This page houses tools generally related to Editart to help the potential art editor.

Some of these tools will still work with other BUILD Engine Games.

A few tools in the downloads: duke3d-tools-build have some support for .art related manipulation.

Also look in other game specific editart tools sections for more downloads.

ART FILE HANDLING

Note: This new .EXE file is a dual-executable: if you run it under DOS or DOSBox then DOS version will be executed and if you run it under Windows then Windows version will work. You can see what file part actually working by text "[DOS16]" or "[Win32]" after program version.

Also a very convenient way to have to specify group file and all tile files will be looked inside it and extracted if needed. So this feature was added and now you don't need any separate tool to extract .ART files.

artmerge update.art - will look for TILES###.ART in current folder
artmerge update.art DUKE3D.GRP - will look inside DUKE3D.GRP instead

Also I add additional check so now all files which don't require to be updated but in range of source .ART numbers will be never extracted or modified.

Works For:
Actually this tool not only for Blood but for any Build game.
If the game uses .GRP group files (Duke Nukem 3D, Exhumed/PowerSlave, Shadow Warrior, etc.) now you can modify files inside them too.
And if the .ART files are in the games main folder (Blood, Witchaven 1, etc.) you can just use it there.

Features

• Open and convert both Windows and Build palette files.
• Easy to use tile browser.
• Set and preview tile animation properties.
• Set and preview tile alignment offsets.
• Import and (batch) export BMP files.
• Insert, delete and (batch) clear tiles, or change their canvas size.
• Create new ART files from scratch.
• View tiles at different scales (1x, 2x, 4x 8x).
• Fast tile rendering.

Usage

You need a palette file for the ART file you want to load. Palettes can be in Windows .PAL format, or Build .DAT format. After loading a palette (it's colors will appear in a bar), you're able to load an art file, or create a new one. When creating a new one, an empty 256-tile file is created. When you have loaded a palette, you're also able to save that palette again. This allows for converting between palette formats.

To quickly select the tile you want to view, you can access the Browser from the "View" menu. In this menu you can also enable the alignment crosshair, or change the rendering scale of the tiles. When you have selected the correct tile, you can use the functions from the "Tile" menu on it:

 Compatibility

The program has been tested with the following games' art files:

• Duke Nukem 3D - OK.
• Powerslave/Exhumed (demo) - OK.
• William Shatner's Tekwar (shareware) - OK.
  
• Shadow Warrior - OK.
• Blood (shareware) - ART file too big (4096 tiles).
  

Of course, it's 100% compatible with EditART as well.

1. 32bit image will automatically converted to choosen palette.
2. You can import a several ART files to one file at once
3. You can import a folder with 8bit *.bmp or 32bit *.png images at once and also export images from opened ART file with saving description.ini file with all information about tiles in ART for subsequent import after edit ini file. (as you can make it throught tga2art and art2tga)
4. supported Build palettes (dat), photoshop palettes (act) and Microsoft palettes (pal)
5. You can resize choosen tile at opened ART
6. For make animation you can choose last tile of animation with Ctrl + LMB, animation will be from choosed tile to last tile.
7. I made movable preview picture of choosen tile....you can see at all parts of the picture at 700% scale.
-added tile viewer

Update...v1.13

1. Added fast conversion palette of choosed tile.
For conversion tile to other palette, you need click to "Convert tile palette" and then choose other palette: duke3d palette, blood palette, sw palette, custom palette (see 2) or load external palette. For batch conversion you can use batch export to png, change palette and import exported png files
2. I added custom palette menu after loaded external palette, therefore you can swithing between duke3d, blood or sw palette and your own loaded palette faster.
3. Added a navigation on TileViewer with arrows