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DuckReconMajor

Texture and Sprite picture format.

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Well, I seem to remember people getting yelled at multiple times for using bitmaps for sprites and textures. Now I can't seem to find anything that would tell me what format I should save them in. I know some say to use png's and use IrfanView to set a transparency, but aren't png's bigger than bitmaps? I used to use jpeg but I'm not sure how to do transparency with that.

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I have made many many graphics and mostly use bmp format (24 bit). The program you use to import the pictures into Doom will (allow you to) select a transparent color.

png are better for some zdoom features (like the added blood splatters and bullet holes), but for standard textures/ sprites/ gfx there is no difference in quality between bmp and png.

jpg and gif tend to lose quality when frequently modified.
jpg do not have transparency, gif can. but you should not use these formats for the reason above.

If you want to make sprites and textures just stick to bmp, if that is what you are comfortable with.

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DuckReconMajor said:

but aren't png's bigger than bitmaps?

If both images have the same number of bitplanes - the PNG (with it's lossless compression) should be smaller.

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Okay, I'll need the spiked clue-by-four of doom here.

DuckReconMajor said:

aren't png's bigger than bitmaps?

No! BMP is an uncompressed format, PNG is a compressed format! The same image is always going to be smaller in PNG than in BMP.

And the compression algorithm used in PNG is non-destructive, contrarily to that used in JPG, so there is no quality loss.

t.v. said:

If you want to make sprites and textures just stick to bmp, if that is what you are comfortable with.


That's a stupid advice -- unless DRM is editing his pictures with a hex editor rather than an image editing tool, there is absolutely no difference between working with BMPs and working with PNGs.

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there is absolutely no difference between working with BMPs and working with PNGs.

which is why I would suggest bmp, if that is what he is used to...

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t.v. said:

which is why I would suggest bmp, if that is what he is used to...


It will change absolutely nothing for him and what he's used to if he uses PNGs instead of BMPs. NOTHING. They are both bitmap formats.

It's just that PNGs are smaller and support transparency.

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... I think we actually agree, but have a different way of formulating it. So there is no point in continuing this bickering.

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Gez said:

It will change absolutely nothing for him and what he's used to if he uses PNGs instead of BMPs. NOTHING. They are both bitmap formats.

If, like me, anyone still occasionally uses MS Paint on older operating systems, you'll find there is a difference. You can't save in PNG format. If people are going to get pissy over file formats, the holyfacepalm images should be reserved for them.

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t.v. said:

jpg and gif tend to lose quality when frequently modified.

GIF is an indexed color format. It doesn't lose anything on frequent saving and loading.

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Okay, I'll use png's. Now how would I go about setting transparency? When I had transparent parts in png's before it came out white in the game. Do I still need to use IrfanView?

If yes, is it a simple option, or is it something special I have to do?

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printz said:

Well, according to realm667.com, SLumpEd lets you work with PNG graphics.

Ah, okay. SLumpEd was my first WAD editor, but I never really got to learn the whole thing. Guess I'll download it again.

printz said:

I didn't know DRM stands for your username =)

Yeah, I always thought that was funny, especially since I'm usually the guy who's scared to death I'm gonna get picked up for even mentioning someone else's work.

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DuckReconMajor said:

Okay, I'll use png's. Now how would I go about setting transparency? When I had transparent parts in png's before it came out white in the game. Do I still need to use IrfanView?

Yes, or any other image editing tool that's not MS Paint -- Paint doesn't know anything about transparency...

The thing is, many wad managers -- wintex, xwe and slumped are all affected -- are hardcoded to consider cyan in BMPs as transparent. It's handy if you work with Paint, which has no transparency. It's a big headache if you're working with another palette than Doom's which does feature cyan colors, though.

With PNG, the transparency is set directly in the picture. So if you make a PNG with a cyan background in Paint, you'll find out that if imported directly with slumped you'll get an opaque image with a cyan (or light gray, with a software renderer) background rather than the transparent sprite you expected. So you have to use Irfanview to re-establish transparency first, and it has a convenient (for spriters) option to mark one color as transparent.

Now, that -- having to pass through Irfanview first between Paint and Slumped/XWE -- is a valid reason to keep working on BMPs. However, if you want to distribute them, convert them to PNG first so they'll be much smaller on the HD.

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Well, you can create transparent PNGs directly in Photoshop, can't you? So no, you don't need to pass through IrfanView.

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Gez said:

Well, you can create transparent PNGs directly in Photoshop, can't you? So no, you don't need to pass through IrfanView.

Yeah, but like I said earlier, the transparent parts came out white in the game. I'll try again later.

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Gez said:

However, if you want to distribute them, convert them to PNG first so they'll be much smaller on the HD.

IF the port it's designed for supports PNGs.

Is there any port that allows alpha amounts to be set on pixels? It would make fiery things and the like much more accurate as to where to be translucent, and make translucency graphic-specific, allow semitransparent wallpatches and whatnot.

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Import bmp files (or anything that the wad manager supports) into the wad, but not as raw data. They'll be converted to Doom's standard graphic format. Vanilla Doom does not read PNGs and the format it uses is not BMP either. It's something about drawing "columns" which I assume are vertical arrays of dots set at various indices.

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DuckReconMajor said:

Wait, does Vanilla support png? What do I use for that?

Vanilla only support its own formats (graphics, sprites and patches use one, flats use another). Slumped, XWE and the others are able to convert PNGs to Doom format.

printz said:

Is there any port that allows alpha amounts to be set on pixels?

GZDoom does, though there are a few specific cases where it doesn't work right.

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DuckReconMajor said:

So what's raw data for?

You mean in XWE? Importing as raw data is when you don't want it to convert it into anything. Useful for making mods for advanced ports.

The difference between Slumped and XWE is that Slumped always "import as raw data" and you have to tell it to convert, while for XWE you have to specifically tell it to "import as raw data" to avoid conversion.

Then there are "raw data" pictures, too, not in Doom but in Heretic.

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