IT TOOK ME UNTIL POST #60 TO LINK TO MY NOW COMPLETE ANIMATION BUT HERE'S THE LINK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THAT FAR!:

LINK
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Original Thread:

I'm guessing the ability to change the palette every animation frame is a new feature of version 5 of Deluxe Paint (DP5)?

Anim / Frames / Set Frame Palette ...",

How does this work? I get very bad results when the background image has a very different palette to a brush I'm using for the main animating object in the frame. How is it best to proceed? 256 colours seems quite limiting these days! Is there a way to use the built in RTG functionality of DP5 in a genlock compatible way or is the RTG output just stored in memory without the ability to output the actual video signal? Shame a fully RTG Deluxe Paint was never shipped

Last edited by BigD on 12-Jun-2018 at 01:45 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 10-Jun-2018 at 09:41 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 10-Jun-2018 at 09:36 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 12-Sep-2015 at 09:50 PM.

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@BigD

One method is to download the isotonic palette from/included with the Collector V3.5 archive (aminet).
Lock it. You'll be surprise how well it performs.

screenshot of the palette and all different icon types in 256 color on 8bit screen

If you don't believe me, ask Cammy or Rebel who have long experimented with palette mapping for the best results.

#6

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@number6

I'm not sure how I'd get that to work with Deluxe Paint V's animation feature?! I was hoping for some help with colour palettes of background pictures and brushes clashing and making do with 256 colours!

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@BigD

I guess the first question is whether you have the option to load and lock a palette. If you do, then here is what you are doing:

You are forcing the program to use the locked palette for each and every image, brush, etc. therefore eliminating any visual side effects.

If you know how wb does this? Each image you load degrades from the previously loaded image as it tries to map to an increasingly smaller expanse of palette with each loaded picture.
With the locked palette you can load 500 images and they'll all have the same quality. Look at the link again. That's all from one and the same palette.
A range of "greys" alone to make that icon would take a ton of greys in the palette. Ditto for the green, red, blue, etc. images. Yet they all have a range within their chroma using exactly the same palette at the same time on the same screen.

I don't know how else to explain it.

#6

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@number6

I understand the principle but can you tell me if this is a feature of Deluxe Paint or are you forcing Workbench to limit the palette available to any given program? I'm using OS3.9 on a classic so I'm really only interested in built-in features of Deluxe Paint to be honest.

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@BigD

Workbench has this ability by using a program like "fullpalette" on AmigaOS 3.9.

But a program like Brilliance, for example allows you to do the same thing within the program. I would think DPaint has a lock palette option as well.

In addition, although speed may not be an issue for you, the other advantage is using the same palette for everything you do, as opposed to what is called changing palette "on the fly". This eats up cycles. Even changing palette for every frame won't produce the same results as using the isotontic locked palette anyway.

Check you manual for loading and locking of custom palettes.

#6

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@BigD

I'd suggest that that you may need to remap the images so the palettes can match. So do you need to produce an AGA Anim5? I wonder if PPaint is more up to the job? Or some newer Amiga program.

@Hypex

Quote:

I'd suggest that that you may need to remap the images so the palettes can match.

That's exactly why you use a fixed/locked palette.

#6

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@Thread

I've worked out how to overcome this problem in DeluxePaint V. The functionality exists in the form of 'The 24-Bit Backing Store' which allows 16.7 million colours to be selected from and represented with their nearest AGA colour palette colour on screen. It will even recalculate the AGA representation in order to get the best match for the all the picture components (brushes etc). The only problem is that it is ridiculously slow!!!!

I really can't believe how unusuable it is on a 060 classic Amiga!! Why oh why wasn't proper True Colour/RTG Graphics Card support released for DeluxePaint! This is a fudge but something that would have flown today if Motorola CPU and Amigas had continued to be developed but sadly it was not to be

From the manual:

"The program will approximate the RGB information on screen using the colours available to the screen mode selected - the more colours available to the screen mode, the more accurate the RGB approximation will be."

It really is clever computer science but is not good for creativity because with a 256 colour background on an animation of 100 frames it took about 20 minutes to save the file and about 10 minutes to re-open the file! The patience required to build up an animation would need to resemble sainthood! All brushes were represented with their proper colour palettes however and the background and brushes could be built up in their proper 256 colour glory - it just seems to be ridiculously CPU intensive!!!

