Images generated by RastaConverter

[+Stephen]

Nice picture!  Don't, for the love of goat (old Minter saying), do a Google Image(TM) search for "liberator".  At least not at work.  You don't see any star ships.

[xrbrevin]

is there a beginners guide to converting images to xex format?

 

i tried using the RCGUI but when i click start i get "error: file not found"

i then used the command line. it created a png which i loaded into g2f but due to the 4-colour limit, i get a barely discernible mess no matter what i click. (am i missing something..?)

i have had better progress with quantizator. an xex was generated - the image was recognisable but the colours were way out. nothing like the examples uploaded here.

i have searched within this topic for guidance but its so vast. the only result i got was to use the GUI but it just seems broken...!

thanks in advance if anyone can assist

 

[drpeter]

14 hours ago, xrbrevin said:

is there a beginners guide to converting images to xex format?

 

i tried using the RCGUI but when i click start i get "error: file not found"

i then used the command line. it created a png which i loaded into g2f but due to the 4-colour limit, i get a barely discernible mess no matter what i click. (am i missing something..?)

i have had better progress with quantizator. an xex was generated - the image was recognisable but the colours were way out. nothing like the examples uploaded here.

i have searched within this topic for guidance but its so vast. the only result i got was to use the GUI but it just seems broken...!

thanks in advance if anyone can assist

 

Not sure what you're doing wrong, but RCGUI should work if you extract one of the above zip files into a folder structure. The main folder should contain RCGUI.exe plus some other files and 2 folders called Generator and Palettes

 

Then make a working copy of the whole folder structure.

 

To operate the GUI, first have your image pre-sized to a 24 or 32 bit 320x240 pixels png file by a graphics program and save it to the working folder containing RCGUI.exe.

 

Select your picture by pressing the [Choose] button top left.

 

For a basic test run, leave everything else on default except [Number of solutions] bottom, middle- enter 1000 here.

 

Then click on [Convert!]

 

You should get a window showing your original picture (on the left), the processed version of your picture that RC will try to emulate (on the right) and a slowly-improving RC image (in the centre).

 

Leave RC to run until you have an acceptable-looking image.  This will likely take from 50 million to 2 billion evaluations. Norm.dist. in the information panel below the images tells you how close RC thinks it has got to the 'ideal' target image in the right panel (the lower the number, the closer the match)

 

You can inspect your current image in more detail at any stage by closing the processing window, which will return you to the setup window and also open a png view of your image in your default system image viewer.

 

To save to an xex, close the png viewer to return to the GUI setup window and click on [create executable file]. This will create an xex in your working folder and also automatically launch Altirra or other emulator you have set up as the default application for xex files.

 

If you want to return to processing the image for further improvements, return to the GUI setup window and click on [Continue stopped conversion]. This works even if you close down the GUI completely then reopen it on another day.

 

I create a new working folder for each image I am working on, so I can always go back to it.

[drpeter]

Ooops, no post without image!

 

So here is my handsome Blue Merle Border Collie, Teddy.

 

Teddy.xex

[drpeter]

For more information, read the help.txt file and try this link:

 

https://github.com/ilmenit/RastaConverter/wiki/FAQ

[Gunstar]

Tidal Cave. 57 colors.

TidalCave.xex

[Gunstar]

Pristine. 82 colors.

Pristine.xex

[+Philsan]

Not perfect but today I had to convert that image.

Dedicated to all 9/11/2011 victims.

 

Twin Towers, 37 colors.

 

Philsan_TwinTowers.xex

[a8isa1]

10 hours ago, Gunstar said:

Pristine. 82 colors.

Pristine.xex 22.13 kB · 13 downloads

That rastaconversion looks perfect!

[drpeter]

Watchers By The Shore

 

Photo taken by Lanty's Tarn, Glenridding, Cumbria (English Lake District) 2008

 

 

Watchers.xex

[+gnusto]

Late to the party. Used a detail map to get some of the eye fidelity. As I look through the various images here, I'm sad we didn't have techniques like this back in the day, as there would have been some awesome adventure games with this level of image quality. Of course, it does take a modern CPU hours to come up with some of these, so maybe not even if we knew how back then...

 

buffy.xex

[tane]

1 hour ago, gnusto said:

Late to the party. Used a detail map to get some of the eye fidelity. As I look through the various images here, I'm sad we didn't have techniques like this back in the day, as there would have been some awesome adventure games with this level of image quality. Of course, it does take a modern CPU hours to come up with some of these, so maybe not even if we knew how back then...

