Nifty Tool to convert images to quake's palette

[=peg=]

I just stumbled on this rather nice open-source (GPL) multi-platform tool: Perler by Snild Dolkow.

(Its java, so you will need a JRE installed, unzip for source-code)


Watch the HD version on YouTube

I've made me an xml version of the quake palette (with and without the fullbrights) which can me imported for testing..

I figure this could come in handy for those who try to make new textures for quake! (the old-fashioned low res kind)

Below a comparison of the original picture and one reduced to quake's palette:

Original 512x512:



Converted to quake's palette and reduced to 128x128:



Not too bad if you ask me

Edit: Included a quake palette with fullbrights

[Spirit]

textures2quake !

[=peg=]

Yup I'm aware of textures2quake but perler gives more control over individual pic's (color balance/brightness/contrast/dithering) with "realtime" preview of the endresult of all the operations.. including the color reduce step. Not saying its THE tool to use, but i sure can imagine it being useful as an intermediate step in the total workflow.

And since its open-source it can be modified to do even better for specific tasks or batching or whatever

[Spirit]

Oh nice! I did not realise all that just spammed that link too quickly.

[haze_the_great]

Have you tried using perler-created images in quake?

I am trying convert a PNG player skin to PCX. I loaded your quake palette (thank you) but anything Perler outputs just becomes garbled in quake. I wonder if its really using only quake's palette, the images output look too good for just quake's palette. It says "The filter will try to mix different colors to make a better approximation of the original source color"

Also using textures2quake, it has the annoying feature of resizing anything you give it. Anything over 256x256 is resized to exactly 256x256. Screwing up the dimensions of the player skin (which should be 320x200) . Trying to stretch it back out after creates a blurred mis-matching skin that doesnt fit the model perfectly. Altho on the plus side with textures2quake, the skin isn't garble (you can actually see the proper colors in game) because it actually did reduce the image to quake's palette.

I'm almost thinking of download vb6 to alter the source of textures2quake so that it doesnt resize the output file. Although i've no idea what i'm doing with that.

[Baker]

textures2quake was more conversion tool for mapping textures. I never thought someone would use it for a player skin, as an example.

If I rewrote texture2quake today, it would be written in C instead. And wouldn't require the FreeImage library.

Inside3d Forums • View topic - Image Manipulation

And the palette conversion tool would be superior to the one in textures2quake which at times could do better (Sajt had pointed out some weaknesses in the color quantitizer -- i.e. the palette reduction code and suggested improvements, which I did write in C in the above thread). And I think I put in the docs for texture2quake that 256x256 was the max supported size, to some degree because it is mighty rare that a mapper use a larger size for a Quake map.

But yeah, I included the source (as I almost always do) so it can be customized, progressed or such by someone that feels it could be better.

[haze_the_great]

Yeah, I know textures2quake is meant mainly for map textures, it does a good quick job at what its meant for. And i know what i'm doing is kind of unorthodox, turning a high res skin into a shitty pcx one. It's just finding out what tools i can bend to work for me.

I would figure it could be done through Gimp. I can load in the quake palette, and tell gimp only to use quake's colors. But for whatever reason, gimp does a completely horrible hack job of putting the wrong colors everywhere and you can barely recognize it as a player skin.

Is there an easier way to go about this?

[Baker]

Is there an easier way to go about this?

If you want free and non-shareware grab TexMex.

Do edit-copy in your graphics editor, paste into TexMex. It will palletize the image. Do edit-copy and then paste into graphics editor.

http://www.quake-1.com/files/developer/texmex_34.exe

TexMex knows the Quake palette. You might not want fullbrights in the palette conversion, so go into TexMex preferences and there is a checkbox to uncheck.

[haze_the_great]

Hmm.. thanks but I couldn't get texmex to open or paste in any image file types. (PCX/BMP/TGA/PNG) Opening says "invalid file type" and "paste item" is greyed out in the menus and ctrl+v does nothing. Looks like it only wants .wad and .bsp. The fun continues lol