Palletes

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Feralidragon
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Palletes

Post by Feralidragon »

Well, another question by the newbie coder, me, and this time I want to know how exactly where the colors must be placed in the pallete texture to use them to fire textures for example?
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Re: Palletes

Post by ][X][~FLuKE~][X][ »

dont quite get what you mean?


how to import a firetexture from animated package in UT into your code??
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Feralidragon
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Re: Palletes

Post by Feralidragon »

][X][~FLuKE~][X][ wrote:dont quite get what you mean?


how to import a firetexture from animated package in UT into your code??
No, no, it's not that LOL

You know that in a firetexture you have a pallette texture to define the background color and the different colors of the particles in the textures, and I want to know where in the pallete I exactly define those colors, the background and the particles colors. I already did my experiments with the GenFX which has pallette textures to be used by those type of textures to define the colors, I made one texture in Paint Shop and tweaked several times the pallete to see the effects, and when I thought like "oh, maybe this is the background color", it never was LOL

So I wanna know how exactly I define a pallete texture, because I have to do custom GFX (firetextures and so) to some new weaponry and effects. I really want to do a good quality pack this time.
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Re: Palletes

Post by Myth »

8-bit image files are quite different from 16-bit 24-bit or 32-bit Because they have a palette.
In some file formats the palette is stored in another file and the image itself in another one. That's a bit more efficient since x number of files can use the same palette and thus reducing the amount of space they use.
Fortunately 8-bit PCX files store the palette information and the image in the same file. So in one part of the file the colors are defined, and in the other part a huge array of bytes, each specifying which color to use at which pixel.
8-bit image files are really old. New software don't work whit 8-bit images, they only convert the output. They define the palette automatically to get the lowest color loss.
To modify the palette itself you'll need to find a software that supports it. I heard that it is (or was) possible in photoshop.

Why does UT use 256 color textures? Cause it was the best texture compression available at that time. It gets the file size to about only x*y+768 bytes, without using any other type of conversion at the same time. (256x256 texture = max 67 KB)
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Re: Palletes

Post by ][X][~FLuKE~][X][ »

Myth wrote:8-bit image files are quite different from 16-bit 24-bit or 32-bit Because they have a palette.
In some file formats the palette is stored in another file and the image itself in another one. That's a bit more efficient since x number of files can use the same palette and thus reducing the amount of space they use.
Fortunately 8-bit PCX files store the palette information and the image in the same file. So in one part of the file the colors are defined, and in the other part a huge array of bytes, each specifying which color to use at which pixel.
8-bit image files are really old. New software don't work whit 8-bit images, they only convert the output. They define the palette automatically to get the lowest color loss.
To modify the palette itself you'll need to find a software that supports it. I heard that it is (or was) possible in photoshop.

Why does UT use 256 color textures? Cause it was the best texture compression available at that time. It gets the file size to about only x*y+768 bytes, without using any other type of conversion at the same time. (256x256 texture = max 67 KB)

pretty much what he said.

normally the background or pallette color is usually black, cant say i have experimented much texture wise this far in depth.
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Re: Palletes

Post by Myth »

][X][~FLuKE~][X][ wrote:normally the background or pallette color is usually black, cant say i have experimented much texture wise this far in depth.
What he wants to say, (I think) is that unreal engine 1 considers the first color of the palette 'the background color', which is 100& transparent when the texture is masked. (or when it's transparent in software mode, so that software rendering doesn't have to mix a color that is usually black, and invisible)
Many converters work in different ways. Some may set automatically the first color as black. Some set the first color to the color of the first pixel on the texture. The problem is that you don't control the converters, so you have to find a program lets you edit the palette its self.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Palletes

Post by Feralidragon »

Myth wrote:
][X][~FLuKE~][X][ wrote:normally the background or pallette color is usually black, cant say i have experimented much texture wise this far in depth.
What he wants to say, (I think) is that unreal engine 1 considers the first color of the palette 'the background color', which is 100& transparent when the texture is masked. (or when it's transparent in software mode, so that software rendering doesn't have to mix a color that is usually black, and invisible)
Many converters work in different ways. Some may set automatically the first color as black. Some set the first color to the color of the first pixel on the texture. The problem is that you don't control the converters, so you have to find a program lets you edit the palette its self.
But I have a program to do that: Paint Sho Pro has that possibility. I use it to convert the textures to 256 color bitmaps, and I can tweak the pallete. :roll:

But well, I found that there's already a texture package with a lot of palletes to use in firetextures (Palletes.utx), and very cool ones and better that I would want. :D

Thanks all :tu:
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Re: Palletes

Post by ][X][~FLuKE~][X][ »

Myth wrote:
][X][~FLuKE~][X][ wrote:normally the background or pallette color is usually black, cant say i have experimented much texture wise this far in depth.
What he wants to say, (I think) is that unreal engine 1 considers the first color of the palette 'the background color', which is 100& transparent when the texture is masked. (or when it's transparent in software mode, so that software rendering doesn't have to mix a color that is usually black, and invisible)
Many converters work in different ways. Some may set automatically the first color as black. Some set the first color to the color of the first pixel on the texture. The problem is that you don't control the converters, so you have to find a program lets you edit the palette its self.

pretty much, just used less words and no description..lol
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