Can I wrangle lossless images out of Colors! 3D?

[BLOCKMINER3000]

Is there a Luma patch for PNG/BMP export, can I do anything with these .drw and .raw files

(from a Checkpoint extdata export, ImageMagick, FFmpeg, and GIMP don't know what to do with these), or do I just have to suck it up and deal with JPEG?

 

[zoogie]

You can take an in-game screenshot directly with Luma, it produces lossless BMPs.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Is there a Luma patch for PNG/BMP export, can I do anything with these .drw and .raw filesView attachment 405204 (from a Checkpoint extdata export, ImageMagick, FFmpeg, and GIMP don't know what to do with these), or do I just have to suck it up and deal with JPEG?

.drw appears to be a vector graphics format, this would probably be the ideal one to use if you can find a program that will open it, since you could render/export it at any resolution.
That is if they didn't just happen to use the same extension and the format is actually completely unrelated (there's a decent chance this is the case)
Supposedly, Inkscape can open .drw files.

.raw is (usually) essentially just bitmap data without a header. Many image editors (for example Photoshop) have support for opening raw files, however because they lack a header you need to specify the correct bit depth and such when opening or the image will not show up correctly. You might need to specifically tell your image editor of choice to open as a raw file, since it can't auto detect it when there is no header.

 

[BLOCKMINER3000]

You can take an in-game screenshot directly with Luma, it produces lossless BMPs.

This produces 400x240 (top screen) and 320x240 (bottom screen) images, whereas Colors! 3D can export up to 1600x960. Not only is the resolution subpar using this method, but the full image views are probably using a non-ideal downscaler (at least it's not nearest-neighbor). I could probably stitch together 100% zooms if worst comes to worst, but this is janky, and far from ideal. Depending on how Colors! 3D handles panning, it might not be pixel-perfect, either.

Post automatically merged: Nov 21, 2023

.drw appears to be a vector graphics format, this would probably be the ideal one to use if you can find a program that will open it, since you could render/export it at any resolution.
That is if they didn't just happen to use the same extension and the format is actually completely unrelated (there's a decent chance this is the case)
Supposedly, Inkscape can open .drw files.

.raw is (usually) essentially just bitmap data without a header. Many image editors (for example Photoshop) have support for opening raw files, however because they lack a header you need to specify the correct bit depth and such when opening or the image will not show up correctly. You might need to specifically tell your image editor of choice to open as a raw file, since it can't auto detect it when there is no header.

I already tried opening both files with GIMP. the .drw isn't recognized, and the .raw redirects to either RawTherapee or darktable when either is installed, and prompts me to open them with one of those when not. Inkscape can't open them either, giving me

this awesome error message, with

/media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/00.drw:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found !loC� ^ /media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/00.drw:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found !loC� ^ ink_file_open: '/media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/00.drw' cannot be opened! InkscapeApplication::document_open: Failed to open: /media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/00.drw ConcreteInkscapeApplication::on_open: failed to create document!

this and

/media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/01.raw:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found WAR� ^ /media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/01.raw:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found WAR� ^ ink_file_open: '/media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/01.raw' cannot be opened! InkscapeApplication::document_open: Failed to open: /media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/01.raw ConcreteInkscapeApplication::on_open: failed to create document!

this for terminal outputs.

I don't know how to tell GIMP and Inkscape to open the files as specific file types.

My best hope for the .drw file appears to be discontinued WIndows software, which isn't very promising.

Post automatically merged: Nov 21, 2023

This produces 400x240 (top screen) and 320x240 (bottom screen) images, whereas Colors! 3D can export up to 1600x960. Not only is the resolution subpar using this method, but the full image views are probably using a non-ideal downscaler (at least it's not nearest-neighbor). I could probably stitch together 100% zooms if worst comes to worst, but this is janky, and far from ideal. Depending on how Colors! 3D handles panning, it might not be pixel-perfect, either.

Post automatically merged: Nov 21, 2023

I already tried opening both files with GIMP. the .drw isn't recognized, and the .raw redirects to either RawTherapee or darktable when either is installed, and prompts me to open them with one of those when not. Inkscape can't open them either, giving me

this awesome error message, with

/media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/00.drw:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found !loC� ^ /media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/00.drw:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found !loC� ^ ink_file_open: '/media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/00.drw' cannot be opened! InkscapeApplication::document_open: Failed to open: /media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/00.drw ConcreteInkscapeApplication::on_open: failed to create document!

this and

/media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/01.raw:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found WAR� ^ /media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/01.raw:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found WAR� ^ ink_file_open: '/media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/01.raw' cannot be opened! InkscapeApplication::document_open: Failed to open: /media/specturion/15B7-8DA0/3ds/Checkpoint/extdata/0x00811 Colors 3D/2023-11-18_00 10/paintings/01/01.raw ConcreteInkscapeApplication::on_open: failed to create document!

this for terminal outputs.

I don't know how to tell GIMP and Inkscape to open the files as specific file types.

My best hope for the .drw file appears to be discontinued WIndows software, which isn't very promising.

I forgot to mention, darktable and RawTherapee can't process the files either.

 

[bailli]

Not tested, just googled:
https://github.com/jaames/colors-drw-parser

 

[JK_]

I actually had something that could do this a long time ago. It's long gone now. I kept it to myself cause they weren't happy about me uploading random memes/pngs and I knew releasing it was a bad idea.

Basically, if I remember right, the raw files are just RGBA formatted. It wasn't difficult at all. There might be a short header in the beginning, but I think gimp should be able to do it by itself as long as you have the offset and format set correctly.

 

[BLOCKMINER3000]

It wasn't difficult at all.

You underestimate my not-knowledge of what that all means and how to do it

*I’d look it up, but I don’t really know what to search.

Post automatically merged: Nov 21, 2023

Not tested, just googled:
https://github.com/jaames/colors-drw-parser

NodeJS

Oh God. This looks promising though, I’ll have to try it out later.

 

[BLOCKMINER3000]

NodeJS
Oh God. This looks promising though, I’ll have to try it out later.

No good. Not only can I not figure out how to actually use the thing, the renderer appears to be too inaccurate to be usable.

This produces 400x240 (top screen) and 320x240 (bottom screen) images, whereas Colors! 3D can export up to 1600x960. Not only is the resolution subpar using this method, but the full image views are probably using a non-ideal downscaler (at least it's not nearest-neighbor). I could probably stitch together 100% zooms if worst comes to worst, but this is janky, and far from ideal. Depending on how Colors! 3D handles panning, it might not be pixel-perfect, either.

I'd really rather not do this. The panning sensitivity is way too high, and it's very difficult to line up the edges, plus the resolution is too big to just do the 4 corners, so that's a headache... So I either just don't use Colors! 3D for drawing, or I greatly suffer. Official 3DS apps (PixelMaker Studio) can export BMPs to the SD card, so why can't Colors! 3D? agh.

By virtue of being DS homebrew (The DS doesn't have a built-in image viewer (with JPEG limitations), so it's probably smart about what format to use.), Colors! DS probably supports what I need. I'll try that. (But not on my 3DS, because non-integer upscaling does not lend itself well to anything precise actions like drawing, and the 1:1 scaling option is unusably tiny.)

EDIT: Sweet, Colors! DS exports to PNG, even better than BMP (for me).

EDIT 2: It can also export much larger images, which I find hilarious. Sadly, it seems to be limited to 4:3 only, but 4:3 works for a lot of things (plus cropping exists).