case this meanr that every pixel in the picrure rhat had the RGB values 15
3, 4 (yell`~w) changed to the foregiound colour (red).
As you saw ir takes a momenr for l)eluxePaint to search throrigh your
image to change all of the pixel colours bur it performs this functioll much
more rapidly than you ever could.
Colour Processing Options
To give you greater flexibility when workilig with HAM images in particu-
lar. DeluxcPaint V includes some effects for painting. The mosr norable of
rhese are rhe'Iransiticency and Process `optiins in rhe Effect menu. We'd
like to show you a couple of these very quickly just give you an idea of
why they are there and how to use them.
Before you begin:
Load the picture riricd Rerrospectivc from the Lxamples disk.
Translucency
The translucency option lets you combine a specified percentage of the
colours in your brush with the colours in the image. This is especially uscLul
for overlayilig onc image orl anorhcr. Ler's rry a quick example.
Select tje Brush Selector tool and pick up the eye image in the upper
righr pcirtioll of thc picmre as a brush.
Press F10 ro hide rhe Menu Bar and Toolbox.
Choose Translucency>On/Off from thc Effect menu (or press Alr-t:).
84 Chapter 4 DeluzePanit V
Press F9 to redisplay the Menu Bar.
Notice that a T appears in the Menu Bar to tell you that Translucency is on.
Move the brush over the image of the earth viewed from space and
stamp down the brush.
You'll see DeluxePaint overlay 50% of the eye image over the earth image.
You can also change the level of translucency by choosing
Translucency>Settings from the Effect menu or press Ctrl-t. Since
Translucency is an Effect rather than a Mode, it will also change the way
shapes are painted on the screen. And, you can combine the Translucency
effect with any of the Process effects to exercise greater control over the
strength of the process effect.
Choose Translucency>On/Off from the Effect menu to turn
Translucency off.
The Process options in the Effect menu let you paint with different combi-
nations of the HSV levels of your brush. Tint paints with a combination of
Hue and Saturation. Hue paints with only the hue of the brush, if you're
painting with a solid colour, this is a good way to convert a colour image to
a monochromatic image as we'll see in a moment. Value paints with only
the value of your foreground colour, and is a great way to add shadows or
highlights to an image, or even just to lighten the image overall. We'll take a
quick look at the Hue option to give you an idea of how the Process options
work.
Choose Process>Hue from the Effect Menu to make it the current
process option. Then Choose Process>On/Off to turn the Process
option on.
A P appears in the Menu Bar to tell you that one of the Process options is
active.
Press F10 to display the Toolbox. Choose the light pink as your current
foreground colour. Select the Filled Rectangle tool.
Press F10 again to hide the Toolbox. Draw a filled rectangle over the .
eye image in the upper righr corner of the picture.
In a moment, the eye is painted over with pink and all of the colours in the
image are shifted to pink. Using the Hue option does not affect the
Saturation or Value of the colours in the image, so the resulting image is a
monochromatic version of the eye. If you want to see the effect against the
original, repeatedly press u to undo and redo the change.
As we mentioned above, the Translucency and Process options can be com-
bined. Try some combinations of options on other areas of the picture. For
example, try the Tint option with'[ranslucency set to a high number to very
lightly tint an area of the picture.
85 Painting Tutorials DeluxePaint V
Tutorial Four:
Gradient Translucency
A new feature of DeluxePaintV allows you to create gradients with variabletranslucencies. This feature can be used in any mode, but the more colours
available, the better the effect. This effect works best in HAM modes, 24 bit
backing store mode, and if available, AGA modes. To get a good effect in
lower colour modes, create good colour spreads and build contiguous color
ranges. In this tutorial you will learn how to create a gradient translucency
in HAM and how to use some of the new features to DeluxePaint's Range
Colour Panel.
To begin this tutorial, please reload the Retrospective.ham image from
the picture drawer of the Examples disk. Select Yes if the program asks
you to change modes.
Hit F10 to turn off the menus and toolbox.
Display the Range Colour Panel use the menu or press Ctrl-r to dis
play it.
If there is a range already defined for range 1, click CLFAR to delete it.
Select the yellow colour in your palette and place it on the left-most
bead of the range line.
Now that the yellow colour is selected (white outline) you can give that
colour a starting fade value/translucency. Click on the Fade slider and
move it all the way to the right. As you do this you will notice that a
small square bead appears below the yellow colour and changes from
black to white as you increase the fade slider. Black is an indication of
pure colour or opaqueness and white is an indication of no colour
(100% translucency). The values range from 0 (fully opaque) to 255
(fully translucent). DeluxePaint will allow you to place fade values on
any individual colour bead in your range up to 256 colours.
NOTE YOU can add fade values to bead positions even if there are no colours
attached to that bead. This is useful for extra customising of your gradient
translucency. Select a bead line (it will turn white) and give it a fade value.
You'll see that the square fade bead appears below the bead line even though
there's no colour attached.
Slide the slider under your colour bead all the way to the right. (The
number at the right of the slider and under the pick icon should read
224; this indicates the bead number that is at the right edge of the
bead line.)
Select the red colour in your palette and place it on the right-most
bead line.
We don't need to adjust the fade value of the red colour for this tutori-
al, but if you wanted to you could. For this tutorial let's leave it at 0
fade. If you click on the fade slider, you will in fact see the black square
bead appear.
We've now created a HAM gradient that goes from a translucent yellow
to an opaque red. DeluxePaint automatically interpolates the in
between fade values. Click and hold the SHOW button to see what the
86 Chapter 4 DeluxePaint V
gradient looks like. You should be able to see through it on the left side
of the screen and see that it gradually gets opaque to the right.
Let's do a gradient fill to see what it looks like combined over an image.
Click OK-to close the range requester, then press F10 to display the
menu bar and Toolbox.
Press F (Shift-f) or right click on the Fill tool in the Toolbox.
The Fill requester should have range I as its current range.
Choose the Hi button and Smooth Dither and click OK.
Press C (Shift-c) or choose the Filled Circle tool from the Toolbox.
Draw a circle over the little girl's head in the Retrospective.ham image
to give her a space helmet.
Experiment with the gradient translucency effect. It's a very powerful
feature and can be combined with lots of different features within
DeluxePaint V.
This section covered only a small part of the world of HAM painting. We
hope that the ideas we've presented here helped you better understand
HAM mode and that you'll experiment freely with the new options
designed for this mode.
Tutorial Five:
The World of Sterzcils
In the following set of exercises you will learn how to create and use stencilswithin DeluxePaint V Although stencils are primarily used for producing
quick, umform lettenng by amateur signwriters, they have uses that go far
beyond that. Airbrush artists, for example, use stencils (which they call
friskets) to cover certain areas of their work while they airbrush other areas.
DeluxePaint makes it easy to create a stencil for any part of an image, with
out the need to redraw the image. All you do is specify the colours that
make up the stencil, and DeluxePaint does the rest, no matter how intricate
the image.
Heres how it works: when you make a stencil for a particular set of colours,
you lock (and thus protect) any parts of the picture that are made up of
those colours. This means that when you have a stencil for a particular set of
colours, you cannot paint over those colours until you turn the stencil off. It
also means that you can essentially paint a picture backwards, from the fore
ground to the background, because you can use stencils to mask any fore
ground objects from the colours you are using for the background objects.
Before You Begin
Choose Load from the Picture menu and load the picture named
StencilSet from the Picture drawer.
Click "Yes" when DeluxePaint asks if you want to change modes to
320x200 32 colors.
87 Painting Tutorials DeluxePaint V
Distant Snowcaps
The left part of the StencilSet picture shows a distant mountain range
behind a green field and under a colourful sky. (If you followed the preced
ing tutorial, you'll notice that both the sky and the field were created with a
Gradient Fill, in a fraction of the time it would take using more traditional
techniques.) Note that the mountain range is actually made up of three
ranges, with the more distant ones painted in lighter shades than the nearer
ones. In this exercise, we will put a snowcap on the most distant range with
out disturbing any other parts of the picture. This would be a tall order for
any other graphic medium, but is surprisingly easy with DeluxePaint. Let's
see how DeluxePaint does it:
Choose Stencil>Make from the Effect menu to display the Make
Stencil requester. Click Clear, click on Colour 8 (the one at the top of
the second column), click Invert, and then click Make.
With four simple clicks you have created a stencil that locks every colour in
the picture except Colour 8, the colour of the most distant mountain range.
The first click cleared the picture of any stencils, the second selected the
stencil colour, the third click inverted the stencil configuration (making
everything except Colour 8 a stencil), and the fourth made the stencil. To
let you know that you have a stencil active, an "S" appears on the Title Bar.
Note that clicking Invert simply inverts the current stencil configuration,
saving you the trouble of clicking all the colours except the one you want to
paint on. This is useful if you want to paint on one or two selected colours
to the exclusion of the rest; if you want to create a stencil to lock only one
or a few colours, you don't need to use invert.
The next step is to paint the snow on the distant mountain range
Press p to display the Mixer. Change Colour 1 (the second colour in
the palette) from grey to white by dragging the RGB sliders all the way
to the right.
Select white as the foreground colour, and then select the one-pixel
brush and the Airbrush tool. Move the cursor over to the distant
mountain range and spray a snowcap on it.
Because every colour except that of the most distant mountain range has
been locked, you can spray without fear of splattering any adjoining colours.
88 Chapter 4 DeluxePaint V
Note that although the white you are spraying on the mountain range is
one of the locked colours, it is not itself locked while you are applying it.
This means that you can paint over it with another colour (such as the orig-
inal colour of the mountain, if you don't like the look of the snowcap) just
as though it were unlocked.
To lock a recently applied colour, just select Seencil>Remake. You don't
need to display the Stencil requester again, because the configuration is still
as you want it. This also means that you can use the "Again" key (a) to
update your stencil, if Remake was your last menu command.
TIP
The Again rule is simple: press a whenever you want to repeat the immedi-
ately preceding menu command, to save you moving the mouse up to the
Menu Bar and through menu and submenu options. If your last menu
command produced a requester, then pressing a will produce that same
requester, without the need for menu selections.
Sunrise in the Rockies
In this exercise, we make the sun rise 6ehind the mountains, so we need to
lock every colour except the sky. Heres how:
Display the Make Stencil requester. (Colour ~ should be the only
unlocked colour in the requester.) Now click Colour ~ to lock it, and
then click Colours 0 (black) and 12 through 16 (the sky colours) to
unlock them. (Colour 12 is halfway down the second column, and
Colour 16 is at the top of the third column.) Click Make.
You have now locked every colour in the landscape except the sky colours.
Now let's make the sun rise:
Choose Stencil>On/Off from the Effect menu to turn the stencil off.
In DeluxePaint V, your stencil affects picking up a brush-you can only
pick up areas that are not in the stencil. Since the orange shades in the sun
are part of the stencil, you turned off the stencil momentarily to pick up
that area of the picture.
Click the Brush Selector, move the large cross-hair over to the sun
image (on the far right of the screen) and pick it up with the left
mouse button. Move the brush over to the mountain range.
Choose Stencil>On/Off from the Effect menu to turn the stencil on.
Did you see the sun move 6ehind the mountains and then peek through?
This is because evety colour-except the sky colours and the back-
ground-is locked, and so will not accommodate the sun brush. When you
are satisfied with the placement of the sun, click to stamp an image of it
there.
Cutting Some Zs
In this exercise we will explore further aspects of DeluxePaint's powerful
stencil editor. In particular, you'll see how to turn stencil colours on and off
from any part of your picture, not just from the Make Stencil requester.
89 Painting Tutorials DeluxePaint V
Display the Make Stencil requester and click Clear to clear the stencil.
Now move the cursor outside the requester and click the large Z shape.
Click Invert and then click Make to return to the painting screen.
Did you notice that when you clicked the Z the Make Stencil requester
responded by locking that colour? This means that you can lock and unlock
colours directly from your image just by clicking ehem. Note that clicking
with the left mouse button adds a colour to the stencil and clicking with the
right mouse button deletes a colour from the stencil. And to make it easy to
find the colours you want to lock or unlock, you can move the Make Stencil
requester to any part of the screen just by moving the cursor to the top of
the requester, pressing the left mouse button, and dragging it to a new posi-
tion.
Now let's see what we can do with the stencil we just created:
Press the ' (accent grave/tilde) key to turn off the stencil.
Pressing ' is the same as choosing Stencil>On/Off from the Effect menu.
This is a very important keyboard equivalent for working with stencils.
Click the Brush Selector and pick up the textured area to the right of
the Z.
Press ' to turn on the stencil.
Move the cursor over to the Z and watch what happens.
Did you see the textured brush appear behind the Z? Because all the colours
except the Z are locked, it looks like you're viewing the textured brush
through a Z-shaped window. Now, when you place the textured brush
behind the Z and click, you will fill the Z with the textured pattern.
Fixing the Background
By using a combination of stencils and fixing the background, you can
define a stencil by area rather than colour. This lets you confine a stencil to
a particular area of the page, without forcing you to lock every instance of a
particular colour. Let's take a closer look:
Make sure the stencil is off and then pick t~p the small clump of pi~le
trees from the right-hand side of the page. From the Effect menu,
choose Background>Fix.
You have just fixed the picture to the background (the "B" in the Title Bar
tells you so), which means you can always return to that picture by clicking
CLR. Thus, you can stamp pine trees all over the landscape and then retun
to the original picture at any time. You can also fix the background succes
sively, updating the picture from the previous "fix." (As we saw earlier, you
can use the "Again" key (a) to repeat the immediately preceding menu com
mand.)
.
For the purpose of this exercise, go ahead and stamp a few clumps of
pine trees in front of the closest mountain range. Now lets turn that
collection of pine trees into a stencil:
90 Chapter 4 DeluxePaint V
From the Effect menu, select Background>Lock FG.
This last action turned the foreground (i.e., everything you added to the
picture since fixing the background) into a stencil, but without affecting any
other part of the picture that uses those same colours. Try it and see. Move
your pine-tree brush over to the pine forest and you 11 see that your brush
goes behind the forest but in front of everything else. You can remove this
stencil either by turning the stencil off or making a stencil by locking
colours.
The colour and area methods are mutually exclusive, so using one method
automatically negates the other. And as is the case with regular stencils,
clicking CLR does not clear the stencilled area-it is protected until you
turn it off, just like the fixed background.
Painting a Stencil
A more powerful way to define a stencil by area is to "paint" it. You can do
this with DeluxePaint V's Stencil>Paint option. Painting a stencil can be
invaluable for protecting areas that are not easily defined by colour. In the
next few steps we'll show you how to "cookie-cut" an area of your image to
create the first of the two logos in the StencilSet image.
At this point you should still be working with the StencilSet picture
from the exercise above. If you still have Fixed Background active from
the previous exercise, choose Background>Free from the Effect menu.
Choose Stencil>Make from the Effect menu. Click Clear and Make in
the requester to clear your stencil.
When you use Stencil Paint, you can either add to an existing colour-based
stencil or you can start from scratch. When you choose this option,
DeluxePaint calculates the stencil based on the colours that are selected in
the Make Stencil requester and then presents you with a screen that you can
use to add or subtract areas from. So, to start from scratch, you need to
clear the Make Stencil requester as we did above.
In the next few steps, you'll pick up a brush to paint in the stencil with and
turn on Stencil Paint to paint down your stencil. Then you'll reverse the
stencil and pick up a new brush.
Click the Brush Selector tool and pick up the red, yellow, and green
logo as a custom brush.
Choose Stencil>Paint from the Effect menu.
In a moment, your image is dimmed and a lower-case "s" appears in the
Menu Bar to show that you are in Stencil Paint mode.
Move your brush over to the mountain range so that the sunrise is in
the lower part of the circle and click with the left mouse button.
91 Painting Tutorials DeluxePaint V
Painting with the left mouse button adds to the stencil (which you see as
lighter colours) and painting with the right mouse button subtracts from
the stencil. By clicking down your brush, you created a stencilled area that is
the shape of the brush. Now, exit Stencil Paint and reverse the stencil.
Choose Stencil>Paint to turn off the mode and create your stencil.
It's important to correctly turn off the Stencil Paint mode the same way you
entered it. If you try to use other options while in Stencil Paint,
DeluxePaint may turn off the mode for you, but there is no guarantee that
in those instances it will save the changes to the stencil. If you think you'll
be using this feature a lot, you should get used to the keyboard equivalent:
Ctrl- s.
Choose Stencil>Reverse to reverse your stencil so that all areas except
the logo-shaped area of the mountain range is protected.
Choose the Brush Selector tool. Pick up the mountain range as a
brush. And press the ' (accent grave) key to turn off the stencil.
Now you should be holding a brush like the first of the logos in the
StencilSet.
With a little creativity, you can combine Stencil Paint and the new gradient
fills we showed you earlier in the chapter to create some stunning effects.
Stencils in HAM
When you're working in HAM or 24-bit backing store mode, the Make
Stencil requester is a bit different from the one you see in other modes. This
requester doesn't attempt to show you which of the possible colours you
have locked. Instead, it gives you powerful ways to lock colours individually
or based on a tolerance level. It then lets you view the stencil as you would
by choosing Stencil>Show. In the next pages we'll take a quick look at the
features of the Make Stencil requester in HAM mode.
Due to the heavy computational and memory requirements of the
Make Stencil option in HAM, this feature will be somewhat slow on
lower-end Amigas. If your Amiga has no more than 2MB of RAM or
51 2K of Chip RAM, we recommend that you use the Stencil>Paint
feature to create stencils in HAM. However, if you are patient, you
might want to work through this section; it might be just the thing for
you.
Before we begin:
Choose Screen Format from the File menu and change your screen for-
mat to Lo-Res 320x200 HAM.
If you dont already have the StencilSet picture loaded, load it now and
choose NO to converting to the screen format of the file.
Choose Stencil>Make from the Effect menu. You'll see a Make Stencil
requester like the one in Figure 4.18.
92 Chapter 4 DeluxePaint V
The Clear, Invert, Make and Cancel buttons in this requester perform
essentially the same function as they do in the Make Stencil requester in
other modes. The important new concepts we want to show you are Show,
Fine Tune, and Tolerance.
Tolerance
The tolerance setting lets you click on a single colour in your picture and
simultaneously lock (or unlock) all "similar" colours in the image. The
Tolerance number determines how different a colour can be and still be
considered "similar" to the one you clicked on. A low Tolerance number
requires that the colours be very similar, while a high Tolerance number
locks colours that may be very different from the colour you clicked. The
range of Tolerance values runs from O to 48. At O tolerance, only colours
that are identical to the colour you click on will be affected. At 48 toler-
ance, all colours will be affected.
TECHNICAL NOTE
Tolerance is calculated in the RGB cube colour space. Each increment of
tolerance represents a change of i on any of the RGB values of the colour
you clicked on.
To see how tolerance works in a practical application, we'll use it to lock
the green colours in the StencilSet image. When you first open the Make
Stencil requester, Tolerance is set at 4. We'll leave it at four as we choose our
first coloun
Move the cursor down to the bottom of the green grass area of the sun-
set image and click once on the lightest green.
Clicking on a colour with the left mouse button tells DeluxePaint that you
want to lock that colour. Notice that the colour appears in a box beside the
Tolerance option, and a black "lock" bracket appears beside the colour to
show that you have locked it. You could click Make to exit the requester
with your stencil, but instead, we'll use the Show button to confirm that we
locked the colours we wanted.
Click the Show check box to show your stencil.
After a moment of calculations, DeluxePaint will dim your image and show
your stencil as lighter areas in the image just as if you had chosen Show
from the Stencil submenu. You'll see that many more greens than the one
you clicked on are stencilled. But not all greens are stencilled, because your
tolerance was set to only 4. You'll also see that part of the green triangle
from the Electronic Arts logo and the green of the trees is also stencilled.
Now suppose that you actually wanted to select more greens than the ones
that were stencilled in this first attempt. You can do this in two ways: either
93 Painting Tutorials DeluxePaint V
click on another green that is not stencilled to lock it and all colours similar
to it; or increase the Tolerance setting. Lets try the latter method now:
Click in the Tolerance edit field to the right of the number 4, back-
space to delete it, and change the number to 8. When you press Enter
or click outside the requester, DeluxePaint automatically recalculates
your stencil, and after a moment it shows you your stencil with the
new tolerance value.
Now you'll see that two thirds of the greens are selected in your image.
If you need to select a large area of your image quickly, high tolerance
numbers can help you a lot. However, to get that help you sacrifice
some control over which colours get stencilled. Of course, you can
always go back and adjust the stencil with the Fine Tune option as
you'll see below.
Fine Tuning the Stencil
Now that you've seen how to add to the stencil and use the Tolerance set
ting, we'll take a quick look at fine tuning the stencil. We're going to use
Fine Tune to subtract a colour from your stencil, but you can also use Fine
Tune to add colours to the stencil.
Click the Fine Tune option to turn it on.
Activate the screen by left-clicking on one of the greens not in your
stencil.
Move the cursor over to the middle of the stencilled grass and click
with the right mouse button to subtract a colour.
DeluxePaint recalculates your stencil and shows your stencil with the
colour removed.
Fine Tune lets you add or subtract single colours from your locked set with
out having to change the Tolerance level. Fine Tune always adds or subtracts
only the colour you click on, though you are certainly welcome to click on
whatever colours you like.