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@Thread

So for work flow and time considerations I had to load my background picture with the 24-bit Backing Store enable in the Screen Format requester and then actually stamp my brushes onto the picture in a bit of blank sky (all plain white luckily) and then saved the picture. This meant the colour palettes of the brushes were all normal as was the background when I saved it!

I then reloaded the new palette corrected picture file once the 24-bit Backing Store was disabled and started creating my multi-framed animation which although a bit short on RAM memory (lightboard and background fix functions won't work) due to the size and detail of the background image works quite speedily! I just pick up the brushes which are stamped on the image when I need them. It's a bit of a weird work around but it seems to work!

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@BigD

DPaint was made for the Amiga chipset really. Especially CLUT modes and colour cycling. It wasn't for RTG. And you can see where it has limitations and also was moving into an RTG direction. But I wonder, despite the time for DPaint to render, how do the anims play back? Do they play back fast and smooth as expected?

Another option you could consider, being you are using the Amiga, is HAM mode. Have you tested or considered HAM? Sure, aside from a palette of 64 x 24-bit colours, the rest are only 18-bit resolution, but would this (262,144 total colours) be better than only 256?

As to speed, it should play back at the same speed, since it's still a bitmap and palette like before. Apart form rendering time.

Last edited by Hypex on 12-Jan-2017 at 02:39 PM.

@Hypex

Quote:

Another option you could consider, being you are using the Amiga, is HAM mode. Have you tested or considered HAM?

Sure have as I've used the mode to load photo background images. I then load my brushes and remap the palette by stamping the brushes into out of view areas of my oversized background picture before converted it to 256 colour high res laced. This way Deluxe Paint chooses the best colours that I need to animate in 256 colours taking into account all the different brush palettes that I will use!

However, it is really painful to edit or paint using the magnifying tool in HAM mode however while I'm getting all my brushes stamped to the background image. It is seriously SLOOOOW even on a 060 That's why as soon as I've stamped the brushes I convert it to 256 colours so that I can do some speedy and fun animating rather than pull my hair out with HAM. HAM is a great idea but was not workable for animating. True Colour Graphics Card support was the only way forward for Deluxe Paint and it's such as shame it never took the jump before EA pulled the plug

Animating in 256 colours on the other hand is great fun! The dithering patterns are not that obvious either especially if the eye is focusing on the animation rather than the background. I'm really glad I'm persevering with this old program as it really is a gem

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@Thread

A big day for my Deluxe Paint animation. I managed to get my Picasso IV Pablo board to output my animation to my Mac's analogue to digital converter. That means I can edit my final animation in iMovie!

This really is a combined technological effort using machines throughout the decades! I mixed the sound using a lot of my own samples on my PS2's Music Generator 2 program (awesome piece of software for a games console with only 128mb of RAM) which I then recorded onto my Sony MiniDisc recorder. The animation was done on my Amiga and captured by my Firewire analogue to digital video converter which also captured the sound off my MiniDisc player at the same time! It will then be edited together and burnt to DVD on my Mac!

I have to say that the Picasso IV was an absolutely amazing piece of kit but experimenting with getting it to output TV friendly video makes me appreciate just how ahead of the curve the Amiga's custom chips were in this area. The Pablo add-on can only output either 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 screen modes to a TV (or analogue converter in my case )! They have to be Picasso screen modes too so a 640 x 480 NTSC High Res Amiga screen mode won't work This means that Deluxe Paint cannot be used to play my ANIM files that I want to export I therefore had to use a third party program to play the ANIM file as Multiview didn't cut it with stuttering and skipping of frames! A quick search (not quite quick enough for my wife but she'll come around) on Aminet revealed a program called 'AnimInWi' which provides the ability to play ANIMs in whatever P96 screen mode I through at it! It also provides the ability to stretch the window to fill the the screen in order that I can continue to use the 640 x 480 mode (the 'view in different window' option plays the ANIM in a native Amiga mode which doesn't work for the Pablo to export the video )

After all that bodging the result is a very high quality S-Video image but the animation just isn't as smooth as watching native Amiga video modes! I am inclined to blame the Aminet program which is playing the ANIM at half speed on a 060 (please suggest a better program if you know of one) but maybe it is that the video chips in the Pablo board are just not as good at smoothly running computer video on TVs as the Amiga chips were! Amazing really!

