Regenerating Nostalgia - Amiga Wallpaper HD

[PixelOz]

Hello I am PixelOz and I'm new to this forum so I salute all its members. I'm a graphic artist and I did this Amiga wallpaper and thought that I should share it with other Amiga fans of this forums.

Here you can see it with far less compression than with the attachment system:

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/6049/regeneratingnostalgiaam.jpg

This is the third in a series that I started with the old Apple logo   wallpaper and just like in another Atari version that I also did I  decided to give this  one a different color scheme. This is another  wallpaper that I did (one of three) as a  tribute to the golden days of  computing in the 80s when computers still  had limited colors and sound  and when they still had limited multimedia  capabilities but they were  starting to move very fast in that direction.  Those were the days when  personal computers were starting to move into  the mainstream which led  to their eventual acceptance in the 90s as  another household item so  the pretty logo may bring back some fond  memories for some people.

The Amiga was a computer that I respected for its value. I was never   able to have one but if I had the money chances are I would have done   so. I had to settle for my PCjr but I had a lot of fun with that one and   I learned a lot about computers with it. Anyway I remember how good  the  Amiga was in multimedia at the time and its Workbench OS was way  ahead  of the DOS 2.10 that I had in my PCjr during those days.

The wallpaper is in many resolutions from 1024 x 768 pixels all the way   to 2560 x 1600 pixels in several different aspect ratios like 4:3,   16:10, 16:9, etc. and I also adapted it to 4:6 ratio IPhone format with   320 x 480 resolution and also 640 x 960 resolution. It has no   compression cause it’s saved in .bmp format (it is compressed in the zip   file but this is lossless compression). Any limitations will only come   from the inherent limitations of 32 bits total color (24 bits + 8 bits   alpha), if it wasn’t for that the color transitions would be far   smoother (too bad) cause the original rendering was done in full 128   bits total colors (96 bits + 32 bits alpha) in Open EXR format. There is   simply always a loss when downsampling to 32 bits total colors. The   IPhone versions were cropped from the high res render so they are not as   optimal but they still look a bit good and they also have the old  Amiga  letters logo in them.

I wanted to do something in 3D with a pseudo sci-fi theme cause I like   sci-fi a lot. It was started in Blender 2.49b and finished in Blender   2.5x (about the second half of the work) for the Apple version and the   color changes to the Atari version were all done in the new Blender and   one of the reasons that I moved it to the new Blender fast was because   it had a much faster renderer and I was planing to use the internal   Blender renderer only and see what it could do cause it has become quite   capable and one can get pretty decent results with it with a little  bit  of effort.

It took quite a while to render (about 22 hours) even on a i7 2.66 Ghz   CPU using almost all threads (7 threads) cause I rendered it in very   high resolution and it uses ambient occlusion and quite a few lights   with many samples. And just like the Apple version it also has some post   processing in Photoshop CS4 for some glow effects and a bit of   correction of color and light in some areas.

So you may be wondering why I chose the .bmp format instead of the   popular .jpg. The reason for this is because of the limitations of the   32 bit image format (24 bit colors + 8 bit alpha transparency) that   become compounded with the .jpg compression. When I did this version in   .jpg I noticed that even when choosing 100 compression quality in .jpg   files it kinda screws it up in some areas and I didn’t like it so I   decided to use the Windows native .bmp format to distribute them.

This increased the zip file size but you can then use the wallpaper with   much better quality in Windows. Now when you try to set the image as a   Set as Desktop Background function of Windows Vista and Windows 7 even   if it is a .jpg, .png or .bmp it will save the image to a special  folder  as a .jpg and with a lot of bad compression.

To prevent this read the included tutorial and you will be able to see   it with much better quality even on Vista and Windows Seven, it is   titled:

HowToPreventWallpaperArtifactsInWinVista&Win7Ver1-2.pdf

If you want to convert the wallpaper images to .jpg format your results   could vary with the application program used. For example even the   mighty Photoshop does a pretty bad job at converting it to .jpg (I tried   with CS4) and the same happened with Corel Photopaint and others and   this is at the mininimum compression level. I got somewhat good results   with The Gimp (free at: [link]) and the Xat Jpeg Optimizer program   (commercial program at: [link]) again at the minimum compression level   but of course it looks way better if you just leave it in the original   .bmp format so that is why I’m publishing it in this format but that is   also at your discretion.

You can modify it for your own personal use only.

You can download a zip file here at Deviantart:

http://fav.me/d3a2shr

Also in this location at Mediafire:

http://www.mediafire.com/?n72l5qvcrg86q3e

So there it is, I hope that some people from the old school of computing and/or sci-fi fans like me and others like it.

If you want to see all the other free things that I have in my place at Deviantart you can click in the View Gallery link at the right of the Deviantart page.

