OK, Folks, took some time to finish the Paintbox version 1.5 of PCXanim, sorry for that.
However you will see that the new paintbox functions are really worth the wait. I don't want to boast here, but I was surprised myself when I saw the results of the cyclic brush animations FX like "Greenfrog" or "Red flow" together with some simple filters of my old Ulead paintprogramm.
PCXANIm 1.5 still is freeware and free for personal or commercial use.
No installation process is required, just keep it in one folder.
Please understand that I started programming "PCXanim recreated" as a personal simple quick shot, so the User Interface may not match todays highly polished surfaces. But it works and does that what it sould do, therefore it was ok for me.
Many thanks go to Roland G. Huelsmann and his helpful spirits. Frank Abbing for his prospeed.dll, without this dll PCXanim would have never become what it is today.
So what is new:
NEW (Update from 1.0 to 1.5. March 2016):
Load animation and overlay animation are now able to check the size and number of frames of an animation bmp when loading.
No need to enter frames or size manually. File name must contain frame numbers as Name+X/Name+XX (e.g. Water+20.bmp).
Quick-Buttons for 10/20 Frame animation added. Create 10 or 20 256x256 new,blank(!) frames instantly. No need to use the Input box. Animations in memory will be ereased.
Cancel buttons for all bmp file loading now work properly.
S/E Seamless now works: S/E Seamles tries to blend the animtion held in memory with an offset to itself. Enter start frame and transparence factor with options button. S/E Seamless sometimes may be helpful to eleminate abrupt start and end flicker from an animation. Well, still not perfect.
Sharpen: Sharpens the animation. When repeated creates some cell FX. Has hardly any impact on black and white animationswith high contrast.
Open: Some kind of open door/gate FX. Splits the frame and scrolls to left and right.
Backwards: Reassembles the animation to be played backwards, side orientation kept (unlike flip).
Rot 90 Degrees: Rotates the whole animation to 90 degrees (no tweening).
Roll: Rolls the animation one frame to the left. May be useful to create fire sprites running asynchron in a 3D world.
PingPong: Creates a PingPong animation. A ten frame animation will be changed to an 18 frame pingpong animation.
Black Frame: Draws a black (RGB 0,0,0) Frame around each frame. To remove unwanted border pixels.
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Paintbox:
Paintbox lets you draw an animation. Originally I had in mind to just create a small paint section to let you paint
a Lighning FX. Paintbox however grew and now can create very sophisticated animations, especially when using the cyclic brush. Have a look at the greenfrog or drain animation in the samples3 folder. Paintbox uses alpha-transparence for the brushes avoiding black borders. Click on the color palette to change color for DRAW and LINE.
Use break to leave the paintbox.
Use right mouse button to save your painting and advance to next frame.
(Not in CYCLING ANIMATION)
Paintbox Options:
First you are asked to enter a pixel size (x = y) for the Draw circle diameter and all other brushes used in Paintbox.
Size can be changed after leaving the paintbox via break. You can go back then to the paintbox and continue.
Clear for next frame: When advancing to the next frame for painting it will be cleared first in RGB(0,0,0)
Overlay: The animation frame in memory will be loaded when advancing to the next frame. You will paint upon that frame.
Overlay 2: The animation frame from memory will be placed above the the painting when advancing to the next frame.
Not sure what this is good for.
Blueprinting: Works only with DRAW,LINE,SINGLE BRUSH and ANIMATED BRUSH. Frame size must not exceed 256 pixels horiz. (X-size). However 256x512 can be used. The main purpose for blueprinting here is to paint or place a bmp on a structure without pasting it into the blueprint. For example a ring animation can be used to place twinkeling stars on it, resulting in a Star-Ring FX. You can also us it to create some Lightning FX, those kind of snake like moving ones as seen in many ScFi movies. Blueprinting does not work with CYCLEANIMATION.
Paint Delay factor: Determinse a delay in milliseconds for brush use.
Brush transparence factor: 0-200. 0 most strongest brush.
DRAW: Lets you draw on each frame with a simple mono coloured circle. RMB advances to the nest frame.
LINE: Draws a line from the first mouseclick position to the next and so on. RMB advances to the next frame.
SINGLE BMP: Uses a single bmp as a brush. Load a brush in the options box. If you select an bmp animation the first frame of the filmstrip will be taken for the brush. Uses Alphatransparence.RMB advances to the next frame.
ANIMATION: Load an animation bmp. You are now using an animated brush. After placing one brush frame with a mouseclick the next will use the following frame of the brush filmstrip, cycling through the animation brush while painting on a frame. RMB advances to the next frame.
CYCLE ANIMATION: Load an animation bmp to use it as a brush. After clicking in a frame xy position the first frame of the brush animation bmp will be placed there in frame 1, the next in frame 2 of the main animation, and so on. So the whole main animation is cycled through automatically, and you are at the first frame again. Now move up your mousepointer a bit and click again.
The brush animation will cycle through the main animation once more, placing its frame brush in each frame, but with the significant difference that the animbrush started with its frame no.2, put in frame 1 of the main animation. Now move up the mouse a bit again and click. Frame 3 of the animbrush is used to start with and so on.
This way some kind of Flow FX can be created.
There is a folder included in the package with rotated brushes ready to be used for Cycle Animations, feel free to play around with the anim brushes,they are mainly for 20 frame animations.
Flip bmp: Flips the animated brush horizontally. Can be helpful.
Shift and scale: The CYCLE animation is shifted up and scaled up during cycling process. Use carefully.
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Animated brushes must match the main animation size and number (!).
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The options requester usually enables and disables the options related to the Paintbox modes.
Thats all, Sorry for the long post.
You can download PCXanim 1.5 "Paintbox Edition" from here:
http://juergen-hunke.square7.ch/PCXANIM1.5.zipNeodumont