Tutorial Six:
Textures and Media
DeluxePaint and its creators have always tried to bring the best and latestcomputer graphics trends to all Amiga users. One of the latest trends has
been to emulate natural media painting and compositing. Every major com
puter platform has a paint program that emulates natural media. We are the
first commercial Amiga program to bring natural media painting and effects
to all Amiga users, and no special additional hardware or files are needed. In
this section you will learn how to use textured backgrounds, media libraries
and how to best combine these tools with other DeluxePaint features to cre
ate some interesting natural looking artwork.
Switch Screen format to Lo-Res HAM
Load the file TextureMap.Lores from the Picture drawer of the
Examples disk.
Click No if the program asks you to change modes.
94 Chapter 4 DeluxePaint V
Select Palette>Default Palette from the Colour Menu.
Your map should turn to two shades of grey and black. Leave this as is.
Open the Ranges colour panel or press Ctrl-r
Click to range 2, then press the CLEAR button if there is a range
defined.
Select the light blue colour in your palette (colour 10) and place it on
the left-most bead line.
Slide the Range slider below the bead line all the way to the right.
Select the purple colour in your palette (colour 13) and place it on the
right most bead line.
You should now have a gradient that goes from light aqua colour to a
deep purple colour.
Click OK to close the ranges colour panel.
Now lets create a stencil to lock out the continents when we do a gradient
rectangle fill.
Select Stencil>Make from the Effects menu or press the ~ key to bring
up the Make Stencil requester.
Click the Fine Tune check box, and left click on any continent (the
dark grey colour).
Click on the Make button in the requester to create a stencil for the
continents.
Select Texture>On/Off from the Effect menu. (When you select this
choice for the first time in your work session, DeluxePaint will auto-
matically bring up the Load Texture window and turn on the texture
for you once it is loaded.) Select the BrushStroke texture from the
Textures directory of the Media disk. You now have a textured back-
ground loaded into memorY
Right-click on the Filled Rectangle tool to bring up the Fill Iype
requester.
Choose the standard Vertical Fill and the Smooth Dither gradient.
Make sure the blue gradient you created is the current gradient. Click
OK to choose the filled rectangle tool.
Press F10 to turn ofE the Menus end toolbox.
Take your cursor and create a filled rectangle from the bottom right
comer of your image to the top left corner of your image. In a moment
you will see that DeluxePaint has allowed you to create a textured fill
with a gradient. You need not combine the texture with a gradient, but
as you can see the effect is a very nice one. You can repeat this process
one or two more times and DeluxePaint will act as if your are building
up layers of paint on a textured background.
You won't need your stencil anymore, so choose Stencil>Free from the
Effect Menu.
Select Texture>Load.. from the Effect menu and load the
EmbossedHair textute file.
95 Painting Tutorials DeluxePaint V
Press F10 to turn on the toolbar if it isn't on alreadY Select the light
green colour in your toolbox palette.
Bring up the Fill Type requester by right clicking on the fill tool or
pressing F (Shift-f). Choose Solid and click OK to choose the Fill tool.
Click on the continent of Africa with the Fill tool. You should see a
hair-like texture fill the area you clicked on.
Choose another colour, load up another texture and fill another conti-
nent or go on to the next step when you are ready-don't let us inter-
rupt your creative endeavours.
Press j to swap to the spare page or select Spare>Swap from the
Picture Menu.
Load the WorldMap.Lores file from the Picture drawer of the Examples
disk. Click No at the change format message.
Press j to swap back to your TextureMap image. Load the Wall file
from the textures drawer of the Media disk.
Turn on Translucency (Alt-t). It should be set to 50% by default.
Select RubThru from the Mode Menu. Press F10 to turn off the
menus and toolbar.
Select the sketch tool (press s) and start rubbing through part of North
America. Because you have translucency on you are not rubbing
through a full opaque image; only 50% of the image (or whatever your
translucency settings are) rubs through. The amount rubbed through is
also being affected by the texture currently loaded. You can turn off the
texture to see the difference in how it reacts as you paint. You can also
try different combinations of having the translucency off, process on,
etc.
Select Colour from the Mode menu or press F2.
Now lets see what effect media types have on images. Please note that
media type libraries will not work by themselves, they require that you have
a texture loaded into DeluxePaint V.
Select Media>Open... from the Effect menu and load the file Chalk
from the media drawer of the media disk.
Choose the Sketch tool or your preferred drawing tool and start draw-
ing some lines on the screen. You'll notice that you get a slow build-up
of colour depending on what your current colour is and what texture
you have loaded. Change your foreground colour and draw again.
Load the felttip media library as you did the chalk one. Drawing on
the screen with this media library will affect the colours underneath
your brush more rapidly than the chalk brush, and the colours under
your brush will lean to dark values very quickly, just as a dirty felt tip
pen going over other colours would.
The other media libraries will give you different effects. Oil will mix much
more with the colours underneath your brush just like an Oil Pastel. Water-
colour will give you a soft textured tint of the current foreground colour.
96 Chapter 4 DeluxePaint V
Experiment with these and any other media libraries, weve made Media
libraries and Fextures as fiexible and customisable as possible. The combina-
tions of effects in DeluxePaint V are endless, so be creative and experiment
with as much of the program as you can. With a little practice you'll be cre
atmg algltal masterpieces m no time.
Tutorial Seven:
Using Macros
In the following tutorial, you 11 1earn how to record your actions as macros.Once you record a macro, you can save it to a file, edit it, and execute it as
many times as you need. Macros are great timesavers for repetitive tasks.
Recording Your Actions
The Record Macro command lets you record your keyboard and mouse
actions and save them as a macro you can execute from the User menu.
Menu commands
Sure, DeluxePaint has many keyboard shortcuts, but there are probably
some menu commands that you use frequently that don't have a built-in
keyboard shortcut. You can create your own macros to bring up requesters
at the touch of a button. Lets create a macro for bringing up the Load
Media requester.
Choose Record Macro from the Macro menu. Your actions are auto-
matically recorded from the time you select this menu command (and
the menu item is checked while recording) to the moment you reselect
Record Macro.
Choose Effect>Media>Open to open the Load Media requester. Select
a Media file if you wish to open one; otherwise click Cancel (it doesn't
matter which action you take for the purposes of our macro).
You can record your mouse and keyboard actions when using
DeluxePaint menus and requesters, but you can't record file-specific
actions such as opening a Media file. Thae's why it doesot matter
whether you click OK or Cancel in the preceding step.
Choose Macro>Record Macro again to stop recording the macro. The
Assign Macro requester appears.
Select macro slot Macro #1 and press OK.
To test the macro you just created, select User>Macro #l (or type
A-1). The Load Media requester appears. You just created a macro! For
the remainder of your DeluxePaint session, you can type /-1 to bring
up the Load Media requester without having to select it from the
Effect menu.
Automatic Signature
Lets try something a little more fun. How about recording your signature so
you can automatically put your signature on a painting?
Make sure that the Record Details option in the Macro menu is not
checked (it is checked by default). This will reduce the size of our
macro file.
Choose Record Macro from the Macro menu.
Click on the smallest brush in the Toolbox (the l-pixel brush in the
upper left corner).
97 Painting Tutorials DeluxePaint V
Write your name in the lower right corner of the screen.
Choose Macro>Record Macro again to stop recording the macro. The
Assign Macro requester appears.
Select macro slot Macro #2 and press OK.
Clear the screen, and then select User>Macro #2 (or type Al-2). Your
signature is written on the lower righr corner of the screen.
Recording your signature is hardly the most useful task you can assign
to a macro. Try recording and saving actions such as drawing a figure
and then cutting it out as a brush.
Saving and Loading
Macros
Now that we ve recorded a couple of macros, let's experiment with savingand loadmg macros.
Saving a macro
The macros you've created so far are stored only in RAM-if you exit the
program, they will be lost. Let's save the first macro to disk so we can per
manently assign it to a macro slot.
Select Save As... from the Macro menu. The Save Macro requester
appears.
Click the Macro #I radio button, and then click OK. A standard
Amiga save requester appears.
Type the filename Loadnedia. dprx in the File text gadget. (Macro
files should use the .dprx extension.) Click OK to save the file.
Loading a macro
After you save a macro to disk, you can assign it to any of the ten macro
slots. If you save your preferences to disk before exiting the program, any
assigned macro files will automatically be loaded into their respective slots.
Thus, you can keep up to ten macros assigned to the keyboard shortcuts ~-
1-A-O at any one time. In the following exercise, we'll load the macro file
we just created into the first macro slot.
Select Load... from the Macro menu. The Load Macro requester
appears.
You may notice that our LoadMedia.dprx file is in fact already placed
in the Macro #I slot-DeluxePaint automatically places the macro
file in the appropriate slot when you save a macro. But we'll pretend
that you're loading a macro file from the beginning.
Each of the ten macro slots has a question mark (?) to its right.
Clicking this button brings up an Amiga file load requester for the
respective macro slot. Click the ? button to the right of Macro #1. A
Load Macro file load requester appears.
Double-click on the file LoadMedia.dprx. The macro file we created
above is selected, and you return to the Load Macro requester.
Click OK to accept the macro assignment.
You have now created a permanent macro file and assigned it to the first
macro slot. However, if you quit the program now, no macros will be
assigned when DeluxePaint is restarted. If you want to save your macro
98 Chapter 4 DeluxePaint V
assignments permanently, choose Prefs>Save to save all your DeluxePaint
preferences settings as tooltypes.
Only macro files that have been assigned to macro slots are saved as
tooltypes. If a macro has been created in memory but not saved to a
file and assigned to a slot, the macro will be lost even if you save your
preferences before you exit DeluxePaint.
In this tutorial, you've learned how to record your actions and save them to
macro files that can be assigned to keyboard shortcuts. However, you can do
much more with ARrexx macro files than simply record and play back your
actions. You can also write your own macro scripts from scratch, or edit
macro files recorded in DeluxePaint. See the Apper~d~x Ffor more on the
world of ARexx macros.
99 Painting Tutorials DeluxePaint V
Chapter 5 Working woth Perspective
This section explains DeluxePaint's powerful Perspective mode. Perspective
lets you paint in three dimensions, which can give your pictures a true feel-
ing of depth. Perspective is a complex feature, so we strongly recommend
that you become familiar with the program before you venture into this
area. We've tried to make this explanation as clear as possible, but be aware
that the steps we list assume that you understand other program features.
Three-Dimensional Model
When you paint in Perspective mode, you are working with a three-dimen signal
representation of the two-dimensional space that is available on your
screen. To visualise this model it might help to think of your computer
scree~1 as the front side of a box.
Usually, wher1 you paint, the mouse moves your brush in only two direc-
tions: horizontally and vertically. But when you move and rotate your brush
in Perspective mode, you add a third direction to the motion: backward and
fr~rward. To move the brush into the distance or towards you, you'll move it
on the 7 axis of the system shown above.
You'll learn more about the coordinate system later in this chapter. For now,
just remember that in its default settings, the screen coordinates operate as
shown in Figure 5. ]; the X axis runs horizontally across the screen, the Y
axis runs vertically, and the Z axis runs backward into the screen.
Rotating a Brush
in 3D Space
The key to working in Perspective is rotating the bn~sh. In this brief section,
we'll show you how to rotate your brush using the numeric keypad. Before
you begin, you need a brush to rotate.
Load the Dolphin brush from the Media disk.
If you are N()T in HAM, choose Palette>Use Brush Palette from the
Colour menu. If you are in HAM, move to the next step.
After you have a inrush, you can enter Perspective mode.
Choose Perspective>Do from the Effect menu to enter the Perspective
mode.
103 Working with Perspective Deluxe Paint V
A small cross-hair appears in the middle of the screen to indicate the
Perspective Centre (or line of view), and your brush is enclosed in a wire-
frame with a large cross-hair over it. In our example, you will also see three
zeros on the right half of the Title Bar. These indicate the current rotation
angles of the brush. The numbers are all zeros because we haven't rotated
the brush yet.
The cross-hair on your brush makes any brush rotations easier to see, and it
will help you position the brush when it changes sizes. An important feature
of the cross-hair is that it indicates the X and Y axes of the brush. The Z
axis of the brush runs perpendicular to the other two axes, just like the
screen's Z axis. Figure 5.3 shows the Brush axis system.
To rotate the brush, use the numeric keypad on the right side of your key-
board. Figure 5.4 shows how each of the keys rotates the brush.
All numerical keystrokes in Perspective mode refer to the numeric key-
pad. You'll use the keypad to rotate images. Sometimes you'll use the
Shift key in combination with the keypad to rotate an object a fixed
number of degrees (more about this in Angle Step, below).
104 Chapter 5 DeluxePeint V
We'll try each of the rotations in the next few steps so you ger a feel for
moving in 3D. We'll start offwith the simplest rotation, that is, a rotation
on the Z axis with the brush in its normal 0,0,0 orientation. This is the sim-
plest rotation, because no part of the brush moves off the plane of your
computer screen.
Hold down 2 on the keypad for about 5 seconds.
The Dolphin disappears and the wire frame rotates clockwise on its centre
(the position of the pointer). Notice that the third number along the right
side of the Tide Bar has increased as the rotation angles increased. Figure
5.5 illustrates rotation on the Z axis.
Press 1 repeatedly until the numbers along the right side of the Title
Bar show 0, O, O as the brush rotation.
When the brush is back to the 0, O, O position, the Dolphin reappears
inside the frame. This is a handy visual cue that the brush is at its original
orientation. Later, when you begin moving the brush in three-dimensional
space, you'll see that the same rule applies to movement-if the brush is
back on its original plane it reappears inside the frame.
Displaying the brush is dependent on memory availability; your brush
may not appear even when in its original orientation if it is large or
memory availability is low.
105 Working with Perspective DeluxePeint V
Rotating on the other axes works just like rotating on Z, but when you
rotate on the other axes, the brush moves off the plane of the screen and
inro the third dimension. Let's see how this works by rotating on X.
Move (don't drag) the brush to the lower left corner of the screen. Hold
down 7 on the keypad.
When the brush frame has rotated to about -45, release the 7 key, and
click to paint the brush.
As you rotate the brush on the X axis, it appears as though the top half of
the brush is turning into the screen and the bottom half is turning outward.
As a result, your painted brush is set at an angle to the screen as shown in
To return your brush to its original orientation, press 0.
Resetting the Brush Rotation
The last step introduced an important keystroke. Any time you need to
reset the brush to its original orientation of 0,0,0, press O on the keypad. If
you get lost in the world of 3D, you can always ger back to the beginning
with this simple keystroke.
The Angle Step To rotate on the Y axis, you use 4 and 5 on the keypad. This time we'll use
the Shift key to rotate by a larger increment, automatically.
Move your brush to the lower right corner of the screen. Hold down
the Shift key and press 4 on the keypad. Your brush instantly rotates -
900 on the Y axis. Click to paint the brush.
Press O on the keypad to return the brush to its original orientation.
When you use the Shift key with one of the keypad keys, the brush rotates
by the Angle Step. The default Angle Step is 90, but you can change it to
any angle you like in the Perspective requester.
Choose Perspective>Settings from the Effect menu to display this
requester, or right-click on the Grid tool while you are in Perspective
mode.
106 Chapter 5 DeluxePaint V
When using perspective, 90 degrees is the most common angle, so leave it
there for now.
Click OK to return to the painting screen
When you rotate a brush in Perspective, the rotation always occurs around
the brush handle. In the preceding examples, the brush was held by the cen
Rotation around the Handle tre (the default position), so the rotations always occurred around the centre of the brush. Let's look at the difference between rotation around the centre
and rotation around the corner of the brush.
Click CLR to clear the screen. Position the brush near the middle of
the screen. Hold down the Shift key and press 2 on the keypad to
rotate 90~ on the Z axis. Press Shifr-2 three more rimes to ser the
brush back to 0,0,0, or press 3 on the keypad to reset the Z axis.
You've seen this rotation before, but we had you repeat it to compare this
with rotation around the corner of the brush.
Keep the brush in the same location. Press Alt-x on the keyboard.
This moves the brush so that it is held by the lower right corner. Note the
position of the arrow cursor. You can also do this by choosing
Handle>Rotate from the Brush menu.
Press Shift-2 tO rotate the brush around the new handle position.
Figure 5.8 illustrates the difference between rotation around the centre and
rotation about the corner.
107 Working with Perspective DeluxePaint V
Screen Verses Brush Coordinates
So far in our discussion of brush rotations, we've always rotated the brush
on one of the two possible coordinate systems. If you look back to Figure
5.7, you'll see that below Angle Step in the Perspective requester there is an
item labelled Type with two buttons: Screen and Brush. We've been rotating
in the Screen coordinate system. In the next few steps, we'll demonstrate the
difference between the two rotation systems.
INRORMATION
If you are familiar with rotation systems, you'll recognise that this
Screen coordinate system is based on Euler angles.
Before beginning this brief example, make sure your screen is clear. When it
is:
Choose Handle>Rotate from the Brush menu (or press Alt-x until
your handle is at the centre); and press 0 to reset your brush to its orig-
inal orientation.
To make this example clearer, it will help if the Angle Step is set to some-
thing other than 90. In the next step we'll have you change it to 45.
Choose Perspective>Settings from the Effect menu (or right-click the
Grid icon) to display the Perspective requester.
Click in the right side of the Angle Step edit field, backspace to erase
the 90 setting and type 45. Click OK to close the requester and use
the new setting.
Now let's try a rotation in the screen coordinate system:
Position your brush in the lower left corner of the screen. Press Shift 2
to rotate 45 on the Z axis. Now press Shift 7 to rotate -45~on the X
axts.
Click to paint the brush down.
Notice that when you rotated the brush on the X axis, the Screen's axis was
used. The brushs X axis was tilted sideways, but the brush still rotated back-
ward into the screen. Also notice that the rotation angles appear in the Title
Bar.
108 Chapter 5 DeluxePaint V
Now we'll change the setting to Brush angles and do the same rotation to
see the difference.
Right-click the Grid tool to display the Perspective requester. Click the
button labelled Brush and click OK.
Press 0 to reset your brush to its original orientation.
Position the brush in the lower right corner of the screen. Press Shift 2
to rotate 45 on the Z axis. Now press Shift 7 tO rotate -45 on the X
axis.
Click to paint the brush down.
In the Brush coordinates system, rotations always take place about the brush
axes, regardless of the current orientation of the brush. In this example, the
X axis was positioned diagonally after you rotated 45 on the Z axis; as a
result, the brush rotated on the diagonal axis instead of rotating straight
backward into the screen.
You'll also notice that the angles shown in the Title Bar are not the angles
that you rotated. The Title Bar always shows the rotation angles for the
Screen coordinate system. This allows you to reproduce your brush rotation
by switching to Screen angles and rotating the amounts indicated in the
Title Bar.
DeluxePaint offers both Screen and Brush coordinate systems for rotation,
because each of the systems has unique merits:
The Screen coordinates system is often consistent with the notion of the
three screen coordinates defining the 3D space. More importantly, the
Screen coordinates system is reproducible: you can jot down the rotation
numbers in the Menu Bar and reproduce the same brush orientation simply
by rotating to the same angles. The results of multiple rotations are the same
no matter what order you rotate in.
The Brush coordinates system is usually easier to visualise if you are rotat-
ing at angles other than 90. So you can usually produce the desired brush
orientation without much difficulty. Unfortunately, the cumulative effect of
separate rotations on the brush axes are not reproducible unless you make
the exact same rotations in the exact same order. You'll notice that the angles
given in the Menu Bar when you rotate using the Brush coordinates are
actually the angles for the Screen coordinates system; this is so you will be
109 Working with Perspective DeluxePaint V
able to reproduce your brush rotation, though you will have to use Screen
angles to do it.
Now that you've seen how to rotate your brush in three dimensions, the
next section will show you the ins and outs of moving a brush around in all
three dimensions.
Moving in 3D Space
Beforeyou begin this section clear the screen.
Choose Perspective>Reset from the Effect menu to reset all perspective
settings, includingAngle Type, to their defaults.
Load the brush named Block.brush from the Media disk. Choose
Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu.
Make sure you are in Perspective mode.
Moving on the Z axis
When your brush is in its original orientation (0, 0, 0), moving your mouse
moves your brush along the X and Y axes. Try it right now:
Move your mouse forward and watch how your brush moves up on the
screen. Move your mouse backward and your brush moves down on
the screen. Likewise, moving the mouse left or right moves the brush
left or right.
Because your mouse can move in only two dimensions (the third direction
would require you to lift it off the desk), it can move your brush in only
rwo directions. You can move your brush in the third dimension by using
the keyboard. One method is to move the brush straight back along the Z
axis only:
Position your brush in the lower left corner of the screen, hold down
the Shift key and press the quote key (") several times.
Each time you press Shift-", the brush moves backward along the Z axis. It
appears as though the brush is getting smaller, but in fact it is moving away
from the front of the screen. To move the brush forward along the Z axis,
you use the colon key(:).
Hold down the Shift key and press the colon key (:) once.
Notice that the " and: keys move the brush toward and away from the
cross-hair in the middle of the screen. This cross-hair defines the Perspective
Centre, which is best thought of as the point of view. No matter where you
place the brush on the screen, if you move the brush using the quote key,
the brush will move into the distance and toward the Perspective Centre.