In Mediafire if you want to see my whole folder this is the link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?xym304qv5byua

[PixelOz]

Oh, by the way there is also a free Amiga Bouncing Ball icon in Win, Mac  and Png formats that I also did in Blender in my places that you can  download.

Just look in my gallery (View Gallery link at the right of the Deviantart page) or in my Mediafire folder.

[PixelOz]

The zip file is not necessarily damaged. It could be that your unzipping program cannot decode LZMA encoding.

There are many unzipping programs that can decode LZMA like 7Zip which is free (open source), very popular and is available also as portable, of course this is for Windows.

The portable version is available here:

http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/7-zip_portable

What unzipping program are you using?

Anyway I created an alternate zipped file which uses the more common deflate encoding (with a larger file size of about 20 megs) in my Mediafire folder.

This is the direct link to that file:

http://www.mediafire.com/?4cmw5wtb0xclbzn

Try that and tell me how it goes.

[PixelOz]

About the question if I'm going to do more, I don't know, I'm doing all kinds of things like this all the time in my spare time.

Check my folders at Deviantart and Mediafire and you'll see that I have been doing stuff like this for a while so who knows?

[PixelOz]

Hey I did another 3D Amiga wallpaper, it is in the Gallery:

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=3699

but I cannot put click-able links to for you to download it from there so here they are:

Direct link to desktop version page:

http://fav.me/d57afrh

Direct link to portable version page:

http://fav.me/d57agp8

An alternate place to download my wallpapers at Mediafire:

http://www.mediafire.com/?s6fv8uv963e0m

[PixelOz]

Mmmm... I used 7Zip with the normal regular deflate compression method to compress it with an IBM compatible PC (not an Amiga) so I'm not sure why you are getting the problem and the reason I use .zip and deflate is precisely because it is the most common and compatible compression method cause I'm trying to make it available as much as possible to the broadest amount of computer users so I seldom if ever get somebody that tells me that it has problems with this.

I remember that one day I got the problem with somebody that couldn't decompress one of my .zip files and I found out it was because I was using LZMA encoding but like I said I'm using deflate for everything now and I know that 7zip is not the best program in the world but it seldom gives me problems of any kind.

I don't know, Winrar should be able to eat something like this for breakfast. Ummmm any format that you can decompress that I may try? I can create .7z, .tar. I don't have at the moment a way to create a .rar file which could be better for you to also place it at Mediafire. Let's see what I can do. I will try later a different program. Will see, will see.

[PixelOz]

I created .tar versions of both files with a different program (PeaZip) and placed them as an alternative in my Mediafire wallpapers folder. Can you decompress those? Tell me if you succeed.

This is the address to that Mediafire folder:

http://www.mediafire.com/?s6fv8uv963e0m

Look for both files ending with .tar and see if you can decompress them OK.

[PixelOz]

I'm glad that it worked for you. Hey maybe you should check this other post I made here if you are interested.

It is about some new Amiga screensaver 3D models (for IBM compatible PCs - well there is now an IBM compatible Amiga too so it is for Amiga too) I made and one of them matches this wallpaper and there are several Amiga related ones.

If you are interested check this link:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=700088#post700088

[PixelOz]

3D graphics  is something that one has to work a bit hard to learn. To me is not that is difficult, it is just that it has steep learning curve and that it took some time to learn something about it.

Now, if one really tries and practice and practice enough there comes a point when one has learned enough not to forget. After a while is a bit like learning how to ride a bike, once you learn it...

Maybe one day yo will pick it up again. If you start with a different application it may take some time to get readjusted to it. If you have really learned enough about the subject in reality it is far easier o learn a second application than to start from scratch altogether cause many of the principles that apply to one program can be applied to another.

I mean for example in rendering I realized how much more I have learned about the subject of light alone and reflections and refraction and global illumination and a helluva lot of things that I didn't know before or that I didn't know as well.

In 3D modeling even if programs have advanced a lot we still find ourselves having to deal with the most fundamental polygon in the universe which is the triangle and as much as I have learned about modern 3D I still have to go into triangle management all the time and dealing with quads (double triangle faces) which is very common.

So the thing is that once you learn these fundamentals well enough learning a new application is a matter of learning where the commands and functions are located because most of the serious 3D programs out there share many common tools and procedures, enough to make it easier to adapt to another program.

Some people prefer to stick with a single 3D program no matter what but I tell you that I could learn any relatively fast. I mean I have used Ray Dream Designer a bit, Strata 3D a bit, 3D Studio Max, GMax and then I moved to Blender just because it was capable enough and it didn't cost a penny. And I have used a few others too like Sketchup and others. And I have used quite a few different renderers along the line too.

Once you learn enough it is relatively easy to move to a different 3D program or learn a different renderer. The same principles of geometry and light generally govern all those programs and renderers, yes they do have many differences but one learns them and adapt to them.

It just takes some practice and one has to take it one step at a time and be patient, that's all. Now, once you learn it can become quite addictive, it is a lot of fun.