Hello,
We're currently making a game. We have started working on the characters and encountered a problem.
When working with Photoshop (what most of our artists use, naturally) - the Photoshop adds anti-aliasing to make it look good. Problem is, because of the Anti-aliasing the character gets a sort of aura in the color of the background color!
We simply take a pen tool (the tool that puts one pixel at chosen color) and take off the aura, But when resizing it happens all over again and it starts looking bad. Is there a way to overcome this?
I understand AGS has some Anti-Alias support but I haven't quite managed to understand how it works and how to use it. I would appriciate any assistance on the subject.
I have searched for simliar threads but could not find a thread about the problem I've mentioned above.
Thanks in advance,
Idan
AGS fully supports the kind of antialising photoshop does when it is used in 32 bit colour mode. If you export your antialiased sprites on a transparent background as png files then import them into AGS with the alpha channel they will be antialised just as they were in PS.
So always draw the sprites on new layers, then you can get rid of the background and they'll export correctly for the 32 bit alpha blending.
To stop anti-aliasing on resize:
> Edit > Preferences > General you'll see a setting for Image Interpolation which is probably set at 'Bicubic (Better)'.Ã, If you change this to 'Nearest Neighbor' it won't anti-alias on resize.Ã, However, image quality will suffer noticably and you'll spend some time cleaning it up.
I presonally find it faster to resize and edit the edges manually ... but that's just me.Ã, Also I prefer pixel art as opposed to smooth edges.Ã, Again, personal preference.
As scotch said though, if you import with a clean alpha channel in 32-bit mode (in AGS) you can achieve some great (and smooth) characters!
Good luck!
well. I do the following
1) make a copy of the char
2) on the original i resize using the "Bicubic" mode
3) on the original i select the area around the char (all the picture except the char) and copy it
4) on the copy i resize using the "smart" resize mode
5) then i paste the "area" on the picture
Groovy!
Another suggestion is to simple make big images from the beginning and them scale them down (never the other way around).
2ma2 has written a neat little tutorial (http://user.tninet.se/~vqb114l/ilb/tutorials/col.htm) dealing with this problem. I think it's the same method Chikago666 described, just more illustrating.
Check it out!
Read Eric's tutorial (http://sylpher.com/kafka/tutorials/aalowres.shtml) also. :D