When you use Perspective, you'll often want to move your brush backwards
and left and right along a plane. The effect is of a brush moving across the
floor. DeluxePaint lets you do this by holding down the Ctrl key while in
Perspective.
110 Chapter 5 DeluxePaint V
Press O to reset your brush to its original orientation.
Position the brush near the bottom of the screen, hold down the Ctrl
key and move your mouse forward and backward.
With the Ctrl key held down, the brush moves away along the Z axis when
you move the mouse forward. In this way, you can easily move in the X and
Z axes instead of the usual X and Y axes.
3D Coordinates
DeluxePaint V lets you see the position of your brush in three dimensional
space when you are in Perspective mode. This is useful if you need to align
your brush precisely.
Press the \ key and look at what happens to the angles in the right side
of the Title Bar. Now hold down the Ctrl key and move the mouse for-
ward and backward.
Pressing the \ key toggles the Display option in the Perspective requester
between Angle and Pos (position) (see Figure 5.7).
Press the \ key again to return to displaying angles in the Title Bar.
Laying down the brush
to move in 3D
Another way to move into the distance is to lay the brush down and then
move it on its own Y axis. Rotating the brush 90 on its X axis makes the
brush's Y axis act like the screen's Z axis. Figure 5.11 shows what happens to
the different axes during perspective rotation.
Lets try it once to see how it works.
Press O to reset the brush to its original orientation and position the
brush in the lower left corner of the screen.
Press Shift-keypad 7 to flop the brush down into the screen. Now
move the mouse around.
You will quickly discover that moving the mouse forward and backward
moves the brush into the screen and back out instead of up and down. This
111 Working with Perspective DeluxePaint V
is because the mouse moves the brush on the plane defined by the brusUs X
and Y coordinates.
Move the brush to any new position and press Shift-keypad 8 to turn it
back up on end. Paint the brush down.
Use the combination of Shift-keypad 7 and Shift-keypad 8 several
times until you are comfortable with how these keys help you move in
the third dimension.
Perspective Plane
You might have noticed that when you flopped the brush down by rorating
on its X axis, the brush moved on a plane below the Perspective Centre.
Remember that when the brush is in its original 0, O, O orientation, it
moves on a plane that is roughly the equivalent of the computer screen.
When you rotate the brush, you change the orientation of the plane. The
plane can be at almost any angle to Perspective Centre. The easiest way to
see this is to fill the perspective plane youve defined.
Press O to reset your brush. Position the brush so that your cursor is at
the bottom of the screen.
Press Shift-7 to rotate the brush on the X axis.
Choose Perspective>FillScreen from the Effect menu and watch as
DeluxePaint fills the perspective plane with a pattern of your brush.
As we said, you can set your perspective plane at almost any angle to the
Perspective Centre. In the next step, we'll draw a plane to the right of centre
with the brush rotated sideways. This will create a "wall" on the right.
Press O to reset your brush to its original orientation. Place the brush in
the lower right corner of the screen.
Press Shift 4 to turn the brush into the screen.
Choose Perspective>FillScreen from the Effect menu.
112 Chapter 5 DeluxePaint V
Practice creating different planes. For example, position the brush above
perspective centre to create a "ceiling" from your brush.
The Perspective Horizon
The position of perspective centre plays an important role in determining
the angle of the plane to the viewer. It also determines the horizon point.
The horizon point is the farthest edge of the plane when you rotate a brush
to 90. To demonstrate how this works, we'll load a picture that has a hori
zon, and fill the plane out to the horizon.
Load the picture Seascape from the Examples disk and choose
Palette>Default Palette from the Colour menu.
You might remember this picture from the Guided Tour. In the picture, the
ocean stretches to a flat horizon on the right side. We'll set our Perspective
Centre in line with this horizon and then fill a perspective plane.
Choose Perspective>Centre from the Effect menu. Your cursor changes
to a large cross-hair.
Position the cross-hair so that it is half way across the screen and so the
horizontal line of the cross-hair lines up with exactly the horizon in the
picture. Click to place the perspective centre.
Now, load your Block.brush brush, and enter Perspective mode.
Press Shift 7 to rotate your brush -90.
Choose Perspective>FillScreen from the Effect menu to fill the per-
spective plane.
When you are done, your screen should look like Figure 5. 13. Notice that
the horizon of your perspective plane exactly matches the horizon of the
original picture.
The Angle of the plane
In the example above, the perspective plane matches the horizon because
you rotated the brush by 90. If you had rotated by more than 90 the
plane would not reach the horizon, as though the plane sloped downward.
If you had rotated by less than 90, the plane would extend above the hori
zon, as though it sloped upward like a mountain. It is difficult to see the
113 Working with Perspechue DeluxePaint V
differences unless you have an existing horizon to compare the plane with.
Without an existing horizon, the sloping of the plane will appear to be only
a difference in the distance between the position of the brush and the per-
spective centre when the brush was rotated.
When you create a perspective plane, the position and angle of the plane are
determined by three things:
The position of the Perspective Centre;
the position of the brush handle (ct~rsor) when you rotate the brush;
and the degree of rotation.
In our examples above, we rotated the brush in 90 increments so the plane
was always either parallel to our point of view or at a right angle. If you
want to create a sloping surface, you do so by rotating the brush to an angle
less than 90. Heres a quick example.
Choose Perspective>Reset from the Effect menu or press Shift-keypad
0.
Position your brush so that the cursor is at the very bottom of the
screen. Hold down 7 on the keypad until the brush has rotated -60
on the X axis.
Move the mouse forward and backward to see how the brush moves on
this new plane.
You'll notice that the vanishing point of the brush is above the horizon in
your picture, this is because the plane is not parallel to the point of view. It
is as though you were looking at a gradual incline.
Putting Things in
Perspective
We've covered the fundamentals of perspective. Now it s time to put what you've learned into practice. In this exercise, we'll create a perspective land
scape and build a three dimensional arch as shown in Figure 5.14. In the
process, you'll learn some of the tricks about using perspective that you can
only understand when you see them in context.
Chapter 5 DeluxePaint V
Creating the Plane
The first step of our tutorial is to create a perspective plane. You don't need
to create a plane every time you use perspective. We're doing it here, so you
can readily see the "depth" of your picture.
Load the Block.brush brush from the Media disk.
Notice that this brush is held by the lower right corner. If you expect to use
a brush in Perspective, it is best to save the brush with the handle in the
lower right corner for two reasons
1. Rotations always occur around the handle, so holding the brush in the
corner helps make the rotations consistent and useful.
2. If you establish a Perspective grid, you can make all of your brushes
conform to that grid if their handles are in the same corner.
Choose Coords (short for Coordinates) from the Prefs menu or press
the l key (Shift-\).
Press the Enter key on the keypad to enter Perspective mode.
Position the cursor at 196, 25 and press Shift-G, which turns on the
grid and uses 196, 25 as one of the grid points.
If you turn on Coordinates and take note of the cursor position before
you rotate your brush, you'll be able to recreate the perspective plane
exactlY
Press Shift-Keypad 7 to rotate the brush -90 on X.
Notice that at this point you don't have angles in your Title Bar. You can
turn off Coordinates if you want to see the angles, but you don't need them
for this exercise, since all of our movements are on 90 and based on sight,
not numbers.
Choose Perspective>FillScreen from the Effect menu.
Building the Arch
Load the RedBlock brush from the Media disk.
At this point you are no longer in Perspective mode, but the Grid is still on.
Press the Enter key on the keypad to enter Perspective mode.
Your brush is automatically laid down on the perspective plane in the same
orientation you left it in last (that is, rotated -900 on the X axis). This is an
important point to remember, because it means that you can easily bring in
new brushes at the right perspective simply by loading them with the per-
spective plane defined by the previous brush.
You'll notice that the grid has been adjusted to your new brush size. It
is not necessarily true that your new brush will line up correctly with
the grid point you used to define the plane (196, 25), because the
brush handle is tied to the closest grid point when you enter perspec-
tive, and there is a three-in-four chance that it will be tied to one of the
115 Working with Perspective DeluxePaint V
other corners. If you want the brush to line up with the grid point you
specified when you created the grid, press Keypad 0 to reset the brush
to 0, 0, 0 orientation, align the handle with the grid point, and rotate
the brush again.
If you don't want your perspective grid automatica turn off the AutoGrid
option in the Prefs menu.
Press G to turn off the Grid so you can move the brush freely on the
plane.
Position the brush so that the Y axis of the brush is aligned with the
Perspective Centre and the bottom of the brush is aligned with the
edge of the second full row of tile on the Hoor. (The coordinates will
show this point as 175, 46)
Press Shift-G to turn on the grid and use your new handle position as
one of the grid points.
Press Shift-Keypad 8 to rotate the brush up on the X axis. Move the
brush rwo grid points to the left and stamp it down. Paint the brush
three times above the current brush position so you create the face of a
column.
Paint the brush four times to the right to form the top of the arch and
the top of the right column. Then paint the brush three times down to
form the right column.
At this point you have a rwo dimensional arch on a three dimensional
plane. Our next task is to give the arch a third dimension.
Move the brush so that it is directly on the bottom block of the left
column of your arch. Press Shift-Keypad 4 to rotate the brush -90 on
the y axis. Paint the brush where it is and rwice above to form the left
side of the column.
Move the mouse a bit to the right to move the brush back along its x
axis and paint another set of blocks so your column is one block wide
at the face and two blocks deep as shown in Figure 5.14.
Press Shift-Keypad 5 to rotate the brush back on its Y axis so that it is
facing you head on. If the brush is not the same size as the facing
blocks of your arch, hold down the Ctrl key and move the mouse for-
ward or backward to bring it closer or move it back.
As we explained in Chapter Five, Using Perspective, the Ctrl key temporarily
fixes the Y axis of your brush so that you can move it on its Z axis. As you
become adept at painting in Perspective, you'll find yourself using this key
often.
Position the brush to the left of the bottom block of the right column.
Press Alt-x to change the brush handle to the other side of the brush.
Your brush jumps so that it is over the bottom block of the right column,
but the brush is now held by the lower left corner. Remember that Alt-x
repositions your brush handle. This keyboard equivalent is especially useful
116 Chapter 5 DeluxePaint V
while working in Perspective, since you usually don't want to move your
mouse to choose from a menu,
Press Shift-Keypad 5 to rotate the brush 90 on the Y axis. Paint the
brush where it is and twice above tO form the left side of the column.
Paint another column just behind this first one so your column is one
block wide at the face and two blocks deep.
Press Shift-Keypad 4 to rotate the brush back on the Y axis. If the
brush is not the same size as the facing blocks of your arch, hold down
the Ctrl key and move the mouse forward or backward to bring it clos-
er or move it back.
Move the brush up so that it is over the block in the upper left corner
of the arch. Press Shift-Keypad 7 to rotate the brush -90 on the X
axis. Move the brush to the right and stamp it once below each of the
three blocks that form the top of the arch. Paint another row just
behind this first row so the top of your arch is one block high and two
blocks deep.
Inserting the
Seascape Picture
To give your perspective painting a bit more colour, and a landscape for the
background, we~ll load the Seascape picture and add it behind the arch.
Choose Spare>Swap from the Picture menu to display the spare page
(or press j ).
Load the Seascape picture from the Picture drawer on your Examples
disk. Choose Palette>Default Palette from the Colour menu.
Jump back to your main page (press j or choose Spare>Swap from the
Picture menu).
Choose Spare>Merge in back from the Picture menu.
In a flash, your arch has a nice seascape backdrop.
This exercise gave you a quick example of perspective, but you can do a lot
more. For an excellent example of perspective at work, load the picture New
Star-Hall on your Examples disk.
117 Working with Perspective DeluxePaint V
This chapter introduces you to DeluxePaint V's animation features. It
begins by explaining the basic model for animation and then covers each of
the different ways to create animations with the program. We recommend
that you work through this chapter in one sitting. It will take you approxi-
mately 45 minutes to complete.
Before You Begin
If you've been experimenting with DeluxePaint for a while before starting
this chapter, it would be a good idea to quit the program and restart. If you
start the program fresh, there is less chance that the results you get from fol-
lowing our instructions will be different from what we describe.
When the Choose Screen Format requester appears, select Lo-Res,
320x200, and 32 colours, and click Use.
The Basic Model
The basic idea behind animation in DeluxePaint is that instead of having a
single page to paint on, you have multiple pages that you can paint on and
Hip through. By creating images that differ slightly from page to page and
then playing them back in rapid succession, you create the illusion of
motion.
This section shows you how to:
Create frames for your animation
Paint on individual frames in the animation
Paint while the frames are flipping-this is called AnimpaintingrM
Use the Animation Control Panel.
Creating Frames
The first step in building an animation is to create the frames to paint on.
Choose Frames>Set # from the Anim menu. The Set Frame Count
requester appears.
121 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
Click in the Coune edit box, change the frame count to 10 and click
OK.
You now have 10 frames to paint on. Notice the numbers 1/10 at the left
side of the Title Bar. This means you are positioned on the first frame of a
10 frame animation.
Painting One Frame
at a Time
The most basic way to create an animation is to paint on each successive
frame individually.
Select the largest round built-in brush and paint a dot in the upper left
area of your screen.
The dot you just placed is on frame 1. The trick of animation in
DeluxePaint is to paint a slightly different picture on successive frames. So
you need to move to the next frame.
Choose Control>Next from the Anim menu to move to frame 2.
(Notice the Title Bar shows 2/10). Click another dot to the right of
where your first dot was.
Now you have a dot on frame I and a dot on frame 2. To create a series of
dots that move across the screen, you just repeat the last step. You'll notice
that changing frames from the menu is a little cumbersome, and it forces
you to move the mouse from the painting area. Its much more effficient to
move through the animation frames by using the keyboard equivalents (list-
ed in the menu beside the options). Follow the numbered steps below and
we'll use keyboard equivalents to complete and play our little animation.
1. Position your brush just to the right of the dot you painted on frame 2.
2. Press 2 on the keyboard once to advance to the next frame, then click
to paint a new dot.
3. Repeat step 2, painting each dot to the right of the previous one, until
your first dot appears again in the left side of the screen. (The Title Bar
will show 1/10 as your frame position.)
You've juse created a brief animation. Now let s play it.
4. Choose Control>Play from the Anim menu (or press 4 at the top of
the keyboard). You should see your dot moving from left to right across
rhe screen.
122 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
5. To stop the animation, press the space 6ar.
Animation
Control Panel
Selecting animation options from the Anim menu or using keyboard equiv-
alents for those commands are only rwo of the ways DeluxePaint has for
controlling your animations. Those two methods are handy, but perhaps the
most eff~cient way to control your animation is through the Animation
Control Panel.
Select Control>Panel from the Anim menu.
The Animation Control Panel appears at the bottom of the screen. It's use-
ful to have it visible while you work on your animation sequence. If you
want to remove it while you're animating, choose Control>Panel from the
Anim menu again. (Notice that there are check marks next to items when
they're on; no check mark when they're off.)
The Control Panel contains a Frame slider, scroll arrows, and fifteen control
buttons for working through and playing with your animation.
Frame Slider
The Frame slider helps you keep track of where you are in your animation
sequence, when you've hidden the Title Bar. Even when the Title Bar is
showing you can move to a specific frame by dragging the slider or by click-
ing on it. One click to the left or right of the slider handle moves the ani-
mation one frame. Clicking on the scroll arrows will take you to the first
(left-arrow) or last (right-arrow) frame.
Anim Control Buttons
Play Backward
Continuously
Play your animation sequence in a continuous loop, from last frame to first
frame. Press the space loar or click to stop play.
Play Backward Once
Click to play through your animation sequence one time, from the last
frame to frame 1. Animation ends on the first frame.
Preuious Frame
Click to move backward one frame. Steps from the current frame to the pre-
vious frame in the animation sequence. If the current frame is the first
frame in the sequence, the position is set to the last frame.
Next Frame
Click to move forward one frame. Steps the current frame to the next frame
in the animation sequence. If the current frame is the last frame in the
sequence, the position is set to the first frame.
123 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
Play Forward Once
Click to play through your animation sequence one time, from Frame 1 to
the last frame. Animation ends on the last frame.
Play Forward
Continuously
Play your animation sequence in a continuous loop, from first frame to last
frame. Press the space 6ar or click to stop play.
Play Ping-Pong
Plays your animation sequence continuously as above, but plays the
sequence forward then backward then forward and so on Press the space 6ar
or chck to stop plaY
Add a Frame
Adds a frame after the current frame, and copies the contents of the current
frame to it. Press Ctrl while choosing this icon to bring up the Add Frames
requester.
Delete a Frame
Deletes the current frame and makes the following frame the current frame
(unless you're already at the last frame). Press Ctrl while choosing this icon
to bring up the Delete Frames requester.
You can't UNDO a delete command, so DeluxePaint asks you to confirm
that you really want to delete a frame.
Repeat Last Go To
Takes you to the frame last defined in the Go To Frame requester (default =
frame 1) of your animation. Press Ctrl while choosing this icon to bring up
the Go To Frame requester.
The LightTable and the four associated icons on the righr side of the
Control Panel will be described later in this chapter.
Painting with
Animation
You saw above that one way to create an animation in DeluxePaint is to
paint on a series of frames individuallY For creating animations that involve
simple movement of an object, DeluxePaint provides a much easier method
called animpainting. Essentially, the frames flip automatically while you
paint.
Right-click CLR in the Toolbox. The Clear requester appears.
HINT Left-clicking on CLR when there are animframes clears only the current
frame.
When you click CLR with multiple frames, DeluxePaint gives you the
option of clearing only the current frame, a range of frames in your anima-
tion, or all frames.
Click All Frames in the requester. Click OK.
124 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
In a moment all of your frames are cleared and you are automatically set
back at frame 1. Now let's do some animpainting.
Select the large round brush, and the Dotted Freehand tool.
Hold down the Alt key, and paint by holding down the left mouse but-
ton and dragging across the screen from left tO right.
As you paint, the frames flip automatically, so you place only one dot on
each frame of your animation. Notice that the frame counter in the Title
Bar changes to show what frame you are on. When you reach the last frame,
you loop back to frame 1, where you'll see your first dot again.
The Alt key is your animpainting keY If you hold down the Alt key at the
time you press the mouse button down, the animation frames will flip with
each stamp of the brush so that you stamp only once on each frame.
Remember that you only need to hold down the Alt key as you press the
mouse button down. Then you can release Alt to press other keys if you
need to.
After you have painted for a few seconds, stop and choose
Control>Play from the Anim menu or press 4 on the keyboard.
You can also use the Animation Control Panel to activate any of the
commands that are called for in this chapter.
Press the space bar or click to stop the animation.
Now you know these basic elements of animation:
How to create frames.
How to move through the frames one by one and paint.
How to animpaint.
Animpainting is especially powerful if you have an animated brush to paint
with; we'll show you how to create and use one later in this chapter. Right
now we want to show you more ways to move objects on the screen.
Automatic Animation
Using the Move Requester
The Move requester lets you automatically move and rotate a brush over anumber of animation frames. More importantly, you can move and rotate
the brush in all three dimensions. In essence, you are painting using
Perspective, but DeluxePaint makes all of the calculations for the individual
frames.
This section will take you through a detailed explanation of each feature of
the Move requester and give examples for most of the features.
To begin, right-click CLR and clear All Frames from the previous ani
mation sequence.
Choose Frames>Set # from the Anim menu. Change the frame count
to 20, and click OK.
Press Shift-1 to move to frame 1.
Load the brush DPaintTitle from the Brush drawer.
125 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
Choose Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu.
These instructions assume that your memory method (Method in the
Anim menu) is set to Compressed-the default setting. Amigas with
two megabytes of RAM can create only 9 to 10 frames using the
Expanded method. You'll find a brief description of the two memory
methods in Reference.
Simple Moves in
Three Dimensions
The Move requester does exactly what its name implies-it moves your brush on the screen. There are many impressive animations you can create
with only the Move requester and a brush like our DPaintTitle brush, but
to create those impressive animations, you need to know how each feature
of the Move requester works. This brief section explains the most basic
Moves.
Stamp your brush in the centre of the screen.
Choose Move from the Anim menu. The Move requester appears.
The first row in the Move requester lists the three axes (X, Y, and Z) in the
three dimensional space of your screen. If you are familiar with Perspective
you know that these axes run lefr and right, up and down, and in and out
from the screen respectively. Figure 6.7 shows the orientation of the three
axes to the screen.
Directly below the X, Y, Z letters there are edit boxes for entering Distance
(Dist:) numbers. You enter numbers here to tell DeluxePaint how far to
move your brush in any direction or combination of directions. (If your
126 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
brush is moving only on the X and Y axes, the numbers are equal to pixels,
but once you move along the Z axis, the units are either smaller or larger
than pixels.) Let's look at a simple example:
Click in the Dist edit box below X and set the number to 200.
Make sure that the Count edit box (in the middle of the requester)
shows 20 as the current setting. If the number is not 20, click in the
edit box and change the number.
Click Preview to see a preview of the movement of your brush.
You will see your brush enclosed in a wire frame move to the right across
the screen. If you want your brush to move to the lee, you enter a negative
number for the X Distance. Try it.
Set the X Dist edit box to -200. Click Preview.
This time your brush moves to the left across the screen. A similar rule
applies to the other two axes: Y Distance moves your brush upward if the
number is positive and downward if the number is negative. Z Distance
moves your brush out to the distance (away from you) if the number is pos-
itive or inward to the screen (coming toward you) if the number is negative.