 

 

It looks accurate, some small lines here and there but very good, can you post a screenshot with the options you used in RastaConverter?

Did you preprocess the image?

 

[+gnusto]

3 minutes ago, tane said:

 

It looks accurate, some small lines here and there but very good, can you post a screenshot with the options you used in RastaConverter?

Did you preprocess the image?

 

CmdLine: buffy.jpg /dither=floyd /details=detail.png /details_val=2 /s=2048 /distance=ciede /threads=4

 

I didn't preprocess other than to get it the right size.

[tane]

2 hours ago, gnusto said:

CmdLine: buffy.jpg /dither=floyd /details=detail.png /details_val=2 /s=2048 /distance=ciede /threads=4

 

I didn't preprocess other than to get it the right size.

Thanks. I never noticed the mask command. It makes a difference.

How is a detail.png file? Is it with better resolution, different colors? Can you attach the detail.png used?

[DragonGrafx-16]

This is so cool... since I don't own an Atari 8-bit computer, what's a good emulator to play around with this?

[+gnusto]

3 minutes ago, tane said:

Thanks. I never noticed the mask command. It makes a difference.

How is a detail.png file? Is it with better resolution, different colors? Can you attach the detail.png used?

The help file says:

/details=Details picture
  To help the optimization algorithm you can set the details mask.
  The brighter the color on the mask is, the higher is distance of the color difference between input and output file on the masked region.
  This way you can make some objects like faces, eyes or other small objects more detailed.

 

I can't find the detail file i used here as I've done several others since, but the basic process was very simple. I loaded the original picture into Paint.Net, lasso selected the interesting area, colored it white and made everything outside of it black, then saved that out as details.png. I actually tried it the other way around first (outside white, inside black) as that seems to be what the help file says, but I found it worked better with white on inside. But anyway the brightness of the area represents how much detail.

 

 

[+gnusto]

4 minutes ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

This is so cool... since I don't own an Atari 8-bit computer, what's a good emulator to play around with this?

http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html (or search "Altirra" here on AtariAge, you will find a lot of discussion!)

 

You may need to fiddle with palettes to get the colors right. Menu View/Adjust Colors. I usually use the "NTSC (Contemporary XL)".

[DragonGrafx-16]

4 minutes ago, gnusto said:

http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html (or search "Altirra" here on AtariAge, you will find a lot of discussion!)

 

You may need to fiddle with palettes to get the colors right. Menu View/Adjust Colors. I usually use the "NTSC (Contemporary XL)".

Thanks! As both an artist and a gamer (and a hobbyist game developer) this is going to be so cool to play around with. Looks like the best image to pixel art converter I have ever seen.

[Wrathchild]

Inspired by drpeter's Lake District snaps, combined with having been there this summer, here's a simple scene converted using:

; InputName: 20190731_160727.jpg
; CmdLine: /h=200 /dither=floyd /pal=real /i=20190731_160727.jpg /distance=cie94 /predistance=cie94 /filter=bicubic /s=4096 /init=less
; Evaluations: 293575970
; Score: 2.0551

     

Wrathchild_NewbyBridge.xex

Edited September 14, 2019 by Wrathchild
text

[tane]

Then it looks a bit dark:

 

NTSC:

 

PAL:

 

 

[Wrathchild]

One of the reasons to post an original pic is so others can experiment for themselves, feel free to boost brightness etc 

 

[tane]

I'm not saying it's bad, just that it seems RastaConverter outputs a darker result.

[Gunstar]

I've a sudden issue of my Atari not communicating with my SIO, maybe a bad PIA or something, but I wasn't able to see this image on a real Atari yet, which I prefer to do as colors show up much better on real hardware. So here is my latest, with only the output image to judge by.

 

Wild. 60 colors.

Wild.xex

[Wrathchild]

That's ok, that's how I understood it.

 

 

13 minutes ago, tane said:

it seems RastaConverter outputs a darker result.

than it displays whilst rendering? Or when viewed in Altirra?

Is that dependent on what palette you choose for both?

 

 

 

Wrathchild_NB-test-WIP.xex

[mariusz]

1 hour ago, Gunstar said:

..... here is my latest, with only the output image to judge by.

 

Wild. 60 colors.

Wild.xex 22.13 kB · 1 download

Nice VBXE   picture.

Edited September 14, 2019 by mariusz