Author Topic: RE: Capture SNES Sprites with a Pink BG (Read 26573 times)

snesmaster · « **on:** September 29, 2008, 11:02:38 am »

Well now for NES games the FCEUC 2.0.2 lets you change the background to pink to easily capture sprites, you can also pause the game and advance it to capture each frame to make animated sprites. See examples on my website I did for Super Mario Bros.:

http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/SuperMarioBrothers/sprites/SuperMarioBrothersSprites.html

Now I would like to be able to do the same thing for SNES games. I have just started making maps for Donkey Kong Country, and I would like to do sprites for it as well. However the current way is using ZSNES and making a save state with the sprite on the screen that I want to capture. Then go to VSNES tool and load the save state. Then I can get the sprite on a pink BG to capture it. However that is a lot of steps and takes way to long for capturing 20 or 30 frames for a complex animated sprite.

Does any one know of a SNES emulator that lets you change the background to Pink, one that lets you pause the game and advance one frame at a time so you can capture each frame of an animated sprite?

Thanks for any help.

TerraEsperZ · « **Reply #1 on:** September 29, 2008, 02:28:13 pm »

I don't know of any, and it's been slowing me down while mapping Clock Tower.

Snes9X and ZSnes are both still in development I believe; while the frame advance thing might be harder to include, changing the "empty" color should be easy. You might try suggesting it in their respective forum, and they just might include it in a future version.

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Current projects: Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES), Bucky O'Hare (NES)

JonLeung · « **Reply #2 on:** September 29, 2008, 02:41:09 pm »

What??? I can't remember the last time I actually booted up ZSNES (other than to get title screen snapshots) but I'm pretty sure you can disable backgrounds (using the 1-4 keys) and then hit F1 to take screenshots, which also has an "advance frame" option...

Or am I totally remembering wrong? o_0

TerraEsperZ · « **Reply #3 on:** September 29, 2008, 03:20:58 pm »

Disabling layers replaces them with black, leading to the all-so-common problem of black-on-black, making it impossible to know which black pixels are part of the sprites and which aren't.

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Current projects: Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES), Bucky O'Hare (NES)

snesmaster · « **Reply #4 on:** September 29, 2008, 09:21:20 pm »

Also one other annoying feature for ZSNES is if you pause it on a frame to capture something then alt+tab over to PhotoShop to paste in the graphic when you alt+tab back to ZSNES it automatically unpauses ZSNES so you lose what frame you were on.

I will follow TerraEsperZ's advice and see if I can find a forum for ZSNES, the people with FCEUX were kind enough to add the features I requested, so I may get lucky again for ZSNES. It certainly doesn't hurt to ask.

Maxim · « **Reply #5 on:** September 30, 2008, 03:52:23 am »

Frame advancing is generally easy to add, coloured backgrounds less so. But both ought to be possible.

JonLeung · « **Reply #6 on:** September 30, 2008, 06:59:32 am »

snesmaster Said:

Also one other annoying feature for ZSNES is if you pause it on a frame to capture something then alt+tab over to PhotoShop to paste in the graphic when you alt+tab back to ZSNES it automatically unpauses ZSNES so you lose what frame you were on.

But using the built-in F1 screenshot thing, ZSNES (or at least the way I have it configured, maybe?) saves each screenshot to the specified folder...

So you could take a bunch of screenshots and do all your editing with all of them afterwards in your image editing program.

Not to mention you'd have to do editing to replace the background colour with that of your choice anyway...

TerraEsperZ · « **Reply #7 on:** September 30, 2008, 07:08:22 am »

I have to thank snesmaster for bringing VSNES to my attention; all the work I've been doing on Clock Tower has been accomplished using the antiquated BGMapper in combination with DOSBox. And it doesn't display everything nicely like VSNES does.

...Yeah, I know I suck, using fossilized software like that...

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Current projects: Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES), Bucky O'Hare (NES)