Icon Design / Collab (Advice / Feedback etc)

[aZtOcKdOg]

Hey guys,

I have been designing a new iconset from scratch and also working on 2x collaborations (Piotrek and Ppill icons) for release onto Aminet etc (no ETA)

Now that I have a studio space again I am starting a few projects again that got put on hold 18mnths ago!

I used a few diff techniques to create some icons for AmigaBill’s streaming WB but I am wondering what an ideal workflow is for converting the ILBM / IFF images into AmigaOS icons.

I will be carefully pixelling a version of the 3 iconsets for the most used low-end Amiga resolutions (I would like fresh icons with low memory overhead that are created for hires non-laced as opposed to shoehorned versions meant for higher res)

I know there is the approach of an ‘anim brush’ for the 2-states and also command line / shell tools for conversion… but even though for these particular iconsets there will be only 2 colours (including the transparent bg) or perhaps 4 max (for the expanded Ppill icons) I am still confused how the palette or pens get allocated / designated and to properly prep and manage colours in the pipeline… esp when it comes to the various standards like StandardWB, GlowIcons, NewIcons etc

I just thought I would reach out here and hopefully get some valuable input to help with the final stages of the icon creation process! (when it comes)

Thanks o/

[Daedalus]

The palette setup is actually pretty simple - maybe deceptively so. Old-style icons simply use colours 0-3 of the Workbench screen, whatever they may be. By default, for OS 2 and up, they are grey, black, white and blue respectively, but if someone has changed the blue to red, for example, then your icon will simply use red for colour 3 instead. There is the option of using 8 colours for screens with 8 or more colours; the second set of four colours comes from the *last* four colours in the screen's palette, so that would be pens 12-15 on a 16-colour screen. These are by default red, green, blue and orange, but could easily be changed from those colours.

MagicWB is just an extension of this concept, where the first 8 colours of the palette are fixed to give consistent colours for nice gradients and patterns. The first 4 colours are basically the default colours, and the second 4 are two additional shades of grey, a brownish colour and a sort of peach colour.

Once you go beyond that, you're into entirely different formats that are palette mapped. GlowIcons/ColorIcons came in with OS 3.5 and NewIcons was a 3rd party patch that worked a little differently internally but to the user worked in much the same way. These formats can be up to 256 colours, which are set in the icon's imagery. Workbench then allocates pens to them based on the required colour precision and what pens are available. With lots of pens free, the icons will more closely match the original design than if there are few or no free pens. These formats store the new image data completely separately from the old icon image data, so the two can coexist, and using the icons on a system without the required updates will show the old icon imagery.

From the sounds of it, the old icon setup is what you're looking for anyway... Hope that helps!

[aZtOcKdOg]

@Daedalus Awesome ahh thanks! Yes just the first 4 colours will be used for these iconsets

Great info!

[aZtOcKdOg]

Will be testing how stable using the Pi400 w/ a good customised distro setup for DPaint > PPaint workflow… not sure though may do the final icon file conv on the real ECS machine to get the resolutions looking right…

[aZtOcKdOg]

Ok, so continuing on the conversion process and I cant wrap my head around this…

I seem to lose a colour in the process (on a standard 4c screen atm yet hoping for 8c) but to show what it looks like from original 8c pixels [L] to final 4c(?) icon info file on AmigaOS / Workbench [R]:

(Please note magnified 4x for ease of viewing)



(I used @Steffest DPaintJS to showcase what it looks like using palette options ‘OPTIMISED’ on the left [L] and ‘MUI’ on the right [R] because this is accurate of what I am seeing Amiga-side)

I really appreciate any help or advice as this step will also help me finish the Workbench icon packs too!

Thanks // aZt

[EDIT:] After posting I thought maybe it was averaging colours during initial conversion from PNG to ILBM or pen colours but even upon editing WBPalette did not help. Perhaps the icon conversion (ILBMToIcon) uses RGB values to re-order the indexes?)

[aZtOcKdOg]

Ok, right so after some tests the icon conversion is likely averaging the palette based on RGB values compared to the standard 0 - 3 pens.

Now I just need to work out how / what converter can handle the 8c icon output… (0-3 and x-x locked pens for 8c icon)

ColorIcons and NewIcons are pretty straight forward with DPaintJS and the OG converters on Aminet… luckily…

[hUMUNGUs]

Got a screenshot ?

[DisasterIncarna]

isnt it because the icon is actually 5 color? (would look weird on a 4 colour screen) the tank on the left looks like it has 2 bright blues, 2 dark blues, then add in the transparancy color and that = 5? also is the palette aga or ecs? i would imagine if an aga palette was used then the icon was displayed on an ecs machine then the color would remap to something similar but not exactly the same?

[aZtOcKdOg]

The Original Tank pixels ILBM shown above is in 8c on Left (7c used incl Index 0)

Depending on the AOS / icon lib used it shows slightly differently for the same icon info file:

(The filename denotes the source ILBM colour count before conversion and the AOS version 310 is what OS was used during conversion)

All shown using 16c Workbench / AmigaOS ScreenMode
(please ignore possible fringing / compression colours if present)


^ This is displayed on ClassicWB 3.1 ^
(I can only see 3 colours incl Index 0 being used)


^ This is displayed on AmigaOS 3.1.4 ^
(I count 5 colours incl Index 0 being used)


If I reorder the palette the conversion will create a different result (it appears to average the RGB values based on the associated pen to be used… ) ie. if the main tank colour and other tones are used in index 1-3 than it will flatten all blues to be the blue in the WB palette / pen and crush the darker blues to black (as seen in the ClassicWB 3.1 screenshot) but if I reorder the indexes so indexes 1-3 contain blue, light grey etc then it will spread the colours accordingly)


Obv the icon info file contains more than the 3c that are being displayed on ClassicWB as the same file appears to have 5c when displayed on AmigaOS3.1.4…


…well I went and hand pixelled it with IconMaster in 4c anyway to get this result for High Res:



(Note the odd pixel grouping is just artefacts of pixel aspect in the emu when I took a screen grab)

All palettes / files are in ECS formats no AGA machine was used in this workflow / pipeline)

Thanks for reading!