[smi]

Hi

I do the graphics for a Freeware 2D Realtime-Strategy game. It is based on tiles, so the edges of any object must be clean without artifacts! There are two problems with Photoshop which I use for making the graphics: Every time an object is resized, the edges are automatically anti-aliased. This is annoying, because the objects must fit to every background so anit-aliasing is not welcome here. The other problem is, if there are two layers, the background layer with the transparency color, the second layer with the object itself, the edges of the object are also anti-aliased to the background color. Does someone know how to solve this problem, i. e. how to disable the auto-anti-aliasing? Thanks for your help in advance!

smi

[Pat]

Switch your Interpolation from Bicubic to Nearest Neighbor. It's in the prefs. It's also in the Image Size dialogue you use to resize the canvas.

-Pat

[smi]

Thanks for this hint, but it doesn't work. I tried it with two layers and also with only one layer. No effect...

[smi]

Ups, it only works when resizing... sorry.. Anyway, bad that it does not help for making the tiles :/. Some tips of you Game Artists would be very kind!

[StrangeFate]

First, why are you resizing and what ?

Usually, if you have a 512x512 texture and size it down to 256x256 the edges are clean if you use bilinear instead of bicubic.

So, what's exactly the problem. ...

hop schwiz

[balistic]

Debabelizer will do what you want, but I think it runs about $800. Its a stapel at most game companies.

[smi]

quote:

---

Originally posted by StrangeFate:
hop schwiz

---

agree

The Problem is that the graphics are not for a 3D game, but for a 2D Realtimestrategy, you know, whith isometric view and tiles and lots of sprites.

The most graphics are rendered i. e. trees, buildings etc. and postprocessed in Photoshop. They never have the right size for direcly using in the game engine, so they must be shrunken down or modified in any way.

Photoshop automatically anti-aliases the objects, when they are scaled. Well, this is good, but the borders are anti-aliased too, so the border of every object has to be "cleaned" with the rubber tool, and this is quited hard since there are 64 different bitmaps per animated character!

Any ideas would be very appreciated!

smi

[smi]

balistic: Never heard of this. Is it an alternitive to Photoshop or a Plug-in?

[balistic]

Its a stand-alone app. Its designed for turning a bunch of graphics of one type into a bunch of graphics of another type. It'll convert between a whole shedload of formats, and will allow you to define a color that doesn't get antialiased in resample operations. You can't do much in the way of painting in it, its strictly for file handling.
http://www.equilibrium.com/products/deBabelizer/features~benefits/conversion.jsp

[Pat]

smi, try it again. By switching the interpolation to "nearest neighbor" Photoshop _can't_ be introducing any anti-alised edge information. If it is, you're not doing it properly. If your source images have crisp edges, they're continue to have crisp edges, regardless of whether you resize up or down. This even works on multi-layered images.

From the sounds of it, your graphics are being rendered and then touched up, so your source images probably contain anti-aliased edge information to being with. If this is the case, NONE of the Photoshop's resizing algorithems are going to remove it for you. It will have to be done by hand, unless you're very talented in contructing uniform color palettes and working in index color mode --where you can isolate those colors easily and remove/replace them. Try converting your source images to index color (you're gonna have to chose the best # of colors, dithering options, etc for your project because it's an aesthetic question) and try editing from there. Photoshop automatically ignores whatever interpolation you've selected and uses "Nearest Neighbor" during any resize calls. Here's the drawback: index color only supports 256 colors.

-Pat

[StrangeFate]

i guess Pat is right.

What i tried once was making a mask around the desired object and saving the mask into a new channel.

After sizing down i selected the channel to have the mask back. IT worked quite well but the mask was antialiased.
However, i forgot to disable antialiasing for the mask, if you do it it might work fine.

[smi]

Thanks for your replies!

Pat: The thing with the indexed colors is quiet tricky! But perhaps this is the way to go.

StrangeFate: The idea with the mask I had also, but it doesn't seem to work If the picture is anti-aliased but not the mask, then the mask doesn't fit to the picture. It is a bit bigger, and resizing it, doesn't works neither.

OMG, this must be a top secret thing of the game industry...

[StrangeFate]

a shame.

I am in the industry but i never had to deal with that, been only working on FPS.

[shahar2k]

or you could take the antialiased mask and then use brightness/contrast on it, increasing the contrast to 100% will remove the antialiasing on the mask, while adjusting the brightness will shrink/grow the mask (if you cant shrink it anymore try re-softening the mask using gausian blur, and then doing ANOTHER brightness/contrast

I deal with this all the time I help make graphics for my programmer friend who is only beginning to learn this mask stuff

[smi]

Yeah, it works fine! thx!