You can use any combination of the three Dist edit boxes to move your
brush anywhere in three dimensional space. Try it if you like. Set a number
for each of the three boxes and click Preview to see where the brush would
move.
Simple Rotation
In addition to moving the brush along an axis or several axes in combina
tion, the Move requester lets you rotate the brush around one or more axes.
You rotate the brush by entering numbers in the Angle edit boxes.
In the Move requester, click Zero, which clears all data from the
Distance and Angle edit boxes.
Click in the Z Angle edit box and enter 360 as the angle of rotation.
(This tells DeluxePaint that you want to rotate the brush 360 on the
Z axis.) Click Preview.
You'll see a wire frame representation of your brush rotate clockwise on the
screen. Just as negative numbers change the direction of movement when
using Distance moves, negative numbers change the direction of rotation
when you use Angle moves.
Change the Z Angle setting to -360' and click Preview.
The wire frame rotates counter-clockwise.
If you're familiar with DeluxePaint, you'll notice several new buttons here in
the Move Requester that will make it easier for you to position and move
your brushes around. Using the knowledge you learned about perspective in
Chapter 5, you'll feel right at home with the way the key frame "Adjust"
button works.
127 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
Again using the DpaintTitle brush, let's try it out.
Click the Zero button to reset the distance and angle settings.
Select the Start key frame button and choose the Adjust key frame but-
ton.
You will see a wireframe representation of the DpaintTitle brush as if
you were in perspective.
While in this Adjust mode you can move your brush around and set
the starting position you would like your brush in.
Click and drag the brush to the top of your screen. Press Return or
Enter (Either key will accept your position and exit you out of Adjust
mode.)
Press the End key frame button and choose the Adjust button one
more time.
Click and drag the brush to the bottom of your screen. Press Return
or Enter.
Select the Preview button to see the move you just created. Notice that
DeluxePaint enters the distance for you automaticallY You can edit the
values manually as you learned in the previous section as well.
The Fade slider ~ill fade in or fade out your move using a translucency
value between O and 255. 0 is full opaqueness, and 255 is full translu-
cency.
The effect DeluxePaint will achieve for you is dependent on your
palette and screen mode. The more colours to transition to full
translucency the better the fade effect will be. You can have a fade value
for both the Start key frame and the End key frame.
As explained earlier, "Adjust" mode is very similar to perspective, not
only can you move your brush in the screen's X and Y axes, you can
also rotate your brush using the perspective rotation keys (1, 2, 4, 5,
and 7, 8 on the keypad) and reset your axes using (3, 6, 9, and 0). In
addition, you can move your brush in the Z distance by holding down
the Ctrl key and clicking and dragging until you set the brush size to
your liking.
We hope the addition of setting Start and End key frames and the
addition of a fade effect over a move will make it easier for you to cre-
ate the animations in your head. Click Zero and try some brush rota-
tion and moving your brush in the Z distance while in the adjust mode
and press Preview to check it out before you move on to the next sec-
tion. Have fun!
Brush Check Boxes
At this point you may be wondering about those two options labelled Brush
beside the Distance and Angle edit boxes. The short answer is that these
options determine whether your brush moves and rotates based on the
screen axes or based on the brush axes. The default setting is for the brush
to move along the screen axes and to rotate around the brush axes. To fully
understand this feature, you'll need to be familiar with how Perspective,
described in Chapter Five, works. We'll explain the Brush check boxes in
more detail later in this chapter. For now, just leave them as they are.
128 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
The Go Back
Command
The Go Back button has a similar function to the Clear button, only itaffects the location of the brush rather than the settings in the Move
requester. When you use the Move requester to move your brush in three
dimensional space, DeluxePaint remembers the ending position of the brush
when the move is complete. If you want to do a second move from the orig
inal brush position, click Go Back to reset the brush location.
We'll show you the results of two different move paths, one without using
Go Back and one using Go Back. In this example you'll also actually draw
and play the animation instead of simply previewing it.
Click Cancel in the Move requester Click CLR and clear all frames (if
yourve been following the steps, the frame count should still be 20).
Successive Moves
without Go Back
Choose Perspective>Reset from the Effecr menu to reset your brush to
the original orientation.
Position the brush at the bottom of the screen, and paint it down.
Choose Move from the Anim menu to display the Move requester.
Click Zero to clear the edit boxes and then set the Y Distance to 200
and the Z Distance to 400.
The frame count should be set to the number of frames you currently
have. If it's not, make it so.
Click Draw.
You just created the first part of the brush's movement, now we'll create the
second part to continue from where the brush ended.
Instead of choosing Move again, this time press Shift-m to display the
Move requester. M is the keyboard equivalent of choosing Move from
the Anim menu.
Set the X Distance to 800, leave the Y distance at 200, and set the Z
distance to 0. Click Draw.
Choose Control>Play from the Anim menu (or press 4) and watch
your animation. Press space t7ar when you've seen it enough.
In the animation you created, your brush moves into the distance and
upward and then shoots off the screen diagonally to the right. Because you
didn't use the Go Back button, the second part of the brush's movement fol-
lows directly from the end of the first part.
129 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
Successive Moves
with Go Back
In the next set of steps, you 11 use the same settings as the first example, but
you'll also click the Go Back button before drawing the second part of the
brush movement.
Click CLR and clear all frames. This time press Shift-Keypad O tO
reset your brush to the original orientation. Position the brush at the
bottom of the screen, and paint it down.
Press M to display the Move requester. Set the X Distance to 0, the Y
Distance to 200, and the Z Distance to 400. Click Draw.
Press M again. Set the X Distance to 800, leave the Y distance at 200,
and set the Z distance to 0. Click the Go Back button. Click Draw.
When DeluxePaint is finished drawing the animation, choose
Control>Play from the Anim menu and watch your animation.
This time you see your animation shows a title splitting into two, with one
title moving into the distance and upward and the other moving diagonally
off the screen to the nght.
Cyclic and Non-
Cyclic Moves
You use the Cyclic button to tell DeluxePaint which of two kinds of anima-
tion you want:
An animation that will loop back on itself (cycle) or chain from the
current move to another move of a similar type; or
An animation that is linear and will end at the last frame you requested
in the Move requester.
DeluxePaint draws your move differently depending on whether or not the
Cyclic button is selected. In this section we'll give you a very quick example
of the difference between the two moves.
Cyclic Animation
Load any brush that contains features to help you tell whether or not
the brush has been rotated. (The DPaintTitle brush will do very well.)
Right-click CLR and clear all frames. Choose Perspective>Reset (or
press Shift-Keypad O) to reset your brush to the original orientation.
Stamp the brush in the upper half of the screen.
Display the Move requester. Click Zero in the requester. Set the Z
Angle to 360.
Click the Cyclic button so a ~ appears in the box. Click Draw.
130 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
When DeluxePaint is finished drawing your animation, notice that you are
on frame 1 of your animation. DeluxePaint moved you to the frame past
the ending frame of your Count.
Press Shift-2 to go to the last frame of the animation. (20/20 appears
in Title Bar ).
Notice that on the last frame of your animation, the brush is not rotated
360, even though you asked for a 360 rotation in the Move requester. This
is because Cyclic tells DeluxePaint to create a "cyclical" animation-one
that completes the move on the same frame where it began. With this ani-
mation, you can play continuously without a seam.
Press 4 and watch the animation for a moment. Press the space bar to
stop the animation.
Non-Cyclic Animation
If DeluxePaint had painted the brush fully rotated on the last frame, you
would have the same image on frames 1 and 20, and the animation would
hiccup when you played it continuouslY Let's draw the same thing with
Cyclic turned off to see how that works.
Press Shift- 1 to move to frame 1 of your animation. Paint your brush
in the lower half of the screen.
Display the Move requester. Click Cyclic to turn it off (remove the <),
and click Draw.
Even as the new move is being drawn you can see that the new rotation is in
larger steps than the first one. When the draw is complete, you will be left
at frame 20, where you can see that the new move completed rhe 360 rota-
tion on frame 20, unlike the Cyclic move which leftyou on frame 1.
Press 4 and watch the animation. Press the space bar to stop the anima
uon.
You should be able to see that the rotation at the top of the screen is
smooth, but the rotation at the bottom of the screen hiccups noticeablY
131 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
You might ask yourself at this point why anyone would want Cyclic turned
off. The answer is simple: you might want to rotate exactly 90 by a particu-
lar frame or you might want to move an object from point A to exactly
point B. Generally, if you are creating an animation sequence that runs for
less than the full number of frames you have allocated for your animation,
you don't want Cyclic turned on. For a clear example of why you would
want Cyclic turned off, follow the next set of steps.
Clear all frames of your animation. Press Shift-2 to move to the last
frame.
Select the Unfilled Circle tool and the single-pixel brush and draw a
small circle on the right side of the screen.
Choose Coordinates from the Prefs menu to turn on Coordinates. The
coordinates are displayed on the menu bar.
Select the Dotted Freehand tool and the largest round built-in brush.
Position the brush in the middle of your unfilled circle and note what
the Coordinates show as the location of the brush.
Move the brush 200 pixels to the left of that position, press Shift- I to
move to frame 1 and stamp down your brush.
TIP
When you need to move your brush in a straight line horizontally or verti-
cally as you did in the step above, hold down the Shift key. This constrains
your cursor to horizontal or vertical movement, depending on which direc-
tion you move in first.
Display the Move requester, click Zero, set the X Distance to 200.
make sure Cyclic is selected, and click Draw.
When DeluxePaint finishes drawing the animation, notice that you are left
on frame 1. Now look at frame 20 (press Shift-2). You'll see that even
though the distance from where you stamped your brush to the centre of
the circle was exactly 200 pixels and the move you requested was 200, the
dot did not reach the centre of the circle. If you want to move your brush to
a specific location by your ending frame, turn Cyclic off.
132 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
Although you cane see it, DeluxePaint has positioned the brush in the cen-
tre of the circle on frame 1. If you want to prove this, go to frame 20 and
display the Move requester. Click 0, change the Count to 1, and click Draw.
When you complete a move with Cyclic selected, DeluxePaint automatically
advances you to the frame beyond the end of your Count and the brush
position DeluxePaint remembers is the position you specified in the Move
requester
Smooth Moves Slowly
The Slow Out and Slow In edit boxes let you specify a number of frames
over which the brush can accelerate or decelerate in your animarion. The
primary advantage of these features is that you can make the brush move
ment smooth at its beginning and ending points. Also, some effects require
a gradual acceleration and deceleration to be realistic. For example, a bounc
ing ball should accelerate on the way down. The bouncing ball is a good
example of how this feature works, so let's try it.
Clear all of your frames. Load the Ball.brush brush from your Brush
directory, and then choose Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour
menu.
Press h to halve the size of the ball.
Display the Move requester. Click Zero to zero the location values, and
then click Start.
Click Adjust. The screen changes to a blank background with ball
brush. Click and drag within the boundaries of the box that surrounds
the brush and position the brush near the top of the screen. Press Enter
or Return to accept the positioning and return to the Move requester.
Click End, and then click Adjust again. This time, position the brush
near the bottom of the screen. Press Enter or Return.
Change the Slow Out Edit box to 10. Make sure the Count is set to
20, and then click Draw. The animation of the ball moving from the
top to the bottom of the screen is created.
After the animation is drawn, choose Control>Ping-pong from the
Anim menu (or press 6) to play the animation forward and backward.
You should see a bouncing ball. Press Tab for added effect.
Let's take a moment to review what you just did. You positioned the Start
and End frames to make the ball move from the top of the screen to the
bottom of the screen. When you entered 10 in the Slow Out edit box, you
told DeluxePaint that the brush should gradually increase its speed over the
first 10 frames and rhen move at the same speed for the last ten. You could
have achieved the same effect by typing values into the X and Y edit boxes
for the Start and End positions, but the method we used is simpler and
more mtultive.
133 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
More on the Move
Requester
What remains in the Move requester is fairly straightforward. For now,we'll
summarise what each of the buttons does. You 11 find additional explana
tions and more examples of the features below, in the following chapter, and
in Reference.
Direction
The Direction options control the direction of the move and the direction
of the recording.
The Go From button is the default setting for movement. With this option
selected, the settings in the Move requester are used to paint motion away
from the point where you last stamped your brush. For example, an X
Distance of 200 moves to the right from where you stamped your brush,
over the number of frames set in the Set Number of Frames requester.
With the Come To option selected, the settings in the Move requester are
used to paint motion toward the point where you stamped your brush. For
example, an X Distance of 200 moves to the right to where you stamped
your brush. This option is most useful when it's easier to specify the posi
tion where you want the move to end than it is to specify the beginning.
Remember that you want to stamp the brush on the frame you want your
animated move to end on. Here's a practical example.
Assembling the Pieces
Suppose you want pieces of a picture to fly onto the screen and assemble
neatly on the last frame. If the pieces are coming from off screen, it's diffi
cult to position the brush there for the beginning of the move! And you
don't want to calculate backwards from the ending position to figure out
just where the starting position should be anyway. The answer is to go to
the last frame, paint down your brush, and tell DeluxePaint to paint the
brush moving toward this point. That's what the Come To option is all
about. Let's do it.
Clear all frames.
Choose Frames>Set # from the Anim menu and set the number of
frames to 20.
Press Shift-2 to go tO the last frame of the animation.
Remember, when you use the Come To option, you always paint the brush
down on the frame where you want the move to end.
Choose Load from the Brush menu. Load the file named piel.brush
from the Media disk. Choose Palette>Use Brush Palette from the
Colour menu.
Paint the brush down in approximately the middle of the screen.
Display the Move requester, and click Zero.
Set the X distance to -200. Set the Y distance to -lSO. Set the Z angle
to 180. Click the Come To option.
Set Slow In to 5, and click Draw. Reset Slow Out to 0.
Play the anim that you have so far.
You'll see the piece of pie chart fly in from off the screen. Notice how the
Slow In setting of 5 frames smoothed the landing of the pie. If you continue
134 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
with the other two pieces to construct the full pie chart, you'll see that this
Slow In element is very important to the look of the animation.
NOTE
YOU can also accomplish these ypes of assembly moves with the Start and
End buttons as well, without having to use Come To.
If you get the point of this exercise and don't want tO complete the flying
pie chart, you can continue on. Otherwise, (or if you want to continue for
fun) there are two more pieces of pie chart to load. Load each one and
stamp it in place (wirh the black edges of the slices overlapping) and set any
move you want that will send the slice flying onto the screen.
This is a great opportunity to experiment with the Move requester settings;
no matter what numbers you enter, the pie will come to the proper end
point on frame 20.
Record
The Record options let you specify the direction in which DeluxePaint
paints the frames of your move.
>>Forward is the default and paints the frames by flipping forward.
II In Place causes DeluxePaint to paint all of the move on the current frame.
Backward paints the frames by flipping backward-this option is useful
with Trails.
Trails and Fill are best explained by vivid example-you'll find two exam-
ples of each in the next chapter.
Load
Displays the Load Move requester. From here you can load Move settings
that you entered and saved with the Save Move requester. When you load a
move, you are loading only the settings for the Move requester. You still
need to stamp your brush in th;e correct position and on the correct frame
to duplicate the move you had in mind. If you aren't absolutely sure of the
setting you want to load, try using the feature this way: stamp your brush in
the centre of the screen; load the move settings you think you want; click
Preview to see the move as it would look if it started from the middle of the
135 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
screen. This will give you a good idea of what the move looks like when it is
actually drawn, and it will also help you determine where your brush should
be stamped to produce the best move for these settings. The requester works
just like the Load Picture requester.
Save
Displays the Save Move requester. DeluxePaint lets you save the settings
(though not the images) of any move you set up in the Move requester. You
can load a saved settings and use them as a kind of template to automatical-
ly describe the movement of another object. The requester works just like
the Save Picture requester.
Animated Brushes
so far we've shown you how to create an animation by painting on a series
of frames. DeluxePaint also lets you select an area of animation as a brush
and paint with it. The result is that the brush changes while you paint, and,
depending on whether or not the frame changes, you create either anima
tion or interesting edects.
In Guided Tour (2), we showed you how to load and use one of the
AnimBrushes included on the Examples disk. In this section, we'll show you
how to create a simple AnimBrush of your own and paint with it.
Creating an AnimBrush
To begin, let's create a simple animation that we can easily pick up as a
brush.
Choose Palette>Default Palette from the Colour menu.
Clear all of your animation frames. Paint a circle about the size of a
quarter and filled with a gradient. Pick your sphere up as a brush using
the right mouse button to pick it up off the screen.
Paint your brush down and rotate it 360 over twenty frames. To do
this:
Display the Move requester. Click Zero to set all of the options to their
defaults. Set the Z Angle to 3GO and select Brush angle Select Cyclic
and make sure the Count is 20.
Make sure Slow In and Slow Out are set to 0.
Click Draw.
Your brush will rotate in place to create an animation that looks a little like
Ia spmnlng p anet.
Picking Up an AnimBrush
When DeluxePaint is finished painting the animation, step to frame I
and choose AnimBrush>Pick Up from the Anim menu.
A large cross-hair like the one you use to pick up standard brushes appears,
but it is special in that it picks up from a series of frames.
Pick up the sphere animation as a brush as you normally would using
the left mouse button.
136 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
In the Pick up AnimBrush requester that appears, 20 should appear in
the Number of Cels edit box. If it does, click OK.
After you click OK, you will see each of the frames flip as the area is picked
up. When it's done, you have your AnimBrush. Another way to pick up an
AnimBrush is to select the Brush Selector and hold down the Alt key as you
pick up an area of your animation.
Painting with the AnimBrush
To prove that you have an animated brush, paint with it a little.
you'll see that the brush spins as you paint. This is one way m use an ani
mated brush. But better yet, try animpainting:
Clear all frames. Hold down the Alt key. Position the brush in the
lower left corner of the screen and paint from left to right across the
screen.
The frames flip as you paint, so you only place one cel of the AnimBrush
on each frame of your animation. When you play the animation back, you'll
see a ball roll from left to right across the screen.
AnimBrush Settings
When you begin to combine AnimBrushes into large animations, you'll find
that occasionally you want to change the rate at which an AnimBrush trans
forms. You might even want to change the direction in which an
AnimBrush plays. For example, you might want the gradient ball you creat
ed above to turn in the opposite direction. You can do this with the
AnimBrush Settings requester.
Choose AnimBrush>Settings from the Anim menu.
Direction
Click the (backward) direction button and click OK.
Now your gradient circle will rotate in the opposite direction when you
paint with it.
The other direction setting is called Ping Pong. This setting causes the brush
to alternate between forward and backward play.
Durahon
The Duration box in the AnimBrush Settings requester lets you specify how
many stamps of the brush the AnimBrush uses to complete its cycle. If the
137 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
Duration number is larger than the number of eels, the brush seems to
move more slowly. If the Duration number is smaller than the number of
eels, the brush seems to move more quickly. Let's try painting normally with
a brush and then paint with the Duration set higher.
Choose AnimBrush>Load from the Anim menu. Load the file named
Sweep from the AnimBrush directory of your Examples disk. Choose
Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu.
Display the AnimBrush Settings requester and set the Direction to play
forward. (Notice that this animated brush has 10 eels.) Click OK.
Position the karate figure on the left side of the screen. Hold down the
Alt key and click the mouse button repeatedly without moving the
mouse to paint one cel of the animbrush on each of the 20 frames of
your animation.
You now have an animation of a karate character performing a sweep kick
twice. You'll notice that the sweep kick is fairly rapid. Next we'll paint the
same animbrush with a longer duration to slow down the motion of the
character.
Choose AnimBrush>Settings from the Anim menu. Set the Duration
box to 20. Set the Current box to I to put the brush at its first eel.
Click OK.
Now position the karate figure on the right side of the screen. Hold down
the Alt key and paint one cel of the AnimBrush on each of the 20 frames.
When you've finished painting your AnimBrush on the 20 frames, press the
4 key at the top of the keyboard to play the animation.
Compare the speed of the two characters. If you step through the frames of
your animation one at a time, you'll see that the man on the right takes two
frames before changing position, while the man on the left moves on every
frame. You can also use Duration to speed up an animbrush by setting the
duration number lower than the number of eels in the brush. In that case,
eels of the brush would be skipped as you painted with the brush.
Note: If you increase the duration of an AnimBrush, it is best to set a
duration that is a multiple of the number of eels in your brush. For
example, an animbrush that has 10 frames will generally look best if
you set the duration to 10, 20, 30, etc.
Metamorphous
AnimBrushes
Another way to create AnimBrushes is to transform the image and shape of
one custom brush into those of a second custom brush. This special feature,
called metamorphosis, can create some stunning effects. We'll show you a
couple of very simple examples just to give you the idea. The first example
metamorphoses between very different brushes. The second example meta-
morphoses between two transformed versions of the same brush. In both
examples, you 11 use the Spare options in the Brush menu to work with two
custom brushes at the same time.
138 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
The Chicken and the Egg
In this example, you'll load two different custom brushes (a chicken and an
egg) and create an AnimBrush that metamorphoses between the two.
Clear all frames of your animation.
If the Animation Control Panel is NOT on your screen, press Alt-A to
display it.
Choose Load from the Brush menu, and load the file named egg.brush
from the Brush drawer of the Media disk. Choose Palette>Use Brush
Palette from the Colour menu
Choose Spare>Brush:Spare from the Brush menu.
