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[Eric Blank]

I wanted to start a thread for explicitly discussing how to make sprites and write tile page and graphics files for the current version of DF, and of course where we can ask questions about sprite making. Not least because I myself want to know the best ways to go about it, as using GIMP has been pretty inefficient, though its definitely working. I've done a couple dozen now, takes about half hour each.

Not figured out how to get items to take the color from materials yet.

What programs do you use to write sprites? What's the best process/work order?

[voliol]

I'm not really a sprite artist, but paint.net has been easy to use in my experience. There also exists tools like GraphicsGale specifically made for pixel/sprite graphics, but I'm not sure DF's needs are quite the ones they are made for.
Beyond that, I figure I should drop these here: https://imgur.com/a/oFRkdGG

Spoiler: non-imgur example (click to show/hide)

They are based off Cooz_curses_square_16x16.png, and come in both v0.47 and v50 default text colors. They have black outlines, though imgur doesn't show that in album view. I had figured I was going to write some script to autogenerate graphics raws using them, from existing creature raws. That way, a placeholder "dark dragon" could at least be a dark gray "D" in graphics mode instead of the placeholder creature, and it would be much faster than manually deciding placeholders.
 
My original idea of how to do that involved updating DF Diagnosipack to v50, and use its toolbox. Opening it up to do so though, I was met unsalvagable code. I say that having written it myself. So now I feel the need to rewrite it from scratch, first. Not knowing when I'll get the time to do that, I figured I might as well put the images up if someone else wants to give it a try.

[PetMudstone]

Not figured out how to get items to take the color from materials yet.

To quote myself from elsewhere.

In "vanilla_descriptors_graphics", graphics\palette_default.txt defines all the palettes associated with colors in-game. This includes the "grayscale" palette that gets recolored based on material color token.

vanilla_descriptors_graphics\graphics\images\palettes.png contains all the palettes associated with colors. In both the .txt file and the .png the topmost palette is the "grayscale" one. Note that there are two halfs to each palette row. The left half is associated with wood items, and the right half is associated with metals, stone, just about everything else.

Anyhow, you use the "DEFAULT" palette/row at the top of the .png file and sprites you make using it should be recolored based on material color definition. I'm not completely sure of its limitations, but it should work. Isn't anything in graphics raws that needs to be changed to accomodate "grayscale" sprites as far as I can tell.