As I told you on Twitter I really like the amount of features of Pro Motion NG, so I’m trying to do the transition from Pyxel Edit before buying it, but I failed.
From Pyxel Edit I can export the tileset and color palette as images (.png):
Tileset (16x16)
Color palette
When I try to import the tiles from Tile Mapping > Import Tiles… I receive this error:
As for the palette, I’ve just loaded it as an image and PMNG shows the expected palette colors (although not in the same exact order, but contiguosly).
You can then export the palette and use it elsewhere.
Pyxel Edit seems to work with true color image modes (where every pixel has it’s individual color) and not with indexed mode where each pixel is an index into a limited color palette (e.g. 256 color). This also means that transparency is defined by an alpha value per pixel and not using a palette index that is defined to make all pixels using it, transparent.
Therefore the PNG files that Pyxel exports are true color and that’s why the color palette is exported manually which would not be required if you have already an indexed image.
While testing I tried to export the tile set as gif, but the color where wrong, so we go with the true color png files now.
Create a new empty tile map project with a desired map size.
Be sure to enable alpha transparency:
Use Tile Mapping/Import Tiles with these settings:
Since you are not using semi transparent pixels (alpha transparency), remove the alpha plane by disabling this “A”:
You could also use menu Layers and uncheck the “Alpha Plane” there.
If you don’t want the original color palette order then you are done. Otherwise:
load the color palette file which is also a true color image as a new project (e.g. drag/drop).
Use these settings when asked:
Now the image is loaded but the real indexed color palette still uses its own sorting.
Go to the palette window and click the tab “Select” and in the inner tabs the one with the palette icon:
Hit Ctrl + A or use the right mouse button context menu within the color palette slots to select all colors. Then in the context menu use “Sort/Sort by Appearance”.
This just goes through the image and uses the ordering as colors appear in the image. Repeating colors are skipped. Looks like this:
To transfer this color order to the other project use Ctrl + C (be sure to have the selection and the palette window still active) or use the context menu entry “Copy”. Now the colors of the palette are in the clipboard.
Go to the project where you loaded your tile set. Go to the palette editor, context menu and use “Paste”. Use the green tick or move the mouse out of the window to apply this new palette to the image:
Now your pixels look wrong because they use different colors. Use the button “Remap” to fix this:
It will relocate the pixels to their correct index in the palette. But you must do this before changing another color etc. .
Done.
Since you are coming from another package you will have more questions. Please be sure to watch as much tutorial videos as you can: https://www.cosmigo.com/pixel_animation_software/learn/videos
Despite of that please ask any question you might have.
Thank you so much both for helping me. This software has so many options and features that is very easy to feeling lost.
For example I spend a lot of time finding an option to resize the canvas. Finally after a while I found it in Frame > Resize. But, why Frame? That’s not intuitive. Edit > Resize canvas, or Tile Mapping > Settings are options that I looked first (just an example).
Despite of that, Pro Motion is a great software and probably after feeling more comfortable I will buy it.
Maybe some day you can refine the UI, simplified similar to Pyxel Edit or Aseprite and hide the advanced options. Making the transition to this great tool more friendly and organic, because in this moment Pro Motion is the only software that contains all the required features for making pixel art games (tile map editor, advanced color palette editor, advanced animation, etc).
Moving something in the UI is sometimes difficult. Easily long term users are disappointed. Actually you change the Frame size
In Aseprite you change the size in the “Sprite” menu
Please continue telling me about things you don’t find or that feel odd to you etc… This helps be to better understand people coming from other software and to tweak things.
I’m currently working on the standard selection tool set. I bet you miss that, too
@Jan, this issue of finding the resize image/canvas seems to popup quite frequently (see also post 313), along with other problems relating to finding the right menu to do specific things.
I think that — as I’ve mentioned in a previous post — improving the CHM Help file could dispell similar issue:
Add CHM TOC.
Enable indexing and search by keyword.
Enable bookmarking.
Especially indexing by keyword would be helpful, for it would allow to search “resize”, “image” or “canvas” and get to documentation page that deals with resizing images/frames.
I think that the main problem in the learning curve is due to the difficulty of looking up topics in the Help file. This is unfortunate, for CHM Help files are really useful, but currently it’s more convenient to consult the online documentation on the website, which provides a TOC.
CHM documents allow quite powerful features, but these need to be set in the source project, before compiling the document.
The keyword search is enabled but I guess I need to add more keywords.
The index is broken. I did not notice that. This needs to be fixed.
I did not add a TOC because the start page that links the documents in a typical way does the job basically. The online version has no real TOC. This is just some elements from the CHM “start page”.
There is potential to improve all this and this should be done but atm I just don’t have much time left for this (none to be honest). I’ll of course add “resize canvas” as a keyword phrase.
ciao @jan.cosmigo (and welcome back from the holidays!).
CHM files can be quite prickly about HTML formatting and CSS features, due to the fact that they use the WebControl with the older IE version as default setting (I think v7, but not 100% sure). Unfortunately, you can’t use the registry hack to enforce higher IE versions (11, or “edge”) for you’d have to apply the setting to the executable of the actual CHM viewer, thus effecting every CHM file viewed (not advisable).
Possibly, the best way to create CHM files today is via Pandoc, converting from markdown (pandoc flavour, which is very rich), for it handles all the nitty gritty of the various HTML syntax issues with CHM files — plus, it allows nice styles control via templates. This also simplify automation of documentation IMO, for the MS tools for creating CHM are quite clanky, and I tend to prefer working with lightweight markup syntaxes instead of having to deal with HTML directly, or using WYSIWYG tools (as there are indeed good commercial alternatives to MS CHM workshop).