The Brush:Spare option copies your custom brush to the spare custom
brush buffer. Now that you have the first brush in the spare buffer, you can
load a second brush without losing the first one.
Choose Load from the Brush menu, and load the file named "chicken"
from the Brush drawer on Media.
Now you have two custom brushes what you can swap back and forth
between by choosing Spare>Brush - Spare from the Brush menu. Try it if
you like. Make sure that the chicken is your current brush before you pro-
ceed.
Now choose Spare>Morph - Spare from the Brush menu. (The Make
AnimBrush requester appears.)
Enter 11 in the edit box as the number of eels in your new brush, and
click OK.
It will take a little while for DeluxePaint to morph your two custom brushes
into one AnimBrush.
Go to AnimBrush settings on the Ping Pong direction button and click
OK.
The Ping Pong option automatically plays your AnimBrush to the end and
back again repeatedly without doubling the first or last cel of the brush.
This means that the brush is effectively twice as long minus 2 eels. (In this
case, we had you create an 11 cel brush so that the Ping Pong version would
play over exactly 20 frames.) You'll find the Ping Pong option very useful for
converting linear brushes into cyclical ones without having to create the
extra frames.
Hold down the Alt key, and click the brush repeatedly to paint the
brush over 20 frames. Press 4 to play the anim.
You'll see an egg metamorphose into a chicken and back into an egg over
and over until you press the space t7ar to stop the animation.
139 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
The LightTahle
The LightTable lets you view a few frames of animation overlaid on each
other like clear sheets of cellophane to help you position brushes or paint
the in-between frames of a character animation. The LightTable also allows
you to set multiple levels of dim so that you can view any frames in your
animation behind (or after) your current frame. This enables you to more
easily see the frame you are working on. (This dimming effect is available in
all modes except HAM.)
Traditional animators work by painting the key positions or poses of a char
acter and then paint the "in-between" frames to create the smooth transition
between poses. The LightTable is ideal for creating animation with this tra
ditional approach. In the next few pages, we'll introduce the basics of using
the LightTable.
A new LightTable feature is the LightTable Settings requester
(Effect>LightTable>Settings...). You can use this requester to control all
four LightTable layers-you can turn each layer on or off, set the anima
tion frame associated with the layer, and set 'dim levels for each layer. The
Dim level for each layer can be set with a slider from -255 (Maximum
brightness; even lighter than the original frame) to 255 (completely dimmed
out).
Simple Tweening
We'll start out with a simple example of painting some in-between frames of
an animation.
Choose Load from the Anim pull down menu and load the animation
LightTable.anim
When you load this animation you will notice that this is a 5 frame anima
tion showing a face moving leE to right. You will also notice that the smile
and the eyes are missing from frame 2 and frame 4. Normally, adding these
features to the face may not be as easy as it seems, especially if the face is
moving. This tutorial will show you how to add the smile and the eyes to
the face to the in-between frames fairly easily, using the LightTable.
Choose LightTable>Settings... from the Effect menu. The LightTable
Settings requester appears.
Click on the first two boxes on the far left of the requester. This will
activate layer #1 and layer #2. You will notice a check mark appear
next to box #1 and #2.
Now we need to tell it which frame you want it to affect and how
much dim you want to add to this layer. On Layer #I change the
frame box to I and move the slider on the right until it is at -200.
This means that layer 1 shows I frame ahead of the frame you are currently
on and it will appear somewhat transparent because of the dim setting that
you adjusted. Moving the stider to the left adds more white to the image
and moving it to the right will add more black.
140 Chapter 6 DeluxePair~t V
NOTE The LightTable settings will have optimum performance if your background
is either black or white. Once you are finished using the LightTable you can
colour in your image and change the background to whatever colour you
desire.
On Layer #2 change the frame box to -I and move the slider on the
right until it is at -175.
This means layer 2 will show 1 frame behind the frame you are currently
on.
Click OK to leave this requester.
Press the 3 key on your keyboard (not the numeric keypad), to bring
up the GO TO FRAME requester. Enter 2 in this requester and click
OK.
Hold down the Alt key on your keyboard and press A at the same time.
This will bring up the anim control panel. You will notice that button
#1 and button #2 to the right of the light bulb button is activated.
This is because we selected these two layers in the light table settings
requester.
Press the light bulb button on this panel. Notice that their is a dimmed
version of frame I and frame 3 superimposed on the current frame.
This gives the illusion of drawing on very thin paper.
Now that the LightTable is activated draw the eyes and the mouth on
the face on frame 2. You may need to toggle the LightTable on and off
with the L key on your keyboard.
Go to frame 4 and draw the in-between frame here as well.
Press play on the Anim control panel, turn on some music, and watch
the face move his head to the beat.
If you like your animation, save it before moving on to the next sec-
tlon.
For more information, check out Chapter 8: Reference.
Evolution of an
Animation
The Background
In this section we'll look at how a traditional animation evolves in
DeluxePaint V.
Turn off the LightTable.
Delete all of your animation frames.
Choose Load from the Picture menu and load the picture
DoggieBackground.LoRes from the Picture drawer on your Examples
disk. When the message appears asking whether or not you want to
change format to that of the file, click Yes.
The picture you see is a simple background image of a lawn and tree. This
image is the background for the DoggieOutline animation. Before anima-
tors begin to draw an animation, they create a background image against
141 Animation Basics DeluxePaint V
which the animated characters will move. The background image can be as
complex as a city scene or as simple as a straight line to indicate the ground
level for the characters to walk on. Whatever its level of complexity, the
background helps keep all of the pieces working in harmony.
In the next brief section, we'll load a wire-frame animation over the back-
ground image.
The Outline
Now we'll take a look at the first step of creating an animation over a back-
ground.
Choose Spare>Swap from the picture menu to put the background
picture on the spare page.
Load the anim DoggieOutline from the Anim drawer on your
Examples disk. When the message appears to ask if you want to change
the number of colours to that of the file, click No.
Note: You just performed an important operation; you loaded an 8-
colour wire-frame animation into lG-colour mode. DeluxePaint lets
you load animations into screen formats that use more colours and
thus makes It possluIe tor you to create tne mltlal ammatlon outnne m
just a few colours and load it into a format with more colours later on
when you want to paint the frames.
DoggieOutline is a few frames of a simple wireframe animation that was
created by an animator who uses the traditional method of first drawing the
outline version of the animation and then filling it with solid colours or pat-
terns to create a finished piece. Traditional animators call the oudine version
of an animation the "pencil test."
Turn on the LightTable to view the animation frames overlaid on one
another.
Click the 4 button in the Anim Control Panel to view the Spare page
behind the animation.
See how useful it is to view the background image through your animation
frames? With the background visible, the animator can easily align the ani-
mated characters without having to worry about accidentally ruining the
background image. Even if you arent working on an animation, you might
find it useful to view a background image while you paint. If you turn off
the Dim option (from the LightTable submenu of the Effects menu) you
can view the background in its original colours and thus treat your anima-
tion frame as a transparent page.
Choose different combinations of settings (1, 2, 3, and 4) in the
LightTable area of the Anim Control Panel. Move the Frame Slider
back and forth to view the different animation frames and background
combined with the various settings.
Merging in the Background
One of the powerful features of the LightTable is its ability tO let you merge
your viewed frames. We'll try it right now by merging the background
image into the image on one of the frames.
142 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
Make sure LightTable is on, but turn off all of the LightTable options
other than 4 (for Spare).
You should see your current frame against the background on the Spare
page with no other frames visible.
Choose LightTable>Merge from the Effects menu.
In a moment, your background is merged with your wireframe animation.
Notice that the LightTable is automatically turned off after a merge opera-
tion. This is done so you will see the frame in its actual state and not be
confused by LightTable effects. One caution is in order: you can't Undo a
merge, so you should be very careful that the image as you see it in the
LightTable is correct before you merge it.
Another way to merge the background image with the frames is to use the
Spare>Merge in Back option in the Picture menu. This option lets you
merge to the current frame, to a range of frames, or to all frames in a single
operation. This is generally the last step an animator takes in the creation of
a finished traditional piece.
The Painted Animation
Before we leave this section, we'd like you to load in a painted animation
that was created using the techniques described in this chapter.
TIP If you are going to be savingyour animations to video tape and you don't
have a lot of RAM in your Amiga, it might be best not to merge a back
ground into your animation. Instead, you can create a painted background
and use a GenLock device to combine the video signal of the Amiga with
the signal of a camera focused on the painted background as you record the
two to a videotape.
Load the walk.anim from the Gallery drawer of the Extras disk.
This High Res I G colour animation was created by an animator at
Electronic Arts using DeluxePaint and traditional animation techniques.
Brush Axes vs.Screen Axes
Now that we've covered pretty much everything else, it's time to cover the
sticky issue of brush vs. screen axes. We've tried to make the example very
clear, but if you feel you need further help, review Chapter Five: Working
with Perspective. We should also mention that you will not need to change
the default settings for these options very often.
Movemerlt Alorlg the Brush Axes
So far in our examples, we've been moving the brush along the screen axes.
When your brush is in a standard orientation (0, 0, 0), movement on the
brush axes is the same as movement on the screen axes. If you rotate your
brush using Perspective, the brush axes may no longer correspond to the
screen axes, and movement on the brush axes will be different. In this exam
ple we'll use the Load Move requester to set some of our movements.
143 Animation Basics DelxePaint V
Choose Screen Format from the Picture menu and change your format
to Lo-Res 320 x 200, Screen size page, and 32 colours palette.
Choose Page Size from the Picture menu and change page size to
Screen 320 x 200. Click OK.
Choose Frames>Set # from the Anim menu and set the number of
frames to 20.
Choose Load from the Brush menu an load the brush named
DPaintTitle brush from the Brush drawer on your Media disk.
Choose Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu.
You should now have a clear page and the DPaintTitle brush ready to work
with.
Choose Perspective>Do from the Effect menu to enter Perspective
mode.
Move the brush down near the bottom of the screen and press Shift-
Keypad 7 to flop the brush over on its back.
Click to paint down the brush.
To flop the brush over on its back, you rotated it -90~ on the X axis (see the
Title Bar) and shifted the brush axes so that they no longer correspond to
the screen axes. Figure 6.8 illustrates the change in the brush axes.
Now if you use the Move requester to move the brush along the Y axis, you
will get different results depending on whether or not you have selected the
Brush button.
Display the Move requester, and click Load.
When the Load Move requester appears, load the file called
Animbasicsl.Mov from the Move drawer of Examples.
Click Preview from the Move requester.
144 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
The wire frame model of your brush moves upwards, just as you would
expect when moving along the screen axis.
Click the Brush button beside the Distance edit boxes. A check mark
appears in the box. Now click Preview and watch the direction the
brush moves.
This time the brush moved into the distance along the Y axis of the brush.
As Figure 6.15 above shows, the brush's Y axis is the same as the screen's Z
axis when you rotate backwards -90on X as we did.
Rotation on the
Brusts Axis
You may have already guessed what will happen when we rotate the brush
on its own axes rather than on the screen axes, but this is sometimes diffi-
cult to visualise, so we'll give an example.
Click Cancel to close the Move requester
Right-dick CLR and select All Frames in the requester to clear all
frames.
Choose Perspective>Reset from the Effect menu to reset all of the
Perspective settings.
At this point you once again have your brush in the original orientation and
are in Perspective mode. Now we'll rotate the brush on the Z axis, so that
the X and Y axes of the brush no longer match the X and Y axes of the
screen.
Hold down 2 on the keypad until the brush has rotated 45 on the Z
axis. You'll see the degrees of rotation in the right side of the Title Bar.
Paint down the brush in the middle of the screen.
Press M to display the Move requester.
Click Zero in the requester.
Click Load. When the Load Move requester appears, load the file
called Animbasics2.Mov from the Move drawer of the Media disk.
Make sure the Brush button beside the Angle edit boxes doesn't have a
on it.
Click Preview.
With the settings above, you'll see the brush tumble toward the screen on
the X axis. Remember that the brush is rotating on the screens X axis. Now
let's look at a rotation on the brush's X axis.
In the Move requester, click the Brush button beside the Angle edit
boxes; click Preview.
This time the brush spins around its own X axis instead of tumbling toward
the screen. The idea is the same for all rotations, though it isn't always easy
to predict what a complex set of rotations will look like. You'll probably find
that most of your moves can be accomplished with rotation around only
145 Animnation Basics DeluxePaint V
one axis at a time. And once you get used to rotations on the brush axes, we
think you'll use these most often, so brush rotations are the default setting.
TIP If this last exercise was less informative than you had hoped, you should
probably review the chapter on Perspective. There you will find more exam-
ples that might help you better understand the difference between screen
and brush angles.
Now thatyou've seen some of DeluxePaints animation features, you might like
to play around a tattle. Load the animations from the Examples disk and play
them. There are several AnimBrushes on the disk thatyou can combine with the
Ocean Background.picture to form an aquarium scene. When you feelyou're
ready to see some more of DeluxePaints animation features, move on to the next
chapter. It showsyou how to create some interesting animation effects by combin-
ing different features of the program.
146 Chapter 6 DeluxePaint V
Chpter 7 ANIMATION EFFECTS
This chapter introduces several interesting animation effects and a host of
animation tips. We strongly recommend that you work through this chapter
and complete the Amazing Bouncing Ball section, which serves as a good
test of your knowledge of DeluxePaint.
Effects
Quick Effects
In the following sections you'll create some interesting animation effects.
Many of these effects are not obvious, so it is worth your time to follow
closely and work along.
NOTE: As you begin each section that uses the Move requester, reset the
requester to its default settings. Our instructions will tell you only which
settings you need to change out of the defaults when you first open the
requester. Figure 7.1 shows the Move requester in its default settings; use
this as a guide if you need to check your own settings.
Before You Begin
Make sure you are in Lo-Res mode with 32 colours. Set your number
of frames to 40. Make sure you are using the Compressed memory
model.
Make sure FastFB is selected in the Prefs menu.
These effects are good examples of how multiple features of DeluxePaint
combine to make simple animation easy to create.
Receding or
Approaching shapes
This technique creates the effect of a shape moving off into the distance.
Notice that this involves using a keyboard command while you paint with
the mouse button down.
149 Animanon Effects DeluxePaint V
Right-click the largest round brush and stretch the brush to be about
the size of a nickel.
Select the Dotted Freehand tool.
Position the brush near the upper left corner of the screen.
Hold down the Alt key and begin animpainting in a curve downward
toward the lower right area of the screen. As you paint, release the Alt
key and press the - (minus) key repeatedly to shrink the brush as it
moves.
When you play back the animation, the gradual shrinking of the brush
makes it look as though it is receding into the distance. Play the animation
backwards, or create a new one using the = (equals or plus) key to enlarge
the brush, and the brush will appear to approach from the distance. This
example used a built-in brush, but you can do the same thing with a custom
brush.
Brush Erosion
The Edge>Trim command in the Brush menu makes it easy to have an
object dissolve inm nothing. You stamp the brush, trim some away, step to
the next frame, and stamp again. The real trick is to use the keyboard to do
all of your frame changes, trimming, and brush stamps.
Select black as your background colour and clear all of your frames.
Load the DPaintTitle brush from your Media disk. Choose
Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu. Stamp the brush in
the middle of frame I
Display the Move requester. Click Zero to set all of the Distance and
Angle edit fields m 0.
Set the Count to 1. Make sure that all of the other options are set to
their defaults. Click Draw.
150 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
Press Shift-o to trim the brush. Press Shift-m to display the Move
requester and click Draw. Repeat this step until the brush has com-
pletely disappeared. (It will take about 11 frames.)
Using the Move requester to stamp your brush saves you from having to
carefully position the brush on each frame. You can also accomplish this by
positioning the brush once and then using the keyboard equivalent Amiga-
Left Alt to click the left mouse button. (We recommend that you press the
Amiga key first and then press the Alt key quickly once for a single stamp,
because pressing the keys in the opposite order will start animpainting over
many frames.)
Since you didn't use all 40 of your frames, we'll use the Control>Set Range
option in the Anim menu to play just the frames you painted.
Choose Control>Set Range. In the Set Play Range requester, set the
From field to 1 and the To field to 12. Click Range. Click OK.
Now press 4 to play your animation and you'll see your brush dissolve
repeatedly until you press space i~ar or click to stop the animation. (If
the animation is moving too quickly, press the left arrow key to slow it
down.)
Before you leave this example, choose Control>Set Range again and
click the All Frames button.
Animated Fades
This example shows you how to use the Fade feature in DeluxePaint V's
Move requester. We will create a simple 40 Frame animation of a title fading
out to the background.
Load the DPaintTitle brush from the Brush drawer on your Media
disk.
Choose Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu. Select the
dark grey from your palette as your background colour.
Clear all frames of you animation and go to frame 1 (Shift-1)
Press M (Shift-m) to display the Move requester. Click Zero to clear out
the distance and angle fields. Set the count to 40 if not already so.
Click Start and then click Adjust and place the Brush in the centre of
your screen. Press Return or Enter to exit Adjust mode. Make sure the
Fade slider is at 0.
Click End and then change the Fade slider to 255 (all the way to the
right).
For added effect, type 360 in the Z angle edit field with Brush checked
on.
Click Draw, and when the move requester is done with your anima-
tion, press 6 to watch it fade out and back in as it ping pongs. Keep
your animation in memory, you may want to use it for the next anima-
tion effect tip.
The larger your palette size and the more like colours you have between the
brush and your background, the better your fade turns out.
151 Animation Effects DeluxePaint V
Animation Pauses
Often an animator wants to pause on a certain frame for from half a second
to several seconds to give an animation that certain effect or feel. In the
past, the only way you could do that in DeluxePaint was to duplicate the
frame you wanted to pause on several times. This works fine, but it wastes
precious memory you could be using for other things.
DeluxePaint V now allows you to perform Anim Pauses on a single frame or
multiple frames without adding the memory overhead. Here's how you can
use It:
Using the animation you created in the last effects mtorial we will modify
the animation so that the first frame pauses for 3 seconds continues at full
speed, then pauses at the last frame for 3 seconds as well. Here's how to do
it:
Go to frame one (Shift-1).
Select Frames>Set Frame Rate from the Anim menu.
Click on the Vary by Frame button (this tells DeluxePaint you are
about to create a variable frame rate animation).
Click in the Jiffies edit field and type in 180 (this is assuming youre in
NTSC l/G0 frame rate). Hence to get a 3 second pause we have multi-
plied G0 X 3 = 180. In PAL modes you would type in 150 or 50 X 3.
As a rule of thumb just remember this: Scan Rate or Frame Rate multi-
plied by the number of seconds you would like to pause is equal to the
number of Jiffes you must enter in the edit field.
Make sure that Current Frame is selected in the bottom portion of the
requester. Click OK
Play the animation (press 4), you'll notice that the first frame pauses
for approximately 3 seconds.
Let's put a pause at the end. Go to the last frame (Shift-2).
Select Frames>Set Frame Rate from the Anim menu again.
Click in the Jiffies edit field and type in the same number you did for
frame I (180 for NTSC, 150 for PAL).
Again, make sure Current Frame is selected and click OK.
Play the animation forward (press 4) or ping-pony it (press 6) and
you'll see that you've easily modified an existing animation to pause at
the beginning and end very easily. You may never have to duplicate a
frame for speed effect ever again.
Animations you have modified using vary by frame will save out with that
information, so that when you play them back in the DeluxePlayer or
reload them into DeluxePaint you don't have to set up the pauses again.
Expanding Circles
This example shows you how to create the effect of a circle expanding out-
ward like a "sonar blip." You use two DeluxePaint features to help you align
the circles and make them grow uniformly: Grid and the 2 key (the Next
Frame keyboard equivalent).
152 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
Clear all frames of your animation and go to frame 1. Turn on the
Grid with X and Y spacing of 8.
Select the second-largest round built-in brush and paint a dot in the
centre of the screen.
Choose the Unfilled Circle tool.
Start from the dot in the centre of the screen and drag out a circle that
is just one grid point wider than the dot, but don't release the mouse
button. Press the 2 key to move to the next frame. Now release the
mouse button.
At this point you have a dot on frame I and a small circle on frame 2.
Continue to follow the last step above to paint larger and larger circles
on successive frames until your circle reaches the sides of the screen.
When you play your animation, you'll see one circle expanding outward. If
you're adventurous, try picking up your entire animation as an AnimBrush
and animpainting it onto your existing animation by starting it on frame 5.
This will give you an animation of two circles expanding outward.
Trails
This example demonstrates the use of Trails. You'll find this option in the
Move requester makes it easy to create impressive title effects.
Clear all frames.
Load the brush DpaintTitle from the Media disk. Choose Palette>Use
Brush Palette from the Colour menu.
Press Shift-2 to go to the LAST frame. You should be on frame 40.
Stamp the brush at the bottom of the screen. Display the Move
requester. Click Zero. Set the Z Distance to -1500. Select the Come To
option for your Move Direction. (Make sure the Fade slider is reset to 0.)
The Come To option tells DeluxePaint that the position of the brush is
where you want the animation to end-you want the animation to "come
to" the brush position and frame.
153 Animation Effects DeluxePaint V
Click Preview.
There is a slight delay, and then the preview plays, starting at the dis-
tant position [Z=1500] and coming closer.
