Acorn Art Thread

[pixelblip]

Runner

[lurkio]

This is for you Lurkio

Thank you!:

• http://bbcmicro.co.uk//jsbeebng/play.ph ... k&noborder

EDIT: Sinister version:

• http://bbcmicro.co.uk//jsbeebng/play.ph ... k&noborder

[pixelblip]

Dungeon

[FourthStone]

They look great on jsbeeb

The running man one you're just showing off now haha, really love it

[lurkio]

They look great on jsbeeb

The fountain also looks great on a real Beeb and a CRT monitor, btw. But yes, JSBeeb displays the pictures well too: see the gallery that SimonSideburns put together after he had downloaded some of the early GIFs in this thread and somehow -- how? -- converted them all to MODE2 format.


That was some time after I first asked if pixelblip would be kind enough to upload some -- ideally all! -- of his art, in that same BBC/MODE2 format, so we could appreciate it in its "natural habitat" (on real Beebs).


In 2018 pixelblip started making animated images, and, again, somehow -- how?! -- a few of them were converted, by ctr, into a format that could be played on a real Beeb (or in emulation).


Last year, because I'm a pushy git, I begged again that more of pixelblip's art be made available in BBC/MODE2 format so it could be displayed in all its glory on the hardware that inspired its creation...


Then, last month, SimonSideburns downloaded all the GIFs so he could rotate them as desktop background images on his Windows PC.

And, recently, pixelblip said:

At some point I will gather all the pics I have ( in bbc format ) and put them somewhere.

I can't wait!

Seriously, I really hope you'll be able to find the time and the motivation to upload the images in BBC/MODE2 format sometime soon, pixelblip. Clearly there's a lot of love for them, and, as this thread shows, there are other people besides me who'd like to see a gallery of your work displayed in its native format. I know I keep banging on about it, but it's only because I'm so impressed by your work and I appreciate the time and effort you've put into it over the years. Thank you.

And, it occurs to me, this is probably the largest collection of art produced for (and on!) the Beeb by any single individual ever! (Can anyone prove me wrong..?!)

[FourthStone]

The fountain also looks great on a real Beeb and a CRT monitor, btw. But yes, JSBeeb displays the pictures well too: see the gallery that SimonSideburns put together after he had downloaded some of the early GIFs in this thread and somehow -- how? -- converted them all to MODE2 format.

When I wrote the ART program, mainly for pixelblip but also anyone who's interested, it was specifically designed to allow export of animated images to either individual png images or native bbc raw format. it can also re-open the individual pngs as layers and recombine them to be saved as bbc raw format, so as long as you have the original pngs you can still convert them into bbc format.

I am just amazed that anyone be so creative with such a limited electronic easel, all I can make it do is grade 3 level stuff so well done again PixelBlip!!!

[lurkio]

A musical interlude:

• http://bbcmicro.co.uk//jsbeebng/play.ph ... del=Master

[pixelblip]

TT Seagull

[pixelblip]

7070

[pixelblip]

Flightpath

[pixelblip]

Crappy New Year!

[pixelblip]

I don't know about you - but the world has just gone completely bonkers!
Nostradamus predicted the end of the world and people fighting over loo roll in Saver centre at the end

[lurkio]

When I wrote the ART program, mainly for pixelblip but also anyone who's interested, it was specifically designed to allow export of animated images to either individual png images or native bbc raw format. it can also re-open the individual pngs as layers and recombine them to be saved as bbc raw format, so as long as you have the original pngs you can still convert them into bbc format.

So I presume it won't be able to convert the latest GIF that pixelblip uploaded to this thread, for example?:

• viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13294&start=1050#p262519

[pixelblip]

Wise Wizard

[FourthStone]

So I presume it won't be able to convert the latest GIF that pixelblip uploaded to this thread, for example?:

• viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13294&start=1050#p262519

I don't know how anyone has converted from GIF back to mode 2, but if the person can explain how they did it I'm sure we could add the functionality to ART. Each frame would have to be scanned for colour changes and that information converted back into picture data, I guess it could be done but I'd need to add a GIF library to ART which I have wanted to do for a (long) while.

ART doesn't currently create the GIF images, it can only export each animated frame as PNG and then you can use an external GIF tool to combine each frame to GIF.

So in theory every GIF image that pixelblip creates should have the original frames saved which can also be saved as bbc raw format.

I could easily add an option to automatically save in bbc format every time the originals are saved if this would be of benefit?

