Maybe this is a GIMP question, but I’m wondering if there is a way to dither textures into 256 color mode so they look better in blender games?
Ofcourse, I use Photoshop, there’s a tool where you can save it as an image with 256 colours (dithered). That’s the way I made the pictures on my website, all the pictures where more than 256 colour, then I dither it to 256 colour and it al looks fine, you almost don’t see any colour losing.
But buying photoshop is the problem, it’s too much money, I use it on school. I don’t know how much textures you want to dither, maybe I can do it for you. But I also know someone who had a free software which can also dither pictures, maybe I ask him where he get that.
[!] If you really want photoshop, send a private message to my elysiun account.
they will look better? I doubt it.
but if you wish to change the color depth of an image in the gimp I believe it is
Image->Modes->Indexed
or something, I would have to install the gimp to see
256 color images don’t always compress better either.
they may compress better as a png, but the jpeg would still be 24 bit color and would look worse.
Bordem encourages me to do a table
Format Avaliable modes lossy?
Jpeg 8 greyscale yes
24 rgb
32 rgba (cymk)
Png 2 b/w only if dithered
8 256 color indexed
24 bit rgb
32 bit rgba
Targa 24 bit rgb
32 bit rgba
it should be noted that an indexed png can have indicies that are transparent, and even indicies with different amounts of transparency.
Yep, you can do this with GIMP. Right click in the image window ‘image’->‘mode’->‘indexed’ or simply press ALT+I.
???
256 colours textures will not look better neither in Blender neither anywhere!!
Blender is a high quality rendering engine!!
It suports among others, TGA images with alpha chanel, so 32 bits
quality images
The only “good” way to use 8 bit textures is to save space and maybe memory.
You can use the Gimp of course!!
Very powerfull!!
António
dude, blender converts all textures to 8 bit textures man… sick.
Blender is a high quality rendering engine!!
Yes when rendering images, it’s realtime engine’s rendering is anything but “high quality”. 
I found something really strange something in the runtimes created with blender. When I make a 32 bit texture and add it into blender like a character uv, then I make an runtime of it, and open it with windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, the texture will be shown as 256 colors, so the textures become low coloured, but when i view it with XP, the textures colours look the same as I made it in photoshop, so i think the runtime chances the colour depth of the game depending n what system you use.
Yes, it seems that the colour depth is dependent of the OpenGL driver used. But that doesn’t seem to be the only factor. Sometimes the textures look ok but a little modification can turn them really ugly even the color depth remained the same. Reducing colours does not have the desired effect sometimes. I think there still is much need for improvement.
yes…i was making a game and it was looking fine,very good textures and all,then when i made an exe and run then game,the game looked like crap,like a super nintendo game or something like that LOL.That doesn’t happens when you run the game from blender(not an exe). i hope they improve that. :Z
I doubt it
16 bit color (“High Color”) mode dithers 24 or 32 bit color textures.
not quite as badly as 256 color mode does (trust me, I’ve seen it, blender over vnc, uggh)
well anyway, I think most opengl drivers use the color depth of the screen, so things will look better at 24 or 32 bit color (really the same) than at 16 or 8.
dude, blender converts all textures to 8 bit textures man… sick.
Then can I convert them to 8-bit with GIMP? I thought for sure somebody said blender games ran in 256 color.
Blender does not run in 256 colours. That is a myth.
Blender’s vertex colours (including realtime lighting and fog,) use the full range of colours available (16 or 24 bit, plus alpha.)
With some graphics cards, Blender converts TEXTURES to 8 bits (plus alpha) it does not dither the textures when it converts them, that’s why saving them as dithered 8 bits can improve their look in the game engine.
PS: I think it’s the graphics card that converts the textures, not really Blender’s fault at all.
I guess that some peoples eyes convert the textures to 3,5 bits with
no alpha!!!
Maybe those great “3D” red & green plastic glasses will help
António
u dare prove wiseman wrong?
I think the color depth depends on your OpenGL settings…not on blender (in the stand-alone player and in fullscreen mode you can limit it though)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so http://brainstorm-studios.net/wiseman/proof/
Hmm… interesting. Any advice on how to change one’s OpenGL settings?
Not sure what you mean, limiting the bit depth of the display only affects vertex colours, textures are converted (apperently only on some graphics cards,) regardless of the bit depth the game is running at, as shown in the screenshot in the above link, which was taken in true colour (24 bit?) mode.
I think blender’s mip-mapping is the problem, it doesn’t work so well on some graphics cards. Mip-mapping is where it converts textures to a compressed format, and swaps it out for more detailed ones as you get closer. On my weak computer (ati rage 128) the mip-mapping makes most bitmap text unreadable unless you make it really big. You can turn off mip-maps by dragging down the top window and clicking the button called “no mipmaps”. Textures will look MUCH better, but you end up with a lot more aliasing (jagged edges) especially looking at things in the distance.
When you save with no mipmaps on, it doesn’t actually save it, so its not all that useful.
who am I replying to?
oh to wiseman:
the images you show are not exactly comparable, as the images are being rendered differently. One is mapped with one pixel of the image corresponding to one of the screen (or two of image to one of screeen, or one of image to two of screen, it is similar to the way apps like photoshop zoom images when you view them) and the other is in your video memory at multiple resolutions, and depending on the size your face is on the screen and how it is textured one of those resolutions are determined (mipmapping), and after one is chosen the color for each pixel on the screen is INTERPOLATED from the image in video memory, the uv coordinates, and the location on screen.
the 3d view doesn’t draw textures the same as the image window, and I believe that the background image in a 3d window is drawn the same as in an image window.
WEAK??? how dare you say weak! LOL you don’t know what weak is…he he! i got a crappy 8 MB tnt2 card! with only 64 mb of ram.now that’s weak! LOL unless 750 mhz makes any difference. 
ps: i could be using blender on a better comp.,but blender crashes on XP when i’m working with armatures. i don’t know if it’s any better,cause it doesn’t have a 3d card,but it has 256 MB of Ram,and it’s a 2.0 GHZ comp.