Color Conversion

[XDelusion]

Hello, I need a little help here. I need to make the green guys here (see attached zip file) look as much like the red guy in the photo as I can. Could someone pleas assist me in this either by telling me step by step the easiest way to do it (with quality results) and or by doing it for me?

 Not to sound lazy, but I'm rather absorbed by all aspects of this project right now so any help would be a major boon, thankx!!!

[Ral-Clan]

Don't know how many colours you are using, but just off hand I think I would pull that green guy into a drawing program like ImageFX, or maybe even DPaint, then use a stencil (or a carefully defined region) so that the whitish colours aren't affected by any changes.  Then just use the balance controls to tint the picture reddish and pull the green out - but the whitish colours (eyes, claws) shouldn't be affected.

[Lurch]

Interesting what game are you working on? :-)

[XDelusion]

Thankx!

It's a new Alien Breed 3D title for the DOOM Odamex engine.

I had originally planned on using the resources from Aminet in order to attempt to re-create the original Alien Breed 3D in Nova's port of BOOM, but after a while I began to realize that I would need PrBOOM at the very least to partially realize my vision, I decided to switch over to BSzili's port of Odamex to AROS to finish the job, but got bored with the idea of a mere recreation and decided instead to go all out and add an entirely new chapter to the Alien Breed universe.

 Since I have a lot more options at my disposal, I am trying to take elements from all of the Amiga Alien Breed releases and apply them to my project. Some of the classic enemies will be returning, some of the environments will look familiar, I.E. out door fenced in areas with roads. Sloped floors, Missions, textures, etc.

 At this point I have seven of the enemies I wanted to add into the game completed or near complete, that included unique behaviors, hit points and all.

 I have the weapon behaviors nearly complete and only need to go back in and replace the barrowed sprites I am using now with original ones that I will probably have to design my self as the ones features in the AB3D resources from Aminet are unusable.

I currently have 7 levels that I am working on, and hope to have at least 1 level completed before too long that I can release as an early teaser till the rest of the work is done. So far it takes me about 25 minutes to complete that level on a good run. Then again I know where everything is at so it will hopefully take everyone else longer.

 My hopes are that people will enjoy my project, and that it will encourage someone to port Odamex to MorphOS and OS 4.

Oh and yes, this project will be supporting Co-Op, so again I'd love to see it running on all modern Amiga OS' eventually. In the mean time it also runs fine on the classic XBOX and should be on the Wii before long too, at least once HyperEye figures out how to get the WiiMote controls working smoothly.

[DamageX]

how about like this?

http://www.hyakushiki.net/junk/redclaws.zip

[fishy_fiz]

Are there palette restrictions? The "problem" with doing a quick conversion is that the colors in the ranges defined also allow for a few colors that work within a range for an enemy that isnt that color (ie greys work for shading fo both green and red) is that those greys will also get a tinge of red.
The best way around it is to manually edit the palette, while leaving the greys alone (as theyre also used with the horn).

Here's a few quick mock-ups to show what I mean......

http://imageshack.us/f/213/a1automaticrecolour.png/   <-- automatic color conversion
http://imageshack.us/f/7/a1bmanualpallete.png/           <-- manual palette edit

Bare in mind the manual edit was done quickly, the colors need to be editted further for more saturation (ala automatic conversion). It will also retain greys, etc. unlike automatic conversions.

[XDelusion]

Close but not quite.

To make things easier, here is the Palette. I should have posted it in the first place. Sorry about that.

[Lurch]

Wow, would love somehow get inolved. What tool's do you guys use?

[fishy_fiz]

Yeah, I realised it wasnt right yet (kinda embarassed to have people think that was a real attempt actually . It was just to demonstrate that you cant just change colorbalance/saturation and that it involves manual work. While the latter (manual edit) isnt as red as it needs to be it was to show that the image itself doesnt suffer, unlike the auto conversion.

Can you re-upload the palette please by the way? That one has too many artifacts (over 7000 colors), making it nigh on impossible to work with

[XDelusion]

Yeah, I realised it wasnt right yet (kinda embarassed to have people think that was a real attempt actually . It was just to demonstrate that you cant just change colorbalance/saturation and that it involves manual work. While the latter (manual edit) isnt as red as it needs to be it was to show that the image itself doesnt suffer, unlike the auto conversion.

Can you re-upload the palette please by the way? That one has too many artifacts (over 7000 colors), making it nigh on impossible to work with

Actually, you and I posted at the same time. Your first submission was a lot closer to what I'm shooting for than the second. Likewise, DamageX's submission was pretty much on par with the second as well.

You are right though, I think this will need a manual palette edit. I.E. go through and edit all the GREEN colors being used into the REDs in my Palette.

If ya'll don't have the time, I'll get to it eventually, but any help would be most appreciated and I thank you both for your attempts!

New Palette attached!

[DamageX]

Oh you need colors from a palette? Well, here is another attempt (note that my tool changed the "transparent" color into one of the colors in your palette)

http://www.hyakushiki.net/junk/redclaw2.zip

[XDelusion]

Oh you need colors from a palette? Well, here is another attempt (note that my tool changed the "transparent" color into one of the colors in your palette)

http://www.hyakushiki.net/junk/redclaw2.zip

MUCH better! Ironically though, over half the images in the archive were corrupted, but those that were not looked brilliant! Now the only limitation I see is my Palette.

 There are a few colors in there that I will not be needing. I built this palette using a collection of images from the Aminet sources that I thought I would be using. Many of them have still made their way into the project, others need work as they conflict too much with the look of the classic series, I.E. the Pinkish Orange Doors. What's up with all the pinkish orange in this game!?!

 That being said, I'll have a look at my palette soon and try to touch it up a bit and convert some of the unused colors over to the reds needed to more closely match the monster in the image above.

 What tools are you using anyhow? And thank you again! Very much!

[fishy_fiz]

Im gonna guess some sort of "load palette" was used there, which makes things easy, but gives pretty poor results. I mean no offense, but I thought that was pretty bad. Look at the graphics for example. There's been considerable detail lost by automatic palette conversion, which will often "chose" badly when looking for closest color within a palette.
Again, quick, but results are heavily compromised.

[XDelusion]

Im gonna guess some sort of "load palette" was used there, which makes things easy, but gives pretty poor results. I mean no offense, but I thought that was pretty bad. Look at the graphics for example. There's been considerable detail lost by automatic palette conversion, which will often "chose" badly when looking for closest color within a palette.
Again, quick, but results are heavily compromised.

I noticed that too, would take some time to clean each image up, I was hoping that if I fix my Palette some that it might make that task easier, by hand or how ever he is going about this. The closer it ends up looking to the original the better.

[fishy_fiz]

Sorry, re-reading that back it sounded harsher than I intended.

A few typos, or misplaced words, etc. What Id meant was more along the lines of:

"I mean no offense, but I thought that converted pretty bad. Look at the graphics closely for example. There's been considerable detail lost by automatic palette conversion".

Sorry, I dont mean to drone on it, just wanted to "correct" it 'cos I felt I came across too harshly (which was then repeated by XDelusion as well  

@XDelusion

So basically you want all the graphics using a universal 256 color palette?
Are there any "rules" in regards to palette indexes with different types of graphics (for example, do backgrounds, walls, floors, etc. use 1st 128 colors and "objects" use last 128?). Not an actual question by the way, just as an example of what I mean by "rules" to the palette.

Also, where did you obtain the graphics? Im looking for a fun, mostly gfx oriented project to play with at the moment, and have some free time, so Im happy to finally help you with some sort of AB3d "conversion" game if you'd like?