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A few things here:
Andrew, Dee, etc: Would you be so kind as to ask your artists for some tips on sprite production? I have a ton of experience with Mac Graphics programs (six years with Photoshop, FWIW), but most of my expertise relates to print production, other still-frame photo media, or continous animation (such as a straight animated render from a 3D program). I've been experimenting with generating sprites from Animation:Master and layering them in Photoshop (so as to mockup a screenshot), but the results are less than satisfactory. It would be really nice if people with experience making sprites could offer some tips and pointers for the rest of us. Thanks in Advance.
General (everybody): Experssion, a program that showed a lot of promise when MetaCreations first unveiled it several years ago, was recently picked up by Creature House. It could best be described as a vector paint program, something of a combination of Painter and Illustrator/Freehand. At $139, it might be a good alternative to Painter (which I've never really liked) and Illustrator/Freehand for natural-media Illustration. I'm picking a copy up as soon as the new year hits (Tax Purposes... I've already deducted more than I really can justify this year). Creature House is working on integrating it with Living Cels, an animation program that uses traditional cel-based methodology rather than 3-D rendering. Could be a good start for some of you out there. Expression info is at: (url="http://"http://www.creaturehouse.com/expr2_frm.htm")http://www.creatureh...m/expr2_frm.htm(/url)
------------------ --You notice that you have been turned into a pile of ashes.
I just got Bryce 4!....kind of related....but im really excited about it yeehhaaa!
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(url="http://"http://www.angelfire.com/mac/startupsoftware")Startup Software(/url)
(url="http://"mailto:aanhorn@angelfire.com")mailto:aanhorn@angelfire.com(/url)aanhorn@angelfire.com
OK, this is going way off topic here but since it relates ever so slightly to creating new graphics to use in the CGE I guess it might pass muster.
I've been doing design/art/typography for 11 years now in front of a Mac. And while I know most of the illustration and graphics programs (esp. Photoshop and Illustrator) when I tried Painter (every version since 3) I was so thoroughly frustrated with it I got mad. Sorry, but since by degree is in Fine Arts I thought they really meant a "natural media" program. Hah.
Try Studio Artist by Synthetik Software instead. (url="http://"http://www.synthetik.com")http://www.synthetik.com(/url). Now this is truly painting on a computer and it's for both still pieces and motion stuff. It truly rocks. It's earned every great rating possible (including Freakin' Awesome from MacAddict).
Marcus Aemilius Decius (working on creating that Roman-era RPG and awaiting CGE final)
I dont have much experience with AM but i've done some EV Plug-in sprites and some others before and nearly all good 3d programs come with an alpha mask export along with the main render. I just used those as sprite masks and it worked like a charm.
AM has an alpha mask, and I'm more than familiar with how they work; my main problem has been that I need to shrink the graphics after they come out of the renderer, and resizing has a tendency to reduce quality.
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Originally posted by sanehatter: **AM has an alpha mask, and I'm more than familiar with how they work; my main problem has been that I need to shrink the graphics after they come out of the renderer, and resizing has a tendency to reduce quality.
**
I have extensive Photoshop experience, as well as some 3D animation experience. I, too, have done EVO sprites (None, however, have been made available to anyone except my brother). To prevent reduction in image quality, resize the image twice: First, shrink the image's resolution to a satisfactory level, then reduce the actual dimensions; make sure this second shrinking DOES NOT resample the image.
When I created the image sprites for EVO, I had to output the 3D rendering as a sequence of stills and merge them in Photoshop. It worked, mostly because I could zoom to discrete pixel images and used layers. (Although it took plenty of disk space to create all that)