as DXT5.

And effects don't need an alpha channel. (Will they ever need it?)

I forgot to mention that only effects with the power of two can be converted to DDS.
I hope this didn't give you any trouble.


Here is a sample of the EFF use:
I've converted your frames. The quality loss is HUGE, as the frames had only 256 colors (for all frames), plus I had to resize them (up to 512²), plus the S3TC comression.

So if you it right, it should look superior to the ANI.

Download (EFF DDS, S3TC, 512², 74 frames, 9 MB, 4 MB zipped)

I did not cut out frames, but I've increased the fps. It will take up 9 MB in your gfx ram.

You might try to cut out every second frame. It might look ok with the higher fps value. Or cut out every third frame and blend two frames in to each other. (50:50)

Edit: My bad, it has 75 frames.
Open the *.eff file and change $Frames: 75.

[J.P.]

A .rar? I don't know what a .rar is either.

And I can't open a .rar. I wouldn't know how.

Can you put it in a zip file?

But from what I read I assume the quality of the picture was downsized.

I can re-render this in After Effects as a jpg sequence, pcx sequence, bmp sequence, tga sequence, tiff sequence, pict sequence, png sequence and a few other formats.

I can re-render it as 512*512, in "millions of color" depth at 30fps.

Then I can put the entire folder, that I saved the files at, on my site for download.

Can I see a screenshot of what you have right now?

[aldo_14]

RAR is another form of compression; it's slightly more efficient than zip IIRC.  You can unzip it with WinRAR, or get a freeware or shareware program that can handle multiple filetypes.  I mainly use PowerArchiver; http://www.powerarchiver.com/ which is shareware but works forever.

[DaBrain]

You should download Winrar. It's widely used here.

After effects, eh? Pretty cool.

Ok so the problem is fixed in no time.
Re-render it @ 512² and select 15 frames per second.
I recommend the use of TGA.

Use the DDS converter to convert the frames to DDS. And now just edit my *.eff file in the *.rar. Reduce the fps to 20-24. Change the number of frames to the new number.


Or just upload the TGA files and I'll convert them.

[J.P.]

Ok, I made the EFF file myself. Wasn't that hard really.

It works. I will upload it when I have the time.