Instead of clicking Draw, click Trails, and let it record.
By clicking Trails, you tell DeluxePaint to carry the cumulative effect of each
frame forward as it draws. The result is that the brush leaves a trail as it
moves through three-dimensional space in your animation.
The Slinky
Press 5 on the main keyboard for a single play of the animation.
For added effect, add a Fade to the start or end of the animation.
The Slinky is a modified version of the standard Trails title. You've probably
seen this effect on many television sports shows. A special feature of this
effect is that it uses the Stencil in combination with the Move requester.
This combination can be very powerful when used properly. When a stencil
is used with the Move requester, DeluxePaint remakes the stencil for each
frame as it renders the move.
Clear all frames.
Load the DPaintTitle brush if you don't already have it. Choose
Palette>Use Brush Palette.
Step to the middle frame of your total. For example, if you have 40
frames as we suggested, move to frame 20 by typing 3 to access the Go
To Frame requester. Stamp the brush down near the centre of the
screen.
Display the Move requester. Click Zero. Make sure that both Brush
buttons are unchecked. Also, be sure Fade is set to O at Start and End.
Set the Z Distance to -1500, and set the Z Angle to 0. Set the Count
to 20. Select the Come To option. Click Trails.
As in the Trails effect above, DeluxePaint paints your title with the cumula-
tive image carried forward to each successive frame.
Step to frame 40 (use ShiR-2 to go to the last frame quickly).
Now you need to create a stencil so you can "paint behind."
Choose Stencil>Make from the Effect menu. In the Make stencil
requester, click the background colour (black), click Invert, and click
Make to lock all colours but the background.
Display the Move requester. Leave all of the other settings the same,
but select the backwards Record Direction (<<). Click Trails.
Because you reversed the Record direction, DeluxePaint begins this move by
painting on frame 40. It then steps one frame backwards and paints the
cumulative effect of frame 40 and the new brush position on frame 39. This
is where the Stencil comes into play. Because the colours in the title are
154 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
stenciled, the second brush stamp appears to be painted "behind" the single
image that was stamped on frame 40. Though, in fact, it was painted over
the single image.
The resulting animation should have your brush moving from the distance,
leaving Trails, until it gets to the nearest position, at which point the Trails
start erasing from the back forward.
Before you move on to the next effect, choose Stencil>Free from the
Effect menu.
Curvirlg Titles
This example shows you how to create the effect of a title moving across the
screen on a curved path using the curve tool instead of the Move requester.
Clear all frames.
Tlr
Load the DPaintTitle. brush from your Media disk. Choose
Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu.
Go to the last frame (frame 40) and stamp the brush near the bottom
of the screen. Click Undo.
TIP: Clicking UNDO immediately after stamping the brush helps ensure that
your results are what you expect. This is particularly important if you are
using a Brush Mode in your move, because DeluxePaint paints on the
screen you stamped on when it paints the move, and stamping twice on the
same screen will give a different result from a single stamp.
Of course, with DeluxePaint V you can also use the Start and End Adjust
buttons to place your starting or ending positions without stamping down
the brush at all.
Display the Move requester, and click Zero. Be sure Record is set to
forward (>>) and set the Count to 40.
Set the Z distance to -1200. Select the Come To option Click Draw.
DeluxePaint paints the brush moving toward the screen from the distance.
Pick up the animated title as an AnimBrush. (Be sure you are on frame
I when you pick up the brush and that you enclose the entire area of
the move-the bottom half of the screen in this case.)
Press Alt-x to place the brush handle in the lower right corner of the
brush so you will be able to click it off-screen.
Clear all frames.
Right-click the Curve tool to display the Spacing requester. Click the
N Total button and set the total to 40. Click OK.
The Spacing requester lets you tell DeluxePaint exactly how many brush
stamps you want to use to paint your curves, lines, and unfilled shapes. By
setting the Spacing to N Total of 40, you'll get 40 stamps of the brush.
Since you have 40 frames, when you use the brush to animpaint, you'll get
one stamp of the brush on each frame.
155 Animation Effects DeluxePaint V
Press Shift-7 to go to the first cel of the AnimBrush.
Position the brush at the left side of the screen and midway between
the top and bottom.
Hold down the Alt key and the left mouse button and drag down to
the lower right corner of the screen. (You'll see your title drawn along
the path of your curve.)
Release the mouse button and define the shape of the curve while still
holding down the Alt keY ~X7hen the curve is a shape you like, left-click
to begin animpainting.
When DeluxePaint is finished painting your curve, press 5 to play the ani-
mation once. You 11 see the brush move into view and curve its way down to
the lower right corner of the screen.
Like the Curving Title effect above, this effect also uses the curve tool to
move an AnimBrush along a curved path. However, in this effect, you use
an object that looks three-dimensional, and you tumble it at the same time
you move it toward the screen.
Clear all frames.
Load the brush named GradientCube from the Brush drawer on your
Art disk. Choose Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu.
Go to the last animation frame (frame 40). Stamp the brush in the
centre of the screen. Click Undo.
Display the Move requester. Set the Z Distance to -1200 and the Z
Angle to 720 (with Brush check). Select the Come To option Click
Draw.
156 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
DeluxePaint paints your cube rotating 720 and moving toward you from
the distance. Now you need to pick up this tumbling object as a brush. You
must pick up the entire animated area, beginning at frame I where you see
only a tiny object. Here's how:
Click the Brush Selector.
Go to frame 40, where the object is largest.
from this frame you can easily see how large an area you need to select to
enclose the entire animated area of the gradient cube.
Hold down the Alt key and enclose the object with your cross-hair, but
don't release the mouse button. (You can release the Alt key.)
Press 2 to step forward to frame 1. Release the mouse button.
Now you have your AnimBrush of the object tumbling and moving toward
you. In the next step, you use the curve tool and Spacing to give it a trajec-
tory across the screen.
Clear all frames.
Right-click on the Curve tool. Set the Spacing requester to N Total 40.
Place the brush handle in the lower right corner of the brush so you
will be able to click it off-screen.
Press Shift-7 to go to the first cel of the AnimBrush
Position the brush at the left side of the screen and midway between
the top and bottom.
Hold down the Alt key and the left mouse button and drag down to
the lower right corner of the screen.
Release the mouse button and define the third point of the curve while
still holding down the Alt keY When the curve is a shape you like,
click to begin animpainting.
Notice that even though the cube has only two true dimensions, the combi-
nation of the three-sided view and the tumble make it appear as though the
brush is three-dimensional.
157 Animation Effects DeluxePaint V
Planetary Orhits-
Brush Handles
This example shows you how to create an animation that simulates the orbit
of a planet. This demonstrates the importance of brush handles-when you
rotate a brush, the rotation always takes place around the brush handle.
Paint a circle about the size of a quarter and filled with a gradient. Pick
the circle up as a brush.
Clear all frames.
Stamp a copy of the brush in the middle of the screen.
Display the Move requester and click Draw to draw 40 frames of your
brush.
If you are holding the brush by its corner, first choose Handle>Rotate
(Alt-x) from the Brush menu until the brush is centred. Now choose
Handle>Place from the Brush menu.
Your brush now has a cross-hair running through rhe centre of it.
Position the brush about an inch and a half above the circle you paint-
ed in the middle of the screen. Hold down the left mouse button, drag
straight down to the centre of the ball you painted, and release the
mouse button.
158 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
Now your brush is offset from the cursor by about two inches. We'll use this
brush to create an orbiting planet.
Point at the centre of the stamped circle with the cursor and click.
(This stamps your circle brush above the circle in the middle of the
screen.)
Display the Move requester. Set the Z Angle to 360. Click Draw.
Play the animation back and you 11 see that your planet orbits around
the central circle!
Using the brush handle effectively becomes a little more complicated when
you rotate over more than one axis, but you might want to spend a little
time trying different settings to see the effects you can create.
Scrolling Backgrounds
This section shows you how to create a scrolling backgrounds from a single
picture. We'll use the new Camera Move requester to do this.
Horizontal Panning
First, we'll pan horizontally across a background. All you need to create this
effect is a picture with left and right edges that meet to form a seamless
image.
159 Animation Effects DeluxePaint V
Load the picture named WorldMap.lores from the Picture drawer
(from the Examples disk).
Type Ctrl- j (or select Spare>Copy to Spare from the Picture menu) to
copy to the blank spare page. (We will use the spare page as the main
animation page.)
Now we'll use the Camera Move requester to make the background picture
scroll seamlessly from left tO right. Because the image was designed to wrap
seamlessly from edge to edge, the edge of the picture won't be noticeable-it
will appear that we are continually scrolling to the right.
Open the Camera Move requester (Anim>Camera Move...) by typing
Shift-n.
Change the Count to 32-this means that we will be creating a
scrolling animation over 32 frames. Make sure Wrap and Cyclic check
mark gadgets are checked. When Wrap is checked, the left edge of the
screen appears when you scroll past the right edge of the screen.
Press Start. This means that we will be setting the position of the first
frame of animation. Click Adjust, and the Adjust bounding box
appears on the screen.
Click and drag on the "field guide" bounding box so that the right
edge of the box is flush with the left edge of the screen.
You can use the Shift key tO constrain your mouse movement so that
you only move in the X plane. Press Shift, then left click and drag to
move the bounding box.
Press Enter or Return to exit the "Adjust" mode (just like in perspec-
tlve).
Press End, and then Adjust.
Place your screen cursor directly on top of the crosshair that is already
on the screen, and press . (period key) on the keypad. This centres your
field guide under your cursor (use it as a short cut).
Press Enter or Return to exit the Adjust mode.
Your X Dist box should read 319 or 320, and all other values should
be 0. Click Preview tO check the preview to make sure the box moves
from the left edge of the screen to the centre of the screen.
If the preview looks OK, press New to create new animation frames.
When DeluxePaint is finished, press 4 to loop play the animation. You
now have a scrolling Earth animation.
Press s while in the animation to view the new frame rate speedome-
ter, which shows the current frames per second value.
Save the animation you've just created-you'll need ir for another
effects tutorial later in this chapter where we'll show you how to create
a revolving globe animbrush from this animation.
This example showed you how to create a scrolling background that moves
left to right, but you can create one that moves in any direction by follow
160 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
ing the same basic steps. You can also use a picture that is larger than an
animation frame to create your scrolling background. To do this, you create
or paint your large picture on the spare page without changing the dimen-
sions of the main page. Then repeat the steps above, substituting a larger X
move distance to move the width of the spare page.
Vertical Panning
In the following example, we'll pan upward on a screen background using
the Camera Move requester.
Load the EArthCore.HAM image from the Picture drawer of the
Examples disk. Press Yes if the program asks if you want to switch
screen modes to the image. (The image is in 320x200 HAM6 mode
with a screen size of 320x10SO.)
Press j to switch to the spare page.
Choose Page Size... from the Picture menu, and click Screen to change
the animation page size to 320x200 pixels.
Select Camera Move from the Picture menu (Shift-e) to bring up the
Camera Move requester.
Click Zero to clear the distance parameter boxes to 0. Change the
Count setting to 40.
Click Start, and then Adjust.
Click and drag on the bounding box so that the bottom edge of the
box is flush with the bottom edge of reduced image on the screen. If
the box isn't visible, press period (.) on the keypad.
Press Return or Enter to exit Adjust mode.
Click End, and then Adjust.
Click and drag on the bounding box so that the top edge of the box is
flush with the top edge of the reduced image on your screen.
Press Return or Enter to exit Adjust mode.
Do a Preview to see if the box moves from the bottom edge of the
image to the top of the image.
Press New to create a new 40 frame animation.
Press 6 to ping pony play the animation you've just created. Use the
Set Frame Rate requester to slow down the animation if it's too fast (or
press the left cursor key repeatedly while the animation is playing
back).
For added effect, add a pause at the beginning and end of the anima-
tion using the Set Frame Rate requester.
Filled Plane Effects
The following effects use the Fill option in the Move requester to create
filled planes that move. In the first example, the plane moves toward you so
that it seems as though you are traveling, in the second example, the filled
plane rolls as though you are doing a roll in an aeroplane.
161 Animation Effects DeluxePaint V
Set the number of frames to 20.
Create a simple filled circle brush to use for your filled planes. (If you
are on a I megabyte Amiga, dont add any gradient or other detail,
because these filled plane moves require a lot of memory even with a
simple brush.)
TiP
For the Moving Ground example, it helps if your brush height is a multiple
of the number of frames you have. This will produce smoother results. (Use
Coordinates in the Prefs menu when you draw the brush and pick it up to
confirm that it has the dimensions you want.)
Moving Ground
Enter Perspective. Press the Enter key on the keypad.
Position the brush near the bottom right corner of the screen and press
Shift-Keypad 7 to rotate the brush -90~ on the X axis. Stamp down the
brush. Click Undo.
Right-click the Grid tool and note the number listed for the Y Grid
value in the Perspective requester. Click OK.
Display the Move requester. Set the Y Distance to the same number as
the Y Grid value only make the number negative. Click the Brush but-
ton beside the Distance boxes so that you move along the brush's coor-
dinates. Make sure the Count is set to 20. Click Fill.
DeluxePaint will take a while to paint your 20 frames. When it is finished,
the animation will show a plane of circles moving toward you.
Rolling Horizon
Clear all frames. Choose Perspective>Reset from the Effect menu.
Press Enter on the keypad twice (this takes you out and then back into
Perspective).
Position your brush near the bottom of the screen. Rotate the brush to
-90 on the X-axis. Stamp down the brush. Click Undo.
162 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
Display the Move requester. Click Zero. Set the X Distance to -640
and the Y Angle to 360. Make sure both Brush buttons are selected.
Click Fill.
Again, DeluxePaint takes a while to paint your 20 frames. When it is fin-
ished, the animation will show the filled plane of circles rotating 3G0
around the perspective centre.
Spinning Effects
Here are two terrific spinning effects. In the process of creating these effects,
you'll need to use a range of DeluxePaint features. At this point we assume
you are familiar with all of the features, and our instructions are, at times,
general. These exercises are a good way to test your knowledge of the pro
gram; if you get stuck, you should look up how to perform the task we
describe.
Amazing Bouncing Ball
A bouncing ball sounds complicated, doesn't it? With traditional media, it
would indeed be tedious, but with DeluxePaint, you can master the effect in
no time at all.
To produce the spinning effect we want for the bouncing ball, you would
ordinarily need to do several things:
Create a range of colours to cycle
Create a checkerboard pattern and wrap the pattern onto a circle to
make it appear spherical.
Create a ball-shaped brush and rotate it so the ball spins on an angle.
These steps are not necessary for this exercise, however, because we have cre-
ated a ball for you to use.
Load the brush named Ball.Brush from the Media disk. Choose
Palette>Use Brush Palette from the Colour menu.
Set the number of frames to 10 and clear all frames.
Press h to make the ball half its original size.
163 Animahon Effects DeluxePaint V
Now to give the ball some bounce.
Go to Frame 1.
Display the Move requester, and click Zero.
Click Start, and then Adjust. Place the ball so that the bottom edge is
near the bottom of the screen. Press Enter or Return to exit Adjust
mode.
Click End, and then Adjust. Place rhe ball close to the top of the
screen. Press Enter or Return to exit Adjust mode.
Set Slow In to 10. Set the Count to 10. Select Go From. Click Preview.
The brush should move upward until it almost reaches the top of the
screen. If it goes too far or not far enough, adjust the end position and
try Preview again.
Click Draw.
Now that you've given the ball some bounce, you pick it up as a brush and
send it bouncing off into the distance by using the Move requester.
Pick up the animated ball as an AnimBrush (make sure you enclose the
entire area over which the ball moves). Choose AnimBrush>Settings
from the Anim menu. Click the Ping Pong icon. Click OK.
Clear all frames. Set the number of frames to 40 and Go to Frame 1 of
the animation.
Move the brush handle to the lower right corner of the brush.
Go to cel 7 of the AnimBrush. Place the cursor in the lower left corner
of frame 1 (so the brush is off the screen) and stamp down the brush.
Display the Move requester, and click Zero. Set the X Distance to 600
and the Z Distance to 500. Set the Count to 40. Set Slow In to 0.
Click Draw.
Turn on Colour Cycling and play the animation.
You'll see a remarkably realistic animation of a spinning, bouncing ball. If
you are adventurous, try creating a plane for the ball to bounce on. You'll
need to adjust the plane's position to match the bottom of the ball where it
bounces. Then you create the plane on the Spare page and merge it behind
the animation. When you choose the Spare>Merge in back option,
DeluxePaint asks if you want to merge behind all of your frames. This fea-
ture makes it easy to build up animations from several elements.
Creating the Spinning Bad
Here are the steps for creating the spinning ball. first you need to create a
range of colours to cycle. These will ultimately produce a spinning effect.
Display the Colour Mixer dialogue and create a spread of eight identi
cal reds and eight identical whites.
Choose Ranges from the Colour menu to display the Range requester.
Select an empty range or clear the first range and define these colours
as a range by setting the eight whites and eight reds next to each other
along the Range bar. Set the Rate for colour cycling to the maximum.
164 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
Select Random Dither and move the slider all the way to the left to
turn dither completely off. (Make sure that your reds and whites aren't
in any other ranges.)
Now you create a checkerboard pattern and wrap the pattern onto a circle
to make it appear spherical.
Display the Fill Type requester. Select the first gradient fill option for a
plain horizontal fill.
Select the red and white range you created. Select the Filled Rectangle
tool. Turn on Coordinates. Select black as your background colour and
clear the screen. Paint a rectangle that is 44 pixels wide and 22 pixels
high.
You should now have a rectangle that is white on one side and red on the
other.
Pick up your rectangle as a brush and create a red and white checker-
board pattern. Then pick up exactly a 5 square by 5 square section of
the checkerboard as a brush.
Tip: Using the grid tool can help. Set the spacing eo 22x and 22y to easily place
the brush.
Clear the screen. Display the Fill Type requester. Select Brush Wrap fill.
Turn on BeSquare in the Prefs menu (so your circle will be truly a cir-
cle). Paint a filled Circle that is approximately 3 inches across.
165 Animation Effects DeluxePaint V
There it is. Press the Tab key to see the ball cycle. You'll find more informa-
tion about colour cycling and colour ranges in Tutorial Two of Chapter
Four: Paint Tutorials.
The Spinning Globe
This example shows you how to create a spinning globe from the
WorldMap picture on your Examples disk. To accomplish this effect, you
create a scrolling background, pick up a section of the background as an
AnimBrush, and use it to animfill a circle using the Wrap fill type.
If you are working on a 2MB Amiga, we recommend that you start
this example from a fresh start of the program. This fresh start will
ensure that you have no memory fragmentation and you have enough
memory to work with. This example is very memory intensive and may
not work on some 2MB configurations.
Load the scrolling earth animation you created and saved a few tutori-
als ago. (If you didn't save it, or haven't done that tutorial yet, please do
so now and then continue the steps below.)
Press the 4 key to confirm that you have a scrolling map without any
glitches. If it's moving too fast for you, slow it down using the left
arrow key.
Now you need to pick up half the scrolling image as an AnimBrush.
Go to frame 1.
Choose Free from the Brush menu to free up any brushes you may
have in memorY
Choose AnimBrush>Pick Up from the Anim menu. Select the left half
of the image. Enter 32 in the requester to pick up the left half of your
animation as an AnimBrush.
Now you have an animbrush of a scrolling map. The trick is to convert that
to a ball shape.
Clear all frames to a black background.
Choose BeSquare in the Prefs menu.
Draw a solid colour filled circle in the middle of frame I. (Make the
circle about 3 inches across, and preferably a blue colour.)
166 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
Choose Frames>Copy Eames from the Anim menu and select the All
Frames button. This will copy frame 1 to all of the animation frames.
Right-click on the Fill tool to display the Fill Type requester. Choose
Wrap as your fill type, and click OK.
Choose AnimBrush>Use from the Anim menu. Press Shift-7 to posi-
tion your AnimBrush on its first eel. (You will not actually see the
brush, but it will be ready in memory.)
Press F3 to place your animbrush in replace mode. (This is done so
that your globe's background is the same as your animbrushes.)
Select the Fill tool. Hold down the Alt key and click on the centre of
your solid coloured circle.
DeluxePaint will automatically "animfill" to wrap the map image into each
of your circles. When it's finished, play the anim to see your spinning globe.
All that's left now is to pick it Up as an AnimBrush and move it through
three dimensions. We'll leave that part up to you. Or if you like, try creating
spinning balls with other images, like faces or interesting patterns. Once
you've mastered this feature, you'll find it hard to resist.
Multiple animation palettes
DeluxePaint now supports multiple palettes in an animation. This tutorial
will show you how to force a different palette to a specific amount of ani
mation frames.
The last turorial showed you how to create a spinning globe. Before we
show you how to force a multiple palette let's add an animation with a dif
ferent palette to the end of the spinning globe anim.
First save your spinning globe animation somewhere on your hard
drive or to a floppy disk.
Press Shift-2 to go to the last frame.
Go to your spare page by pressing the letter j on your keyboard. The
title bar should say SCRATCH.
Load DOGGIE BACKGROUND from the picture pull down menu.
Toggle back to your globe animation by pressing j again.
Let's use the Camera Move Requester to create a new animation which we
will put after the current one.
Press N to bring up the Camera Move Requester.
Lets adjust the starting frame by pressing Start followed by the Adjust
button in the requester. This will bring up the Doggie Background
from the Scratch page.
Move your cursor all the way up to the far upper left corner of the
screen and press the '.' key in the perspective keypad.
The period key centers the camera view where the cursor is currently posi-
tioned.
167 Animation Effects DeluxePaint V
Press the Enter key in the perspective keypad to exit the adjust screen.
Press End followed by the adjust key again to adjust the end of this
camera move.
Move your cursor all the way up to the far lower right corner of the
screen and press the '.'key in the perspective keypad.
Press the Enter key in the perspective keypad to exit the adjust screen.
You will notice that when you are adjusting these frames the palette does
not appear correcdy. Do not worry about this. We will fix this a bit later.
Make sure that you have WRAP checked in the requester.
Set the Frame count to 20.
Press AFTER in the requester to tell DeluxePaint that you want to add
this new animation after the spinning globe.
Play the animation to see the results. You will notice that spinning globe
animation is followed by a diagonal wrap animation of the
DoggieBackground Picture. You will also notice that the Doggie
Background animation has scrambled colors. Let's solve this by forcing a
palette to the second animation.
First let's tell DeluxePaint what frames you want to add this new palette to.
Select SET FRAME PALETTE... from the ANIM/FRAME pull down
menu.
Since the new DoggieBackground animation covers frames 33 through 52,
enter these numbers in the range frame count.
Select the Range button, then select Make Palette.
This tells DeluxePaint that you want a separate palette for these range of
frames.
Click OK.
If you look at FRAME PALETTE INFO... in the ANIM/FRAME pull
down menu you will see that there are two separate palettes assigned for two
ranges of frames. Now all we need to do is change the palette for the second
anim so it looks correctly.
Press 3 on your keyboard to open the Go To Frame requesrer, and
enter 33.
Press j to go to the spare page.
Pick up any part of the screen as a brush.
Press j to go back to frame 33.
Select USE BRUSH PALETTE from the COLOR/PALETTE pull
down menu.
Now the two anims have their correct palettes.
168 Chapter 7 DeluxePaint V
NOTE: There are three other ways you can force a specific palette.
1. You can save a color set for a particular picture and then reload the
color set into frame 33.
2. You can save a color palette for a particular picture and then reload the
color palette into frame 33.
3. You can go to frame 33 and adjust the palette manually by editing the
colors in the color mixer or the arrange palette requester.
Tips
This brief section lists some tips for using DeluxePaints animation features.
This is not a complete list of tips, so be sure you at least scan the rest of the
manual if you are not inclined to read everything.
You can use Fixed Background to see the current frame as you modify
it for the next frame. This is very useful for freehand animations. Here's
how ir works:
Create some animation frames and draw a figure on frame 1. Choose
Background>Fix from the Effect menu. Choose a different colour to
paint a modified version of the first figure. Press 2 to step to frame 2.
Choose Background Free to stamp the modified figure on frame 2. You
can repeat this process to paint the next modification, and so on.
If you want your brush to grow (move toward the screen) in your ani-
mation, but you need to stamp it in the small size for proper position-
ing, you will get nicer results if you paint the brush large and then use
the' or Ctrl key in Perspective to shrink it before you paint it down for
the move. This way the brush moves toward its original large size as it
is drawn by the Move requester and the large size will not suffer from
Jaggles.
Slow Out and Slow In from the Move requester always affect both the
Distance and Angle motions. So a falling, tumbling object won't look
right-the tumble accelerates along with the fall. Here's a work
around: Use Move to make a tumbling object without Slow Out or
Slow In. Pick the object up as an AnimBrush. Now use Move to make
this AnimBrush fall with Slow-Out for acceleration. The tumble stays
at a constant rate, but the fall accelerates!
Similarly, Move can't Slow-Out one Distance parameter and not the
other. That means it can't make a cannonball fly at a constant X speed
but a decelerating Y speed (to form a parabola). You can overcome this
by creating the animation in steps as in the Amazing Bouncing Ball
effect: Use Move to paint a ball faJling with Slow In. Pick up the falling
ball as an AnimBrush. Use Move (or the Straight Line tool with N
Total spacing) to paint the falling ball moving across the screen at a
constant rate.
If you want an object to completely disappear when it flies off to infin-
ity, here's a trick: Set the X rotation to 90 so that the brush turns
"edge on" as it approaches infinity. This way no more than a single
pixel line will remain of your brush.
169 Animanon Effects DeluxePaint V
When you paine your brush down to begin a move, Undo immediately
after you stamp the brush. This guarantees that the brush appears cor-
rectly on the current frame when the move is painted. Painting down
your brush before a move is how you tell DeluxePaint where to start
the move from. You don't need to leave the paint in place, since
DeluxePaint paints that Eame again as the first frame of the move.
You can't stamp the brush behind you, but you can Move it there. If
you want an object to start from behind the viewer and drop into the
screen with a perfect, unbroken motion, do this: Start from the centre
position and use the Move requester set to a Count of I to move the
brush out to the position you want (for example, -1000 from the front
of the screen). Now clear the screen or reload the background for the
animation. Use the Move requester to move the brush fotward enough
Z distance to go from behind you past the centre position and off into
the distance.
If you have a series of pictures that use the same screen format and
palette, you can use DeluxePaint V to give a slide show. Just load each
picture into a frame (see Load in the Picture menu for loading multiple
pictures) and set a slow frame rate or flip the frames manually with the
2 and I keys.
Spacing Tips
When you animpaint with the shape tools, use the Spacing requester to
control the number of brush stamps used to draw the shape. In effect, this
setting determines how many frames you will paint over.
Instant Marquees: Set the Spacing requester to N Total and the number of
frames you have, and animpaint unfilled shapes using a built-in brush.
Using the Spacing set to N Total for animpainting is especially good with
the Circle tool, which otherwise paints a non-cyclical pattern. Also try set-
ting Spacing to Every Nth Dot, especially with the unfilled Polygon tool.
170 Chapter 7 DetuxePaint V
Chapter 8 REFERENCE
DeluxePaint V's Reference chapter contains all the information you'll need
to master the program, arranged in a way that's easy to use. The Tools sec-
tion covers the Toolbox, explaining how to select, modify and use the tools
to draw basic shapes or otherwise manipulate your image by colour, size,
shape, or orientation. The Menus section covers all the options available in
the pull-down menus. The menus are described individually, moving left to
right across the Menu Bar, and down through each option.
Some entries in Reference cross-reference other parts of the manual or other
sections of Reference. We recommend that you look at the cited section for
more information about any cross-referenced entry.
When you start DeluxePaint V, the Toolbox appears on the right side of the
screen. It contains built-in brushes, tools, the Colour Indicator, and the
Palette.
Select a tool by clicking its icon in the Toolbox.
You can hide the Toolbox to expose more of the painting area by pressing
F10 (this hides the Toolbox and the Menu bar). You can then press F9 to
display the Menu Bar without the Toolbox. Press F 10 to display the Toolbox
again.
173 Reference DeluxePaint V
The following tool descriptions include any keyboard equivalents that are
available. And to help you learn these, we have suggested a mnemonic for
each one. You'll find these especially useful if you want to hide the Toolbox
as explained above. You can also find all keyboard equivalents in Appendix B.
Built-in Brushes
There are ten built-in brushes you can paint with in the Toolbox. To select
any built-in brush, click on it.
Right-clicking a brush invokes the resize brush option. When you move the
brush to the screen, your cursor has diagonal arrows pointing ourward. To
increase or decrease the size of the brush, drag the mouse, and when the
cursor is the size you want, release the button.
You can also change the size of the current brush dynamically, even while
you're painting. Press the plus (+) key to increase the size of your brush (no
need to press the Shift key). Press the minus (-) key to decrease its size. The
icon in the Toolbox reflects any changes you make.
The smallest a resized built-in brush can be is I x I pixel. The largest it
can be is 100 x 100 pixels.
Dotted Freehand
Keyboard Equivalent: s-mnemonic-sketch
Lets you paint freehand with the current built-in (or custom) brush. Hold
down the left mouse button to paint with the foreground colour, or the
right mouse button to paint with the background colour. The tool paints in
a series of "splats" or "stamps" of the current brush shape.
The spacing between each stamp depends on how fast you move the mouse
-the faster you move the mouse, the greater the spacing between stamps.
If you move the mouse slowly, there is no space between splats.
We recommend you use this mode for drawing with custom brushes,
or when using the different paint modes.
Holding down the Shift key while painting constrains the tool to move
either horizontally or vertically, depending on the direction you move the
cursor immediately after pressing Shift.
Continuous
Freehand/Filled
Freehand Shape
Keyboard Equivalent: d-mnemonic-draw.
D-Filled draw
Click in the upper left corner of the icon to select the Continuous Freehand
tool. Click in the lower right corner to select the Filled Freehand Shape tool.
The Continuous Freehand tool paints the brush in a continuous line as you
drag the mouse. This tool works like the Dotted Freehand tool, except that
174 Chapter 8 DeluxePair~t V
it never "splats." Instead, it connects point A to point B with a brushed line.
The slower you draw, the smoother the lines. Fast freehand drawing may
result in angular looking shapes, especially in higher resolutions.
Holding down the Shift key while painting with the Continuous Freehand
tool constrains the tool to move either horizontally or vertically, depending
on the direction you move the cursor immediately after pressing Shift.
Use the Filled Freehand Shape tool to draw filled freehand shapes. When
you release the mouse button, your shape is filled using the current setting
of the Fill Type requester. (If you release the mouse butmn before you reach
the starting point for your filled shape, DeluxePaint completes the shape by
drawing a straight line from the current mouse position to the starting point
of the shape.)
Holding down i as you click on the Filled Freehand Shape tool causes the
tool to paint shapes that are filled and then outlined with the current brush
using the settings of the Spacing requester. (See the Straight Line Tool below
for an explanation of the options in this requester.) If you use a custom
brush as your current brush, it is possible to paint shapes that are filled with
one colour and outlined with another. The outline is painted by tracing the
shape with the current brush. Note that the shape is traced by the brush
handle; if the handle is offset from the brush, the outline will be offset from
your filled shape.
Right-clicking on the Filled Freehand Shape tool displays the Fill Type
requester. From here you can set the fill type for all filled shapes. See Fill
Tool for an explanation of the options in this requester.
Straight Line Tool
Keyboard Equivalent: v-mnemonic-vector.
V-Spacing requester
Paints a straight line in any direction. The width of the line is determined
by the current built-in (or custom) brush. To paint a line:
Select the Straight Line tool, and position the cursor where you want
the line to begin.
175 Reference DeluxePaint V
Use the left mouse button to paint with the foreground colour, or the
right mouse button to paint with the background colour.
Drag in any direction to create a line.
Holding down the Shift key while painting a straight line constrains the line
to be either horizontal or vertical, depending on the direction you move the
cursor immediately after pressing Shift.
Holding down the Ctrlkey as you paint a straight line, causes the line to
- leave "traces" as you paint.
Right-clicking the Straight Line tool displays the Spacing requester. The
Spacing requester lets you specify the space between the paint "splats"
deposited by the brush. Click to choose any of the four options in the
requester
N Total
Defines the total number of "splats" that will occur along the line. You can
define the number of "splats" by clicking the edit box, backspacing or delet-
ing over the existing value, and typing in the new value. This setting is espe-
cially useful for ensuring that when animpainting over a series of frames you
get exactly the number of brush stamps you need.
Every Nth dot
Spacing sets the number of pixels between each "splat" of the brush. This
lets you space your brush splats accurately.
Airbrush
Paints using the Airbrush tool along the path defined by any tool affected
by the Spacing requester. The number to the right of the button sets the
number of airbrush sprays to be applied at each pixel along the path. This
creates a fuzzy line or shape. You can use this feature with the painting
176 Chapter 8 DeluxePeint V
modes from the Modes menu to create interesting effects. For example,
using Smear with the Airbrush spacing can create interesting textured effects
on a coloured background. This option can only be used with the "splatter"
Old Style airbrush, not the Standard airbrush.
Connnuous
This spacing paints an unbroken path with no space between pixels.
Continuous is the default setting.
Curve Tool Keyboard Equivalent: q-mnemonic-qurve
Use the Curve tool to draw an arc between two points. The width of the
line is determined by the current built-in (or custom) brush. The Curve
works like the Straight Line tool, except that the line remains attached to
your cursor, so you can specify the third point in the arc.
Select the Curve tool, and position the cursor where you want the
curve to begin.
Drag to where you want the curve to end, and release the mouse but-
ton.
Move the mouse in any direction to form the arc shape you want, and
click.
Holding down the Shift key while painting with the Curve tool, constrains
the tool to move either horizontally or vertically as you paint the initial line,
depending on the direction you move the cursor immediately after pressing
Shift. This is useful if you want the ends of your curve to line up horizontal-
ly or vertically.
Holding down the Ctrl key as you paint a curve, causes the curve to leave
"traces" as you paint.
Right-clicking the Curve tool displays the Spacing requester (see Straight
Line Tool, above, for an explanation of the options in this requester).
177 Reference DeluxePaint V
Fill Tool
Keyboard Equivalent: f-mnemonic-fill.
F-Fill Type requester
Use the Fill tool to fill an enclosed area using the current settings in the Fill
Type requester. To use the tool:
Move the paint can cursor over the enclosed area you want to fill, so
that the tip of the spout is within the area.
The spout is the one pixel opening at the bottom of the "splash."
Click to fill the enclosed area.
Holding down i when you click with the Fill cursor fills any irregular shape,
including gradients, outward to the background colour. In other words, the
fill spreads outward until it reaches areas of the current background colour.
Holding down the Alt key when you click with the Fill cursor, animfills the
shape. This means that the frames of your animation will flip, and the fill
tool will fill outward on each frame from the point where you clicked. This
option works with all of the Fill Types except the gradient fills that use the
gradient direction line to define the gradient.
Right-clicking the Fill tool displays the Fill Type requester. The options in
the requester are explained in the following paragraphs. When you return to
the painting screen after choosing a fill type, the current gradient (or pat-
tern, if Pattern or Perspective is selected) and its orientation are shown in
the Colour Fill box in the Title Bar (see User Feedback in Title Bar, later in
this chapter).
178 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
Solid
Fills with the current colour. If you paine or fill your shape using the left
button, the shape is filled with the foreground colour. If you paint or fill
your shape using the right mouse button, it is filled with the background
colour. This is the default mode.
Brush
Fills with one image of the current custom brush and sizes it to fit the filled
area. See Figure 8.8.
Wrap
Fills with one image of the current custom brush and adjusts it to the hori-
zontal and vertical shape of the filled area. This gives the illusion of wrap-
ping the brush around a 3D solid. The effect is most pronounced if you use
it to fill a shape that is very different from the shape of the custom brush.
Perspective
Fills with a pattern of the current brush in the current perspective setting
(see Perspeceive under the Effect menu).
Rub
Fills using Rubthru mode, where the picture on the spare page is rubbed
through to the area to be filled. The current Translucency setting determines
how much of the picture is rubbed through (100% translucency equals 0%
of the image being rubbed through). This option is ghosted unless a spare
page is available.
Hbrite
Fills using the Hbrite painting mode. In effect, this is a special form of tint-
ing that only works if you are working in a HalfErite screen mode (see
HBrite in the Mode menu, below). When you are not in a HalfErite screen
mode, this option is ghosted in the requester. Drawing with the right mouse
button over Halfbrite areas reverts them to their full colour counterparts.
Pattern
Fills with a pattern made from a brush. To use this option, you must first
click the From Brush button to create a pattern of the current brush. This
pattern remains the current fill pattern until you click From Brush again to
create a new pattern from your new custom brush.
Range
Fills an enclosed object with a spread of colours (a gradient, see Gradients,
below) from the selected range. Type in a number from 1-8 to specify the
range you want to use. Click to select one of the fill options, which specify
179 Referenee DeluxePaint V
the direction and type of the gradient fill. You can only use one fill option
at a time.
Horizoneal paints the gradient horizontally.
Vereical paints the gradient vertically with an even distribution.
Horizoneal Line paints the gradient one line at a time and adjusts the gradi-
ent on each line so that it follows the contours of the shape being filled.
Gradients
DeluxePaint supports two types of gradients: Linear and Radial. A Linear
gradient fills an object in one direction (in a line), and can either take the
object's shape into account, or ignore it. A Radial gradient fills an object in
all directions (radially) from the point where you click, until it reaches the
boundaries of the object. Like Linear gradients, a Radial gradient can either
take the object's shape into account, or ignore it.
Linear Gradients
The linear gradients are Line and Shap(ed). When you fill an object with
either of these options, a gradient directional line stretches from the centre
of the object to the cursor. Use this line to tell DeluxePaint the direction in
which to fill the shape with the gradient. For example, if you move the
directional line to the top of your shape and click, DeluxePaint fills your
shape with the selected gradient from top to bottom. The first colour in the
gradient (in the far lefe position in the range) appears at the bottom of the
shape.
Line fills the object with a uniform linear gradient, ignoring the shape of
the obJect.
180 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
Shaped fills the object with a linear gradient, taking the shape of the object
into account, so gradient lines tend to follow the object's contours.
Radial Gradients
The radial gradients are Cir(cular), Cont(ours), and (Hi)light. When you
select any of them and click on a shape, a gradient directional line stretches
from the centre of the object you filled to the cursor. Move the cursor,
which is attached to the directional line, to the spot where you want the
gradient to begin and click. DeluxePaint will fill your shape radially outward
from the point where you clicked. Radial gradients are especially useful for
drawing shadows and other consistent three dimensional lighting effects.
Circular fills the object with a circular (shaped) gradient radiating outward
from the point where you click. Like the Straight linear fill, above, Circular
does not take the shape of the object into account.
Contours fills the object with the gradient taking the shape of the object
into account. This creates a contour effect, reminiscent of topographical
maps.
181 Reference DeluxePaint V
Highlight is similar to Contours, but optimised to create a highlight effect.
Like Contours, the object is filled with its shape taken into account.
Dither
DeluxePaint draws patterned gradients by dithering, which reduces the con-
trast between adjacent colours (without changing the colours themselves).
Clicking the cycle button cycles through the following choices:
Random
When Random is selected, you can adjust the degree of colour mixing in
the gradient fill. Drag the Dither slider left or right to decrease or increase
the amount of dither. Setting the slider all the way to the left gives almost
no mixing between shades. Moving the slider to the right increases the
amount of mixing at the colour boundaries.
Pattern
When Pattern is selected, DeluxePaint creates a fixed pattern dither. This
mode is useful for creating fills in modes with fewer colours.
Smooth
When Smooth is selected, DeluxePaint utilizes a Floyd Steinberg dithering
technique that smoothes the contrast between the colours in your gradient
as best as possible. This mode is most useful in HAM and 24-bit backing
store modes, where more colours are available.
Airbrush Tool
Simulates the action of an airbrush by spraying with the current brush. Two
styles of spray distribution are available: Old Style (random) and Standard.
Select the Airbrush tool. Position the cross-hair on the page and drag
to paint.
Click twice on the Airbrush tool to select Standard mode rather than
Old Style (the default).
Holding down the Shift key while painting with the Airbrush tool, con
- strains the tool to move either horizontally or vertically, depending on the
direction you move the cursor immediately after pressing Shift.
182 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
Press the + and - keys to increase or decrease the size of the airbrush when it
Dim: Click this box to activate the current dim slider values.
c >: Click the left and right arrows (< >) to globally increase or decrease the
dim values for all four Layers. Each mouse click moves the values up or
down by 5 units. Alt-Click adjusts the values by 10, and Ctrl-Click adjusts
the values by 1.
Sliders: The sliders set the dim values for each Layer. The dim value (-255
to 255) is the amount of black to add to the colours in the selected Layer.
The larger the number, the darker the colours; the smaller the number, the
lighter the colours. Zero leaves the colours unaltered. Adding a negative
amount of black will make the colours lighter (i.e., add white).
Anim Lock: Click this checkbox to lock out any page that is not within the
current animation play range. This will lock out the first frame of an anima-
tion if a layer is set to show the next frame ( I ) and the current frame is the
last frame in the animation, or lock out the last frame of an animation if a
layer is set to show the previous frame (-1) and the current frame is the first
frame of the animation.
243 Reference DeluxePaint V
Background >>
Fix
Fixes the background by "locking" the current picture. This allows you to
draw on it without losing any of the background. You can erase any paint
you apply aEer fixing the background by clicking CLR or by painting with
the right mouse button.
Fixing the background uses additional memory. When the background
is fixed, no colours may be picked up from that background.
Free
This "unlocks" the background, and merges it with anything that was paint-
ed over it, so that clicking CLR will clear the entire picture. It also frees up
the memory that was allocated to fixing the background.
Lock FG
The Make Stencil requester lets you create stencils based on colours in the
palette. By locking a colour, you make it impossible to paint on that colour,
wherever it may be on the page. By using a combination of Fix Background
(see above) and Lock FG, however, you can define a stencil by area rather
than colour. When you select Lock FG, you define as a stencil those areas
on the page that you have painted since fixing the background, regardless of
the colour of those areas.
Anti-alias
Anti-aliasing is a smoothing process which eliminates or reduces the jagged
edges apparent in lines that aren't precisely vertical or horizontal. The effec-
tiveness of anti-aliasing is dependent on the range of colours in the palette.
