UPDATE:
This is the .zip file with Amiga executable program demonstrating the features described in this article. This demo program is developed with Amiga Blitz Basic 2.1. It takes ~10 seconds to generate copperlist on Amiga 500.
I have been planning to start creating Amiga graphics using the Copper for a long time. Here is the first attempt:
I talked to a few people about it at the Xenium party. I wanted to do something like the Atari demosceners do with their G2F tool. I mean, adding colors line by line using the Copper. It’s a bit of fun and experimentation to see what;s possible on Amiga with this approach, on only two bitplanes graphics (4 colors).
I also needed it for other reason…
I started doing this for the needs of a game I’m creating for the Amiga – Robot Jet Action. I finally had to develop a mechanism for how to first draw such graphics and then add/generate these colored lines for the Copper. I wanted to see how it will look like on Amiga right away, especially in the A500 OCS palette (4 bits per color component).
In short, I do all this in Photoshop with proper layers setup and using my scripts that generate final Copper lists. I also made a simple visual tool, but I’ll write about it (or maybe show it on a Youtube video) soon-ish.
What you see on the images above is the following:
- raw graphics in 4 colors,
- graphics with simple copper-bars applied
- advanced color gradient as a result of stacking multiple layers
As you can see in example 3), with the right color selection, the effects can be quite advanced and, for example, used in demos on the A500.
Below is the graphics used for conversion. Generated in SDXL1.0 + InvokeAI. The prompt is copy-pasted from some pic on CivitAI. Sorry I dont remember which one ATM.
