The Custom SPrites Tutorial Thread

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Medricel
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Post by Medricel »

mikenet2007 wrote:The thing I find most difficult is being limited to the 256 color pallet
You can use 24-bit PNG graphics (use the Alpha to set your transparency). GZDoom will display them in their full colors.
mikenet2007
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Post by mikenet2007 »

Shinjanji wrote:
mikenet2007 wrote:The thing I find most difficult is being limited to the 256 color pallet
You can use 24-bit PNG graphics (use the Alpha to set your transparency). GZDoom will display them in their full colors.
Problem I have with doing that is you limit your creation to those using GZdoom, many don't use that port and prefer the original look of Zdoom better, but personally I'll use either but I'd like my creations to be available to a larger audience.

However sometimes making a convincing looking blend is difficult in the original color pallete. To bad it wasn't more like 356 colors, that would make things easier, but its just something I have to deal with I suppose, backward compatibility with Zdoom is important to me.
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Nash
 
 
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Post by Nash »

The trick is to use a swatch/palette consisting of the Doom colours while you draw in 24-bit. When it comes time to downsample the bit depth, you won't lose as much colour information (in other words the final result will end up looking a lot similar to what you originally drew).
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Post by Gez »

mikenet2007 wrote:Problem I have with doing that is you limit your creation to those using GZdoom
-- and Skulltag, which uses the GZDoom renderer. (A slightly updated version of it, even.)


That said, I think the software renderer could be upgraded to support truecolors. It's not like it would actually change the algorithms' logic, as it wouldn't be a new feature like 3D floors. More like a change akin to converting ZDoom to use floating point... :wink:
mikenet2007
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Post by mikenet2007 »

Nash wrote:The trick is to use a swatch/palette consisting of the Doom colours while you draw in 24-bit. When it comes time to downsample the bit depth, you won't lose as much colour information (in other words the final result will end up looking a lot similar to what you originally drew).
Yea true, however in that case the more colors you use outside the 256 color palette the bigger the color loss would be in zdoom. I suppose thats what many do but I actually went into this project designing 1 level solely for zdoom, now its turned into a 3 level megawad that will have a Gzdoom version.

Basicaly I used Gzdoom for the first time a couple months ago and decided my level looks nice enough in it to make two versions of the wad. Only difference between the two wads however will be minimal tweaking because there are a couple things that bother me.

One is that my colored lighting in the wads hue is way off in GZdoom, it must render it differently. Other than that I'll probably move some torches off the walls in key locations so the ambient light doesn't bleed through the walls. Additionally I may add a better sky in the Gzdoom version but I want to keep the changes to a minimal, Ive already expanded this project many times its original scale.
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Nash
 
 
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Post by Nash »

Where are the pictures?
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Post by mikenet2007 »

Nash wrote:Where are the pictures?
Of the Wad, or the texture?

The texture I decided to scrap and make my own from scratch because the four frame original from duke3d had to be extensively modified to be the length and color I wanted but it just doesn't look good or smooth while animated. The megawad I've been posting pics of here, but mostly only of one map, to prevent the whole wad from getting spoiled.

This is my only decent sprite work for doom, this Caco I've showed before but its not 100% yet........

Image

Here it is in my map.......

Image

I wont show much of my map here since the topic is sprite related, but here are two pics, the bottom one has some of the colored lighting I was talking about on the face of the building, Gzdoom renders the light violet, this being one reason I'll be making two version of my map, one for Zdoom and one for GZdoom

Image
Image
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Nash
 
 
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Post by Nash »

Oh sorry Mike, I meant Eriance's pictures for this tutorial. They're all dead links.

But nice map and monster edits though! Can't wait to play that.

But does anyone have the pics for this tutorial?
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InsanityBringer
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Post by InsanityBringer »

Nash wrote:Oh sorry Mike, I meant Eriance's pictures for this tutorial. They're all dead links.

But nice map and monster edits though! Can't wait to play that.

But does anyone have the pics for this tutorial?
I do

http://basementnet.us/ryan/Files/SpritesPics.zip

Super future edit: I still have them! link updated, I guess.
Last edited by InsanityBringer on Sat Jun 04, 2016 3:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mikenet2007
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Post by mikenet2007 »

Nash wrote:Oh sorry Mike, I meant Eriance's pictures for this tutorial. They're all dead links.

But nice map and monster edits though! Can't wait to play that.

But does anyone have the pics for this tutorial?
Oops, hehe my bad. Thought you were talking to me, lol.

My monster edits are incomplete however, I plan to change another of its features soon to make it look a little less like the original.

I want to make an original monster for my duke3d map like Eriance has done here, and because the basics in sprite animation between Duke3d and Doom are so similar, this is good practice for me.
HeXaGoN
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Re: The Custom SPrites Tutorial Thread

Post by HeXaGoN »

Would Gimp Be A Good Editor For This?
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InsanityBringer
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Re: The Custom SPrites Tutorial Thread

Post by InsanityBringer »

Gimp should be sufficient, but naturally the steps will need to be adapted to GIMP's interface.

Really, any decent image editor should be usable for spriting, and if you got patience you can even use MS-Paint.
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Salad Viking
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Re: The Custom SPrites Tutorial Thread

Post by Salad Viking »

Nice necro-bump. Also, is that the title of a new book you're making? I Think That Is A Good Title For A Book Too. :P

Yes, GIMP is sufficient. The very little spriting I do is done with GIMP. But you'll need a document scanner or a tablet if you want to base your sprites off of hand-drawn images.
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Amuscaria
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Re: The Custom SPrites Tutorial Thread

Post by Amuscaria »

I wasn't aware that this thread was still even in the database. o_o Guess I'll just post my new tutorial here, if I finish it this weekend. :/
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cq75
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Re: The Custom SPrites Tutorial Thread

Post by cq75 »

I think this should be stickied, it's really helpful, and I've linked it to people many times.
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