8-bit woes bleep bloop

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:32 am

Hi,

I'm looking at doing an 8-bit animation in AS.

If I draw something in Photoshop, at the smaller possible resolution, a couple pixels wide and a couple pixels high, I get crisp lines, because I'm just drawing with pixels.

However, when I import these PNG files into AS, they look fine in the workspace, but when I render the scene, it looks all blurry like this:

Hmm. One solution is to just change the size of the image in Photoshop before I save it as a PNG, to like, 3000 x 4000, but it seems backwards.

ANy suggestions?

knunk · Post by **knunk** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:46 am

MD
I did a similar thing a few years ago. My solution was to use the little image as reference only. I ended up building everything out of boxes in flash. looked very clean.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:53 am

Cool. I'd like to see that if its on YouTube or something.

Another solution is to build the scene out of vector boxes in AS using the grid snapping. Meh.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:12 am

Have you tried turning antialias off in the render settings?

One problem is scaling. Even with 8 bit if there is ANY scaling in AS, zoom or anything, the images will get "modified". Try turning off the antialiasing though... can't say it would work or not.

Also what ever pixel dimension the image is make the AS document that size. Or pick a size in Photoshop and set that size in AS. Then make sure all the images are 100% and fit within that defined area and nothing scales in AS.

-vern

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 6:01 am

Aside from the missing sharpness: 8bit doesn't mean "16 ill-chosen colours like before windows".

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:05 pm

@ slow > he he, these colours are some of the 8 colours that are part of the TELETEXT, whatever console/computer that it. Found the colour palette off Wikipedia's colour palette page. Its got great stuff.

@ vern > thanks for the suggestion. Tried it, no success. Yeeargh. Frustrating because it looks perfect in my work view, just can't get the sharpness to render out, however if I render in .SWF it works. But iMovie won't import SWF files.

Humm humm humm...

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:12 pm

The best workaround I've found is to change the image size in Photoshop, add 2 zero's to the end of the width and height with NEAREST NEIGHBOR (PRESERVE HARD EDGES) resampling chosen, then running the EXPORT LAYERS TO AS FILE script. Not really that ideal, but still. I wonder if there's an easier way.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:18 pm

Other option that works really well is to just turn the GRID on and draw everything within AS, change to about 12 frames per second, and make sure grid snapping is on. Thus far this works the best for me. Humm humm humm...things also move one pixel distance at a time, so it looks more authentic. Humm humm humm...

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 3:41 am

You're going very retro ...

But 8 colours are not 8bit, they're 3bit. (I just read up that stuff on wiki.)

Teletext was running in Germany as "Bildschirmtext" or "BTX", now there's still "Videotext".