| From: | Curt Esser |
| Date: | 11 Aug 99 at 01:39:04 |
| Subject: | Re: 16Bit Chunky, well, any bit, really... |
Hi Ayar
On 10-Aug-99, Ayar Baboon wrote:
>
> I've no idea, but I'd be grateful if someone explained what 'chunky'
> is. Also, what's planar?
OK, first Planar graphics is the standard Amiga display system - used on
every Amiga ever made, unless you have added a GFX card to the system.
The display on your screen is made up of one or more "bitplanes" (Planar -
get it?)
-think of it as a series of pieces of paper stacked on top of each other.
The more bitplanes, the more colours you can have on the screen, up to 256
colours on an AGA system (this would be 8 bitplanes, or an 8bit display)
The colour palette number of each pixel on the screen is read by reading the
appropriate bit from each of the bitplanes - for example, to get the colour
of the first pixel you would read only the first bit from each bitplane.
Now, "chunky" graphics, which is used on all GFX cards, and also is the
"native" format on the PC and the MAC:
In chunky, each pixel is defined by one or more full bytes - this limits the
display to multiples of 8 - 8bit, 16bit, 24bit, etc.
An 8bit chunky gives you the same 256 colours as an 8 plane Planar display,
but as you can see, it is much easier to handle since you don't need to go
searching for the bits in all the bitplanes...
Unfortunately, you can't display a chunky directly on a standard
(non-GFX-card) Amiga, so you must convert it to a planar bitmap first.
I hope that clears it up a bit...
Later...
Yours electronically,
Curt Esser
camge@ix.netcom.com
http://members.xoom.com/Curt_Esser/
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