After all this experimenting and learning I realise that messing around with Amigas is still just great fun despite all their limitations in this day and age I'm glad I will be able to produce something at the end of all my animating though obviously no where near the quality of Eric Schwartz. I'm sure AnimatED would have been able to combine the sound and graphics but I'm really used to using iMovie now so I'd rather not get to grips with another new program/work cycle when I've used so many machines/programs already

Last edited by BigD on 12-Sep-2015 at 10:19 PM.

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@Thread

In regards to ANIM5 players that work with P96 screen modes I've also heard that AnimCommander is a good program. Has anyone used it? It claims to be very fast with a good range of features.

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@BigD

It's a possibility the videos are synced to AGA VSync instead of Picasso VSync. But it should be possible to get good VSync on Picasso96 cards as well.

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@BigD

I forgot about this thread. At first when I read it I thought it was another "DPaint on OS4" problem.

And then I saw my name. I don't remember replying on this new thread! And then I saw the date.

It's funny looking at this now being a slightly different person. So when I read it now I got out my DPAintIV AGA manual and look up brushes and palettes. Sure I read it cover to cover once. Beautiful fine print on thin pages I could see with the naked eye once. Those were the days!

Anuway I see two ways around keeping your palettes. You can load your palette in and load up your brush and select to remap it. Or you can use the option to use brush palette. All should be in the Color menu. If you have a background you may need to do the opposite and remap that to the brush palette.

I can't comment on the '060 as I haven't tried. I have the hardware now. But I did sense DPaint was a bit slow at times. Not sure if it was because it wasn't optimised or used OS routines. Though I'm sure it writes directly to the bitmap.

As to RTG, well DPaint as stated does support 24-bit loading, as well as in the backing store. But actual exported pictures will be 8-bit. For animation I don't see a problem as the ones DPaint was made for are ones that did tricks like colour cycling. It could have done better and also supported colour stripes with the copper but AFAIK did not. So swapping palettes around was used to great effect. And for efficiency. I don't think planar mattered here either as the new frames would be written whole or as difference anyway. And with interleaved bitmaps written as one chunk. In any case DPaint was a "real" Amiga program supporting the chipset.

RTG is another story. Compared to bitplanes it needs at least twice the data shifted as an 8-bit CLUT if we only think about a 12-15-bit pixel word. 24-bit would be worse as 32-bits would be needed per pixel write so four times as much needed per frame. Also, RTG is not as efficient. It may support unlimted colour on screen but without a palette it cannot change colours instantly or over the full screen. If there is a background or foreground you want to fade in or out, it can't change one colour and have the hardware do the rest. It has to rewrite the entire frame. Good for real video where this is expected but not for computer cartoons.

Last edited by Hypex on 11-Jan-2017 at 03:26 PM.
Last edited by Hypex on 13-Sep-2015 at 03:27 PM.

@BigD

Usually you just remap the animation frames to the same palette (likewise a brush can have its colours remapped to a fixed palette).

Using a palette as shown by #6, you should be able to remap both the frames of animation and brush to that fixed palette without compromising the look of everything.

I've used the remapping before to fix frames of an animation to a fixed palette as by default each frame had its own colour palette which creates havoc when being used with other things whose palettes are not the same.

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@_Steve_

As stated I've already got round the palette problem by stamping the brushes I need to a unseen part of my oversized background image while in a 24 bit screen mode and then saving it as a High Res Laced 256 colour file. This creates the ideal palette for each background I'm using. Selecting either background or brush palette did not yield good results and I would now where to start using an iso-tonic fixed palette or whatever it was called with DPaint

Anyway, my main problem now is the vsync issue with the Picasso IV displaying the finished ANIM is a juddering visible refresh for each frame rather than the smooth way that the standard Amiga screen modes display it.

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@BigD

Quote:

A big day for my Deluxe Paint animation. I managed to get my Picasso IV Pablo board to output my animation to my Mac's analogue to digital converter. That means I can edit my final animation in iMovie!

Honestly talk about taking the hard route! Just save it as seperate frames (preferebly PNG for portability) using PPaint, or ImageFx and import into the modern movie editor of your choice.

No need to discard quality by converting anlog and back.

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@BigD

BTW PPaint should play an anim5 on RTG providing RTG CLUT8 modes are available.

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