For example, to draw a smooth, oblique black line on a white background,
you'll need to have two intermediate shades of grey in the palette.
Anti-aliasing works with straight and curved lines, and with filled and
unfilled shapes, It is especially good at smoothing the jagged lines in a brush
that result from rotating or shrinking it in Perspective mode.
None, Low, Hogh
Keyboard Equivalent: Alt-/
Set the level of anti-aliasing used on your brush when you paint. None is
the default setting and applies no anti-aliasing. Low lets you eliminate some
of the jagged outline in your images and brushes. The cost of removing
jagged lines is painting speed, but it is still faster than smoothing out an
image by hand. To use anti-aliasing, select either Low or High before you
lay down the brush image. Anti-aliasing is most effective when you have
reduced the size of your original brush (for example, by moving it back
along the Z axis). Anti-aliasing in the High setting can be very slow if your
brush or fill area is large.
Process >>
The effectiveness of the Process options is dependent on the colours
available in the palette. DeluxePaint combines your foreground colour
with the colour in your image and then looks for the colour in your
palette that most closely matches the colour it needs. For best results,
your palette should contain a range of colours between the colours in
the palette and the colour you are using to tint. The Process options
obviously give the best results in higher colour modes because all
Amiga colours are available for painting.
244 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
You can combine Translucency with any of the Process options to increase
your control over the effect of these options. For example, Hue would nor-
mally directly substitute the hue of your brush for the hues in your picture.
If you turn oll'franslucency with a setting of 50%, instead of substituting
the hue directly, the resulting hue will be a 50/50 combination of the brush
hue and the picture hue.
On/Off
Keyboard Equivalent: Alt-p
When you choose Process On a P appears in the middle of the Title Bar
Tint (default setting)
The colour you are painting with tints the colour(s) underneath it in the
direction of the colour you are applying. Use this option if you want to cre-
ate a shading or tiTIting effect over a number of colours on the screen, or to
colourise a black and white or greyscale image.
Hue
Use this option with ally painting tool to adjust the hue of a coloured area
of your image. J'his option is useful for converting a multi-coloured image
into a monochromatic image. Note that this option will have no effect on
greyscale images because a colour with no Saturation is grey regardless of its
hue.
Value
Use this option ro paint the Value of the current brush into the colours in
the image. This is an effective way to create shading effects. If you choose a
light colour to paint with in Value mode, darker colours you paint on will
become lighter. If you choose a dark colotlr to paillr with, lighter colours
will become darker.
Translucency >>
On/Off
Keyboard Equivalent: Alt-t
When you choose Translucency, a'l' appears itl the middle of the Title Bar.
Painting with 'I ranslucency on has the effect of laying a transparency or
coloured filter over a portion of your picture. The transparency is tinted
toward the current foreground colour. The degree of tinting is determined
by the level (percentage) set in the Translucency requester (below).
245 Reference DeluxePaint V
Settings...
Keyboard Equivalent: Ctrl-t
Displays the Translucency requester. The default setting is 50%.
To change the setting, click on either side of the slider, or drag the slider to
a particular position. Click OK to confirm your new setting.
Here's an example of how Translucency works. Let's say you have a red
object in your painting with the RGB values R: 15 (100%) G:0 B:0, and
that blue (R:0 G:0 B:15 (100%) is your foreground colour. If you set the
translucency level to 50% and painted over the red object, the resulting
colour would be equal to 50% of the objects colour, red, and 50% of the
foreground colour, blue. The RGB value of the resulting colour is R:7
(50%) G:0 B:7. If this colour (purple) is not in the current palette, the clos-
est colour to this value will be used instead. Like the Process functions,
Translucency give the best results in HAM mode.
The percentage value for translucency refers to the amount of the original
object that will show through the newly applied foreground colour. For
instance, in the above example if the translucency level was set to 75%, the
resulting colour would be 75% of the existing colour in the painting, red,
and 25% of the foreground colour, blue. The RGB value of the resulting
colour would be R:11 G:0 B:3.
Translucency works with all the painting tools (except text, single pixel
Airbrush, or the 3- and 5-pixel built-in brushes), and in combination with
the Process options. By combining Translucency with Tint, for example,
you can control the degree of tinting.
Perspective >>
The Perspective submenu contains options for manipulating a brush in
three dimensions.
Do
Keyboard Equivalent: Enter (on keypad)
Puts you into Perspective mode. Your brush is represented by a four-cell
matrix, which you can manipulate with keypad commands (listed later in
this section). The amount of rotation for axes x, y, and z is given in degrees
on the right side of the Title bar. The centre of perspective (see Centre,
below) is indicated by a cross-hair. You can paint an image of the rotated
brush at any time by clicking.
To exit Perspective mode, click a tool in the toolbox or press Enter on
the keypad.
FillScreen
Keyboard Equivalent: - (minus) keypad
Fills the screen with the current brush, in its current state of rotation in 3D.
The entire brush size (not just the opaque part) is the default size for the
Perspective Fill pattern.
246 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
Reset
Keyboard Equivalent: 0 on keypad
Resets the brush to its original state before rotation, and returns all of the
settings in the Perspective Settings requester to their defaults (see Settings,
below).
Note: The keyboard equivalent does not reset the perspective centre.
This is useful if you need to reset your brush to its original orientation
without changing your perspective plane.
Centre
Keyboard Equivalent: . (period)keypad
Allows you to set the Perspective centre or horizon in your perspective
Lanascape.
When you select Centre, your cursor changes into a large cross-hair.
The smaller, stationary cross-hair on the screen indicates the existing
centre. Move the large cross-hair to the new centre you want and click
either mouse button.
Once you have set the Perspective centre, the position of the unrotated
brush relative to that centre determines the position of the perspective plane
when you rotate the brush. The greater the distance above or below
Perspective centre, the less pronounced the perspective effect.
Settings
Displays the Perspective requester. When you are in Perspective mode, you
can also display this requester by right-clicking the Grid tool.
The following options are available:
Grid
You can use these edit boxes to set the dimensions for a grid in three-dimen-
sional space. When you first open the requester, the numbers in these boxes
correspond to the dimensions of your brush; the Z dimension automatically
takes the same value as the Y dimension. It is important to remember that
the entire brush size (not just the opaque part) is the default size for
Perspective Grid and Perspective Fill.
247 Reference DeluxePaint V
From Brush
Clicking From Brush sets the X and Y grid values ro correspond ro the
width and height of the brush. This is the quickest way to restore the per-
spective grid settings to the same dimensions as your bnLsh without affect-
ing any other settings.
Angle Step
Specifies the rotation increment used in conjLmction with the Shift key and
the appropriate keyboard rotation key (see Perspechne Rotations, below). This
value defaults to 90.
Screen
The default setting, uses the screen coordinate system when rotating the
brush on the x, y, and z axes. (If you are familiar with coordinate systems,
you will know this coordinate system as the Euler method, which measures
all three angles of rotation from absolute zero.)
Brush
Rotates the brush relative to the current brush coordinate system.
Display
The Angle and Pos buttons let you choose whether the angles of rotation or
the position of the brush in three dimensional space arc displayed in the
Title Bar.
If Coords from the Prefs menu is turned on, the Fitle Bar shows two
dimensional coordinates; be sure to n~m Coords off if you want to see
three dimensional coordinates.
Perspective Rotations
All perspective rotations are controlled through the keypad on your key-
board.
248 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
Pressing Keypad O resets all three axes to zero and fixes the Z axis (see
below), but retains the apparent distance settings. Pressing Keypad O in con-
junction with the Shift key resets all perspective values to the default state.
Other Perspective
Keyboerd Commands
Ctrl temporarily fixes the Y axis so that you can move the brush forward or
backward in 3D space by moving the mouse forward or backward.
The; and' keys move the brush plane forward or back along its fixed axis
(see below) without changing its orientation, moving it in a direction per-
pendicular to the brush plane. This is the same effect described in the above
discussion on brush position prior to rotation. Thus, with the Z axis fixed,
brush position relative to the Perspective centre at the moment of rotation
determines the brush's distance above or below eye level. You can achieve the
same effect after the brush is rotated by using the; and ' keys to move it for-
ward or back along its Z axis.
Pressing these keys with the Shift key held down results in larger increments
of movement. In addition, you can modify the apparent distance from the
observer by pressing the < and > keys (i.e., the Shifted "," and "." keys).
Thus, when the apparent distance is great, the perspective foreshortening is
at a minimum, becoming greater as apparent distance decreases.
Fixing Axes: Whenever you start in Perspective mode, the Z axis (the one
perpendicular to the screen) is "fixed," that is, the mouse does not move the
brush through that axis. You can selectively fix any axis, as follows:
To fix the X axis, press Shift-9
To fix the Y axis, press Shift-6
To fix the Z axis, press Shift-3
As noted above, you can move along the axis that is currently fixed by using
the Shifted or un-Shifted; and' keys (use the Shifted keys for larger incre-
ments). You can also temporarily fix the Y axis by holding down the Ctrl
key.
Pressure >>
On/Off
DeluxePaint supports pressure-sensitive tablets (TriMedia, Inc. software dri-
ver required). When painting on canvas with a traditional brush, your
strokes vary in colour intensity and width depending how hard you press
the brush down. Pressure-sensitivity allows duplication of this effect, as well
as other effects not possible with traditional media.
Settings..
Keyboard Equivalent: Ctrl-p
Displays the Pressure requester, and turns on pressure on exit.
249 Reference DeluxePaint V
Translucency: When this option is on, your brush paints from the back-
ground colour to the foreground colour, so the order of light to dark
changes depending on the background colour. For example, if your back-
ground colour is white and you're painting with a red foreground colour,
your brush strokes change from light pink to red with increasing pressure.
You can change the amount of translucency with the Translucency Settings
requester. The higher the Translucency setting, the wider the variety of
shades available for pressure.
Cycle: This option causes pressure to be translated into colour cycling using
the current colour cycle range. The colour cycle range must have a cycle
speed associated with it for this option to work.
Size: When this box is checked, the setting of the slider is used to modify
the brush size (in pixels) depending on how hard you press on the tablet.
Reverse Size: Invert the Size modification so that pressing harder will reduce
the brush size by the selected amount.
Pressing OK from the requester automatically turns Pressure on.
Media >>
Open
Use a standard open requester to open a Media Library file. Media Library
files shipped with DeluxePaint (in the Media drawer) include chalk, felt tip
marker, oil pastel crayon, and water-colour.
Media rypes and textures work together-in order to use a Media type, a
texture must also be turned on. When both Media and Textures are turned
on, you can duplicate natural drawing effects such as water-colour on paper,
oll on heavy canvas, etc.
The use of media and textures and their effects will vary depending on
which colour you are using and what kind of effects you are using.
Experiment with media types, translucency options, and colour modes to
get different effects.
Close
Close the currently open Media Library file.
250 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
Texture >>
On/Off
Keyboard Equivalent: Right Amiga-t
This turns the current background texture on or off. If there is no texture.
the Load Texture requester is displayed.
Load
Use standard ASL requester to load any IFF image as a background texture.
For optimum effect, images should be tile-able and 16 colours or greater,
but different effects can be achieved with even simple black and white or
colour images. Only bitmap data for the selected file is read; any palette
data associated with the file is ignored.
Invert
Keyboard Equivalent: Right-Amiga - I
Inverts the data of the current background texture.
Free
Clear the current background texture from memory.
Macro
Menu
The Macro menu is a new menu that lets you record, load, save, assign, and
execute ARexx macros. Macros enable you to save actions and then repeat
them-you can even assign macros to function keys for easy access.
Record Macro
Keyboard Equivalent: Right-Amiga - M
When this check item is selected, DeluxePaint begins recording menu
choices and mouse actions. When selected again to stop recording, the
Assign Macro requester appears. Select one of the ten slots and press OK to
assign the macro you've just recorded to a function key. Macros are kept in
RAM:T until you save them.
Record Details
When this option is checked, all mouse drawing movements are recorded in
the macro. When unchecked, only necessary mouse drawing movements are
recorded. For instance, when unchecked, only the two endpoints of a
straight line would be recorded. If checked all the mouse movement in
between the two clicks to set the endpoints would be recorded, leading to a
more complex macro file.
Execute Macro
Opens an "Execute Macro" window in your default open ARexx macro
directorY Choose an ARexx macro file, and press OK to execute the macro
file immediately.
251 Reference DeluxePaint V
Load...
Open a requester to simultaneously open a macro file and assign it to a
function key
?
Click on the question mark next to a macro slot to bring up an open file
requester. Select a macro file and press OK to load the macro in the macro
slot.
Save AS...
Opens a standard ASL "Save File" requester to save the macro currently in
memory to an ARexx file.
Prefs Menu
The Prefs menu contains a list of options that you can toggle on or off to
suit your work habits. When you choose an option, a check mark (~)
appears to the left of the option to indicate that it's turned on. Choosing the
option again turns the option off and removes the :.
You can toggle multiple options by clicking on the option while the Prefs
menu is exposed.
The AutoGrid is turned on by default for all DeluxePaint users. For artists
using HAM screen format, FastAdjust is also turned on by default.
New additions to the menu allow you to save and restore your default pref-
erences to and from disk.
Coords
Keyboard Equivalent: Shift-\
This option turns on the coordinate display in the upper right-hand portion
of the Title Bar. Simply moving the mouse displays the current position of
the cursor, with the origin (0, 0) set to the lower left corner of the $creen.
Holding down either mouse button temporarily resets the origin to the cur-
rent cursor position and displays the displacement value from that tempo-
rary origin as you move around rhe screen. The readout is scaled in pixels.
See also Origir'UL, below.
252 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
Fast FB
Fast feedback. Turn on Fast FB when working with large or complicated
brushes while using the line or unfilled shape tools. Fast FB lets you draw
your lines or shapes using the smallest (one-pixel) brush for feedback, and
then completes the design using the currently selected brush. This increases
response speed while you are drawing, but does not affect the final image.
MultiCycle
Works in conjunction with the Cyde paint mode from the Mode menu.
With MultiCycle turned on, painting with a multicoloured brush in Cycle
mode cycles each colour in the brush, provided the colour is in a cycle
range. When MultiCycle is turned off (the default ), using Cycle with a
multicoloured brush treats the brush as though it were a single colour (the
current foreground colour).
Be Square
Because the Amiga's pixels are not perfectly square, circles and squares
drawn with the shape tools are not perfectly round or square. If you wish to
draw "true" circles or squares, select Be Square. This will square all the built-
in brushes, the appropriate shape tools, and symmetry. Be Square does not
square "ridding or perspective, and should be turned off when you are using
those features.
Workbench
Toggles the Amiga Workbench on and off. Default setting is off.
ExclBrush
If you pick up a brush with ExclBrush (and the Grid) selected, you will
exclude a one-pixel border on the right and bottom edges of your brush (see
Figure 30). This is useful if your brush has a coloured border around it and
you want to use the brush to create a pattern fill or perspective fill (using
the Fill Type requester). When DeluxePaint creates your pattern, the border
will be uniform throughout instead of being twice as wide where one copy
of the brush is placed next to another.
253 Reference DeluxePaint V
AutoTransp
Modifies the way brush pickup works. With AutoTransp turned on,
DeluxePaint determines the transparent colour by looking at the corners of
the capture rectangle or the points of the polygon to see if they are the same
colour. If the four corners are the same colour, that colour becomes the
transparent colour, otherwise the current background colour remains the
transparent colour.
AutoGrid
With AutoGrid turned on, the perspective grid is resized automatically to
match any custom brush you choose to load or pick up. Its as if you had
clicked the From Brush action button in the Perspective requester. When
AutoGrid is off, the perspective grid is not automatically resized.
This option affects only the grid in Perspective, not the standard grid.
OriginUL
When Coords from the Prefs menu is on, DeluxePaint displays the current
position of the cursor on the right side of the Title Bar. By default the pro-
gram calculates the origin, or zero point of coordinates (0, 0) of the cursor
position from the lower left corner of the screen. If you would rather have
the origin calculated from the upper left, choose OriginUL. To return to the
default origin, choose OriginUL again.
FastAdjust
This option is available only in HAM mode, where it is turned on by
default. FastAdjust tells DeluxePaint NOT to attempt to correct the fringing
effects that appear along the right side of your brush while the brush is
moving. This improves the speed of brush movement and is especially help-
ful if you are using large custom brushes. If you find the fringing to be
annoying or difficult to work with, turn FastAdjust off, and the fringing will
be reduced.
MouseTrack
This check option is available only on Amigas with a 68020 CPU or
greater. When MouseTrack is on, DeluxePaint buffers your mouse move-
ments during freehand drawing so that your lines look smoother.
Toolbox>>
This submenu allows you to open requesters for the various toolbox items
directly from the menu rather than right-clicking on the toolbox icons. See
the Tools section for an explanation of the requesters.
Fill...
Keyboard Equivalent: F
Displays the Fill Type requester.
Spacing...
Keyboard Equivalent: V
Displays the Spacing requester.
Fonts...
Keyboard Equivalent: T
Displays the Choose Font requester.
254 Chapter 8 DeluxePaint V
Airbrush...
Keyboard Equivalent: Alt-A
Displays the Airbrush Settings requester.
Grid..
Displays the Gridding requester.
Symmetry...
Displays the Symmetry requester.
Icons...
Opens the Icon Preferences requester for setting icon options for files creat-
ed with DeluxePaint. Icons are saved using the current workbench palette
settings. Your results will vary depending on your workbench settings.
Save Type
None: Files are saved without any icon information.
Standard: Files are saved with standard DeluxePaint icon.
Preview: A miniature version of the picture is created and used as the file
icon.
Save Options
Size from Brush: Uses the custom brush dimensions to save the Icon
Preview.
Embed Preview: This option saves the preview to the file. If a Save Type of
Preview is selected, a preview is saved as an icon as well.
Preview Smoothing
Set the anti-aliasing options for the preview icon to None (no smoothing at
all), Low (some smoothing), or High (maximum smoothing). Smoothing
only takes effect in non-HAM modes.
Preview Size
Set the icon preview size in pixels. Icon sizes are limited from 20x20 to
320x200 pixels.
Font Dir...
Displays a requester you can use to select a different font directory than the
default Amiga font directory.
Default
Resets DeluxePaint's preference settings to the factory defaults.
255 Reference DeluxePaint V
Last Saved
Restore the preference settings from the last time they were saved as
tooltypes.
Save
Save current preference settings as tooltypes to the DeluxePaint program's
icon. In addition, the program saves the current Directories for Picture,
Brush, Anim, Palette, Animbrush, Stencil, Texture, and Media as your
default directories, and saves the currently assigned macro files.
User
Menu
Keyboard Equivalent: A-l to A-O execute user macros I to 10.
This menu allows you to execute one of the ten macro files DeluxePaint can
store at one time.
User Feedback
in the Title Bar
Painting Mode Displays the current painting mode (Matte, Colour, Replc, Smear, Blend,
Cycle, Smooth) beside the program title [DeluxePaint] on the Title Bar. See
Mode menu, above, for information on painting modes.
Colour Fill Box Displays the currently selected fill pattern, or perspective fill or gradient fill in a small box in the middle of the Title Bar. This box previews the pattern
or gradient you'll get when you fill a shape. The Colour Fill Box is absent if
your Fill Type is set to Solid. See discussion under Fill tool, below, for more
information on the Fill Type requester.
A Appears in the middle of the Title Bar when Antialias>High is selected
from the Effect menu.
a Appears in the middle of the Title Bar when Antialias>Low is selected
from the Effect menu.
B Appears in the middle of the Title Bar when the l~?ackground isfixed.
P Appears in the middle of the Title Bar when you have selected one of
the Process options (Tint, Hue, Value) from the Effect menu.
Process>None does not display the P
S Appears in the middle of the Title Bar to show a Stencil is active.
s Appears in the middle of the Title Bar when a Stencil is active, and
Stencil>Show or Stencil>Paint is selected.
T Appears in the middle of the Title Bar when Translucency from the
Effect menu is turned on.
256 Chepter 8 DeluxePeint V
Axis Rotation When you are in Perspective mode, the rotation of the selected shape about
each axis (x, y, and z, respectively) appears in the right corner of the Title
Bar. The axis rotation information is superseded by the cursor coordinates if
you turn on Coordinates in the Prefs menu.
Coordinates When Coords is active, the coordinates of the cursor position are displayed
in the right corner of the Title Bar.
Memory Availability Press the Ctrl key and the letter a at the same time to display available Fast memory/Chip memory in the left corner of the Title Bar. See Appendix A
for information on DeluxePaint~s memory usage.
Startup Tooltypes The tooltype options listed in the following section allow you to specify
program defaults. You can specify startup tooltypes using the options in the
following sections with the Information requester, accessible through the
DeluxePaint V icon and Workbench menus at the Workbench screen. Most
of these tooltypes can be saved directly out of DeluxePaint V from either the
Prefs menu or the Screen Format requester.
Preference Tooltypes These tooltypes correspond to your menu choices in the Prefs menu.
Tooltypes are in brackets () if unchecked or off.
AutoGrid
FastAdjust
Be Square
Coords
Fast FB
MultiCycle
Workbench
ExclBrush
AutoTransp
OriginUL
MouseTrack
Icon Tooltypes
These tooltypes correspond to the icon preferences.
IconSizeFromBrush ( Default = off)
IconSaveType= <Nonel Standard I Preview> (Default= Standard)
