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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: amigakidd on April 02, 2009, 07:13:23 PM

Title: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: amigakidd on April 02, 2009, 07:13:23 PM
I've been working on Mac based graphic arts using your usual Adobe Creative Suite. I've been a mac user as well since system 7. Plus a PC, like always.

I plan to use graphics apps on my hobby amiga. Yes, The amiga is used for hobby projects. Can anyone recommend good graphic apps for me. I'm not working on OS 4, only on classic amiga 1.3 to os 3.9

Yes, this is emulated though Amiga Forever.
I've heard of Deluxe Paint. I also want to know if there are Illustrator or Quark-like apps that I can play around with. or even 3d programs. I know that Toaster cannot run on AF2008.

I'm thinking once I get the gist of it, I plan to sell my amiga artwork via cafepress, if ever get good.

I have a degree in graphic design. Just curious to use an Amiga graphics app as an alternative add to my current knowledge of graphics apps. I got into the Amiga because of the graphics palette and interesting multimedia chipsets.

Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Matt_H on April 02, 2009, 07:52:04 PM
In addition to DPaint, also take a look at PPaint (should be included with Amiga Forever).

On the higher-end front, there's PerfectPaint (freeware), ImageFX (commercial), ArtEffect (commercial), and ADPro (commercial).

The big names in 3D rendering on the Amiga are Aladdin4D, Cinema4D, Real3D, Imagine, and Lightwave. Of these, I think only Aladdin and Imagine are still in development.

For structured drawing, take a look at ArtExpression and DrawStudio. There are a few others as well - DesignWorks, maybe?

For DTP, the answer is PageStream, hands down, no question.

Good luck, and have fun!
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Amiduffer on April 02, 2009, 07:52:58 PM
As far as 3D apps go, The main ones are Real3D, Alladin3D, Imagine3D, and Lightwave of course. Can't say that your experience will be pleasurable though, since the old technology will mean Looooong rendering times.

Photogenics and ImageFX are your main (photoshop) type programs. Adpro is an older version that hasn't been developed in a long time.

DPaint, PersonalPaint, Brilliance! are the main bitmap art programs.
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: 4pLaY on April 02, 2009, 08:26:32 PM
There is also Tornado3D wich i remember to not be to shabby.
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: amigakidd on April 02, 2009, 11:10:12 PM
wow, the amiga has 4x as much graphics programs as the mac does. This makes the mac a business machine :)

The job recruiter I went to last week gave me a checklist of what programs I know (about 2 page long) it has Aladdin 4D, ImageFX, Lightwave. I'm gonna learn these programs.

No wonder the Amiga is a creative computer and people feel attached to them, because it has a soul and creativity in it.

I heard that TV stations still use Amigas for displaying text on screen. That is so inspiring.

I'm going to learn some of these apps while I'm still unemployed at least I can explore them and play with them.
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Amiduffer on April 03, 2009, 12:14:09 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJLKbQys3zM

Check out the introduction to this new video, which I created with DeluxePaint4.
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: ChaosLord on April 03, 2009, 03:43:46 AM
@Newbie:

There are 256 kazillion other Amiga gfx apps that have not been listed yet.

A few important ones are: Caligari, Candy Factory, Clarissa, TV Paint.


For presentation software there is: Hollywood and Scala and 14 kazillion others.
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: boinger on April 03, 2009, 03:56:01 AM
check out photon paint 2 and brilliance.
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: AmigaHeretic on April 03, 2009, 06:07:22 AM
The 2 paint programs I've used the most over the more recent years are TVPaint and FXPaint.

TVPaint was released for free and you can download the latest version HERE. (http://www.tvpaint.fr/public/TVPaint359/TVPaint.rar)

TVPaint is kick ass on WinUAE as it's 24bit support is great.


Not sure what happened to FXPaint though.  I know I got mine through IOSpirite a couple years ago, but looks like they stopped carrying Amiga software??

Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: krize on April 03, 2009, 09:15:17 AM
IOSpirit have removed all the Amiga info from their pages :( Sad they dont release the old software for free (or sell it even)...

My favourite gfx program: TVPaint - Still very cool, with layers and other nice features.. Works with bigger screenmodes also..
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: 0amigan0 on April 03, 2009, 10:19:19 AM
@Amigakidd:

I'd recommend you to learn TVPaint and ImageFX.
U can get TVPaint for free ( http://www.tvpaint.fr/public/TVPaint359/TVPaint.rar ). One of its main strengths is its excellent graphics engine, as it produces among the most vivid colors I've ever seen. Ideal if u have drawing talents.

ImageFX 4.5 (can be bought here http://www.novadesign.com) is another Amiga gem.
It is a graphics manipulation program, similar to other software on other platforms, eg. Photoshop, but IMHO it's more flexible than Photoshop.

There's a Yahoo group about Imagefx (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/imagefx ) where u can ask for help!

The best 3d software that is a good companion of ImageFX, is Aladdin4D (http://aladdin4d.blogspot.com/ ); its own way of doing animation is different, can be hard to grasp at first, but once u do, u can't do without its flexibility.

Last recommendation, is to use Amiga emulation on a today's Pc/Macs, as it literally flies. Speed is *everything* for this kind of stuff!

Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Manu on April 03, 2009, 02:47:55 PM
@amigakidd

If you want feel free to download some of my stuff to check Dpaint out, all my animations are 13+ years old but still you can load them into DPAINT if you like.

Some of them was made with Imagine some Dpaint and some combined together.

Link to my "not very updated" site (http://personal.inet.fi/cool/amy/)
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Ami_GFX on April 03, 2009, 06:57:32 PM
I've been using Amigas for graphics since 1993 and by far my all time favorite is Deluxe Paint. To get the absolute full benefit of it you need the last version--5.2. 5.1 has a bug in the airbrush that is annoying. Image FX, Toaster Paint, TV Paint and Photogenics are also favorites of mine. Lately, I've been using Imagemaster RT which is a bit less intuitive but has a lot of hidden power.

Back in the day, I used Digi Paint and Photon Paint a lot and Imagine 2.0 for 3d stuff but now I use 3d Studio Max--a really old version--which is so much easier to use for the little bit of 3d graphics I do.

 Part of the charm of the Amiga is not what they are cabable of but how they work with and influence my creative flow. Pcs and, to a lesser extent, Macs, tend to distract me more. My Amigas are dedicated to art and graphics 100% and I don't use them for anything else like writing or web browsing. Amigas make me think about things in a different way. I like the buffer architecture of a lot of Amiga graphics programs. It can be a difficult to work with at first but once you understand it, you can do incredible things with it. And then there's the classic Amiga trick of just being able to select part of an image and instantly turn it into a paint brush. I've never seen that on any other platform.

Here are examples of what I've done with Deluxe Paint. This was done with Deluxe Paint 5.2 and Imagemaster on my A4000.
(http://www.daviddbaca.com/Images/Luminaria.JPG)

This was done with Deluxe Paint in Winuae.
(http://www.daviddbaca.com/Images/MandalaMask.jpg)

This is the same image processed with a Photoshop filter--I can't rember which one.
(http://www.daviddbaca.com/Images/MandalaMask3.jpg)
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Manu on April 03, 2009, 10:29:15 PM
@Ami_GFX

Hey, that was some darn good looking graphics you've made. I can't even begin to imagine how you accomplshed that in DPaint. Especially those "redsih" flares.Well done!
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Ami_GFX on April 03, 2009, 11:21:56 PM
The redish flares are done with the DpaintV airbrush-the new one-- and processed with a filter in Imagemaster. I used Cybergrafix to use Dpaint in 800x600 rtg mode. That helps a lot. In AGA ham, there tends to be a lot of unwanted artifacting when you use the airbrush.



Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: amigakidd on April 04, 2009, 06:44:19 AM
I was also inspired by Who Framed Roger Rabbit movie to start animating. I'll play around with TV Paint. I hope the dev team in Winuae should start doing open source support for Webcams and emulate Video toaster or a fake genlock capabilities into Winuae using cheap 0.3 or higher webcams. ::: Toni Wilen ::: Wink Wink idea...
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Ral-Clan on April 04, 2009, 12:46:48 PM
Quote

Ami_GFX wrote:
The redish flares are done with the DpaintV airbrush-the new one-- and processed with a filter in Imagemaster. I used Cybergrafix to use Dpaint in 800x600 rtg mode. That helps a lot. In AGA ham, there tends to be a lot of unwanted artifacting when you use the airbrush.


How in the world were you able to get D-Paint to use non-native screen modes?  I use DPaint V (yes, it's great), but everytime I try to start it in a non-native Amiga mode it crashes.  I am using it in WinUAE with Picasso96 (I am not aware of any way to get Cybergraphix to work in WinUAE - which is too bad because I am a registered owner of Cybergraphix).
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: trilobyte on April 04, 2009, 02:26:49 PM
Hi,

I personally think Brilliance 2.0 is the best bitmap paint & animation program on the Amiga.  PPaint (Personal Paint) is nice and comes with Amiga Forever, but I really like the interface and keyboard shortcuts of Brilliance.  Plus it has rarely if ever crashed on me.  See if you can find a copy with the manual ... you won't regret it.  It has everything DPaint does except the ARexx commands, but the interface is so well-thought out and convenient... very productive.

Also if you intend to work with 3D, you might want to look for a program called PixelPro, or Pixel 3D Professional.  It's a handy little app that will take your 2D bitmap art and make 3D objects out of it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Amiga art :-)

Hope that helps
t'byte
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: trilobyte on April 04, 2009, 02:30:23 PM
Quote

amigakidd wrote:
wow, the amiga has 4x as much graphics programs as the mac does. This makes the mac a business machine :)


The Mac used to be more "diverse" with programs such as Freehand, Expression, Painter, Bryce, etc.  These days though the scene is less interesting!

Quote
The job recruiter I went to last week gave me a checklist of what programs I know (about 2 page long) it has Aladdin 4D, ImageFX, Lightwave. I'm gonna learn these programs.


I really want to know what job recruiter you're going to who tells you to learn Amiga apps!   :-D    It helped me once when I applied to work at a former Amiga distributor, but those days (and that company) are long gone!

cheers,
t
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Ami_GFX on April 04, 2009, 07:51:02 PM
Quote

ral-clan wrote:
How in the world were you able to get D-Paint to use non-native screen modes?  I use DPaint V (yes, it's great), but everytime I try to start it in a non-native Amiga mode it crashes.  I am using it in WinUAE with Picasso96 (I am not aware of any way to get Cybergraphix to work in WinUAE - which is too bad because I am a registered owner of Cybergraphix).


It won't work with Picasso 96 in ether Winuae or a real Amiga with an RTG card. I have been able to use Dpaint in RTG modes with Cybergrafix, the original Picasso II driver on a Picasso II, the original Merlin drivers and Merlin Probench which shares some code with Cybergraphix. Cybergraphix works the best by far and you can open Dpaint in any 8 bit sreen resolution up to 1024x768. You can even load a 24 bit iff image into it but you will only have an 8 bit pallette and it will be really slow. There seems to be some undocumented 24 bit support in the last versions of Dpaint--probably undocumented because it was a work in progress.
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Matt_H on April 04, 2009, 09:02:25 PM
Quote
There seems to be some undocumented 24 bit support in the last versions of Dpaint--probably undocument because it was a work in progress.


You have no idea how right you are :-)
Seen this (http://www.dallashodgson.info/articles/dpaint.htm) before?
Title: Re: Amiga Artist Newbie
Post by: Ami_GFX on April 04, 2009, 10:37:21 PM
Interesting read, thanks. Now I know a bit more about what I'm working with. I'll have to play a bit more with 24 bit images in Dpaint. :idea: