Texture Editor

Amon

Staff member
Hello everyone. I have decied to create my own texture editor for creating textures for use with the Sega Saturn. It is currently being written in c# and will require the .net framework.

Current Progress

So far you can import any supported image (iirc bmp,jpg,gif,png). Images that do not conform to the saturn requirements of width of a multiple of 8 or larger than max size (currently using 256x256 as per the ssdk texture editor) are either not imported, auto stretched/skewed, auto cropped (width and/or height reduce until meets requirements) or auto filled (extra width is added and currently with black). These options are handled either for all images being imported or image by image basis. Image by image basis includes a preview window.

Images that are imported are displayed at full size 10 images per row.

Planned Features

-Saving to a text file (which includes bitmap data, and for SGL users texture table, picture table AND sprite attribute table)

-Open and Saving as a project

-Options to change size of displayed textures (fullsize, and set sizes such as 25x25.

-Setting the transparent Color on a image by image basis or for all images

-Manipulation of the texture list (deleting/moving textures)

-Display the current size of the texture list in bytes

-Image rotation/scaling/flipping

Anyways, what are your thoughts?
 
The texture size is limited to multiples of eight in the hardware only for the width, the height can be set freely.
 
ExCyber said:
Have you given any thought to compatibility with other CLR frameworks (e.g. Mono)?

I learned of mono yesterday but I have given it thought. I could also even rewrite it in another laung like java or something more portable. At the moment I am most comfortable writing this sort of program in C# though.

antime said:
The texture size is limited to multiples of eight in the hardware only for the width, the height can be set freely.

Currently the program only checks to see if the width is a multiple of 8 as it should. It also checks to see if the size is greater than the max size. Since at the moment I am only dealing with RBG sprites, is the max size 256x256?
 
The VDP1 manual specifies the max. texture size as 504*255, regardless of texture mode.
 
I had a look at those, its an easy change so done :). Any other features you people want to see?
 
maybe all color mode supported

some filters

a preview mode (something like tv scanlines)
 
Amon said:
Ohh, sounds good. Will add that, if I ever figure out how.
You might want to check out these libraries, which do something similar (although they are optimized for real-time rendering in emulators). I haven't looked at them myself, but they presumably contain some algorithms to model various NTSC limitations.
 
I have resumed work on the texture editor. So far you can import images and then export them to a texture file. Before I add more features I am improving the speed of several functions through the use of "unsafe" code ie using pointers in c#. This will improve the speed tenfold. In another application I have this can sometimes adds artifacts to images. I will have to revert the code if this happens to the slower method or allow user choice. If anyone wants to try it out please let me know.

*edit*

Well as I predicted I was finally able to improve the speed. The program is now usable and saves to a texture file in a timely mannor.
 
Well I am finally working on this thing again. The GUI needs a lot of work and I am thinking of rewriting this from scratch. The code is complete crap with globals and everything but hey it works. I have single color transparency working (picked using a color dialog) and hope to have a per image transparency setup as well as some sort of color picker.
 
Back
Top