ART has grown very dynamically as idea's for its use have popped up, I'm very open to adding features if anyone will get some benefit from, the souce code is up on GIT so if anyone has idea's to improve it I'd love to know

P.S. Loving the latest images pixelblip

[pixelblip]

I will gather all the bbc images and put them in a folder. To save converting gif to bbc. Although it might be better if a tool can be built as I will have so many scattered files with random names. It would take a lot of work. I will gather them all up though and share the folder.

[pixelblip]

Sorry everyone not to get political of course but this is bringing out the satirist artist in me I didn't know existed!

U.K Covid-19 Virus Response

[pixelblip]

Keep Calm

[pixelblip]

Ok no more CO19 jokes now!

[pixelblip]

Summer Meadow

[pixelblip]

Summer Meadow

[ctr]

In 2018 pixelblip started making animated images, and, again, somehow -- how?! -- a few of them were converted, by ctr, into a format that could be played on a real Beeb (or in emulation).

I did a little tidying and uploaded my code to github:
https://github.com/mungre/img2beeb

There are instructions there describing how to build and run it without visual studio. It requires the gifs to be 640x512. At least one of the new ones isn't.

[pixelblip]

53

[lurkio]

I did a little tidying and uploaded my code to github: https://github.com/mungre/img2beeb There are instructions there describing how to build and run it without visual studio. It requires the gifs to be 640x512. At least one of the new ones isn't.

Thanks. I'm trying to run this in WINE in CrossOver on a Mac. (I know, I know...)

I got past the first crash by (re?)installing something called the Windows Imaging Component in the 32-bit Windows 7 WINE "Bottle" I'm using. But the program img2beeb.exe still crashes, now with a different error:

Any idea what's wrong?

[ctr]

Any idea what's wrong?

Silly question, is it an animated gif? A non-animated one might confuse it.

Or edit the compilation line in build.bat to read:

Code: Select all

%CSC% -debug -define:DEBUG -out:bin\img2beeb.exe src\Program.cs src\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs -reference:WPF\WindowsBase.dll -reference:WPF\PresentationCore.dll -reference:System.Xaml.dll

(i.e. replace "-optimize" with "-debug -define:DEBUG"). This should produce a more useful stack trace.

[lurkio]

Silly question, is it an animated gif?

Yes, it's this one: download/file.php?id=54199&mode=view

Or edit the compilation line in build.bat to read:

Code: Select all

%CSC% -debug -define:DEBUG -out:bin\img2beeb.exe src\Program.cs src\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs -reference:WPF\WindowsBase.dll -reference:WPF\PresentationCore.dll -reference:System.Xaml.dll

(i.e. replace "-optimize" with "-debug -define:DEBUG"). This should produce a more useful stack trace.

Here's the output:

EDIT: Just got img2beeb.exe working by borrowing someone's PC and building it on that. I'd still like to get it working in CrossOver/WINE if possible though.

[ctr]

Yes, it's this one: download/file.php?id=54199&mode=view

That gif works fine for me on Windows 10. The failing line of code is the one I thought might have a problem with a static gif because it reads the inter-frame delay:

Code: Select all

byte frameDelay = (byte)(ushort)((BitmapMetadata)gif.Frames[frame].Metadata).GetQuery("/grctlext/Delay");

But it's failing for some other reason. Maybe you've got an old Windows Imaging Component (WIC)? Maybe the WIC version on Windows 7 never supported gif metadata? I don't have Windows 7 installed to try it.

The dependence on WIC is quite slight: just reading gifs, not doing any further processing. I only used it because it was handy. If you really want to get this working cross-platform, it would probably be more productive to convert it to use one of the image libraries that runs on .net core than to spend who knows how long trying to diagnose this.

Alternatively, if you post a zip of all the animations you want converting I'm happy to do them for you.

[pixelblip]

Wicker Man

[lurkio]

The dependence on WIC is quite slight: just reading gifs, not doing any further processing. I only used it because it was handy. If you really want to get this working cross-platform, it would probably be more productive to convert it to use one of the image libraries that runs on .net core than to spend who knows how long trying to diagnose this.

Sorted it! It turns out that when you create a new Win 7 "Bottle" in CrossOver (WINE), you get the wrong version of WindowsCodecs.dll in C:\Windows\System32, for some reason.* What you get is a small 22KB file.

But if you find the correct Win 7 version of the DLL, which is about 1MB in size, and substitute it for the old, small, wrong one, then your img2beeb.exe program suddenly works!



* I think the same thing happens when you create a Bottle for Win 10 too.

[pixelblip]

Well done Lurkio and CRB.
I did see a problem in this. If you turn these gifs into BBC pics how you gonna know what is colour flashing and what isn't? You could save the frames of course and play 8 back in sequence but it's not the same as saving a picture with the flashing colours and animating it.

Really what I need to do is get all these pics together in their original format. Before I get Covid 19!