IDraw Guide
by MasterSean2k
I) What is it?
II) Getting Started
III) The Tool Box and Selection
IV) Options
V) Various Junk
VI) Animations
VII) Icons
VIII) Hotkeys
Credits
This tutorial was written for use with IDraw3.32.1
I must warn you that the graphics on this tutorial aren't of the highest quality. To shave off a lot of bandwidth, I'm using JPEGs rather than bitmaps, PNG's, etc.
I. What is it?
-> What is it? <-
IDraw is a powerful paint program that allows you to make and edit graphics.
-> What are the supported file formats? <-
As far as I know, it only supports Portable Network Graphics (.png) and Bitmaps (.bmp). It's possible to save in PNG, BMP, AVI, IAS, and ICO formats.
-> I'm confused. What do I do? <-
That's what this tutorial is for.
II. Getting Started
Download and install the IDraw program. Then open the program.
At first you will see a grey screen with a toolbar at the top and some strange numbers in the bottom right corner.
The first one is a fraction; the numerator is what Undo number you're on and the denominator shows the maximum number of Undos. The second set of numbers is the coordinate where the cursor is, in pixels (width, height). Ignore both sets of numbers right now.
On the toolbar, click on File and then New. A box will appear that prompts you for some information. The width is the horizontal distance (left to right) in pixels. The height is the vertical distance (top to bottom) in pixels. Below that are the color options. Your picture could be two, 16, 256, or a user-specified amount of colors. The box underneath all that allows you to get a pallette from an existing BMP or PNG.The large white box to the right of everything lists every different dimention you've specified when you created a new graphic.
You should now click on Settings, Drawing Settings. You will see the box below:
"Single Grid Color" specifies the color of the grid when you're zoomed in to 8x or higher. The "Grid (Zoom Mode Only)" section is how large the unit segments are. It is usually best to have these numbers equal what you will set up in the Unit Grid (See part 3). "Icon: Transparency Color" sets the transparent color for all images; it can be either the color in the lower, left corner or you can make it the 2nd color (See part 5). The text field is how many Megabytes (MB) worth of undos it will remember. The checkboxes can be ignored. Now click OK.
III. The Tool Box and Selection
If this is not visible when you open your new page, you can reach it by clicking on View and then Tool Box. This contains all the necessary tools you'll need to make your pictures. The top 8 items are selection tools and the bottom 10 are for making the picture itself.
-> Before actually doing anything here, I will go to Settings, Set Up Unit Grid, and set them to 24(width) and 32(height). I then go back and set them both to 1. You'll see why in a minute. Assuming it's been a minute, you can click on the first tool, Select Rectangle. Click anywhere on the picture and, amazingly, you can select a singe square pixel! Click, hold, and drag the cursor over multiple squares and you can select all of them at once!
You may now go back into Settings and choose 24, 32 from the bottom of the list (Any time you create another pair for the Unit Grid, it'll appear down there.) Now click anywhere and be astounded, as it selects a square area of the picture that's exactly 24x32 pixels! You can click, hold, and drag the cursor, and it selects an area of 24x32 segments.
If you un-check the Use Unit Grid option, one click from the above tool will select a single, pixel.
-> The second tool is Select Ellipse. This is pretty much the same as the first, but with this you can select circles (or ovals). This is not commonly used.
-> Below the first tool is Select Polygon. I believe that if you use this, you can select an area of pixels in a custom shape.
I have found that this tool does not work properly.
-> Following that is Select Region. Click any where and it selects a pixel. Click and drag and it makes lines based on where you move the cursor. And if you draw, for example, a line that goes down and then right, when you let go of the button it will connect the starting point and the ending point to make a right triangle.
-> Next is Select Parellelogram. Click, move the cursor, and then click again. It makes a line from point A to point B. If you click, hold drag, and let go, then you can click somewhere else and it makes a quadrilateral.
-> Number six is Select Color. Click on any color and every pixel that contains that specific color is selected.
-> Then comes Select Border With Color 2. Click on a part of your picture and (if it's not color 2) it will select EVERYTHING until it comes to the color 2. (For more about Color 2, see part 5).
-> The last selector tool is Select Surface, which lets you select a pixel and all the pixels immediatly around it are also selected if they're the same color (And all pixels around those, etc.). In other words, it will select clusters of pixels with the same color.
NOW we can move on to the slightly more interesting stuff- the bottom half. When using the tools listed below, make sure that you have the space you'll be drawing in selected or you have nothing selected. If not, the drawing tools won't work.
-> First is Dot, more commonly called the pen/pencil. No use explaining this.
-> Line is next. This is also simple. Click and it makes a line that fills up a Unit (as specified in the Unit Grid). Not commonly used.
-> Below those is Rectangle, which creates a border 1 pixel thick around the inside of a unit.
-> Filled Rectangle is the same thing, but it fills an entire unit.
-> Ellipse and Filled Ellipse are the exact thing as above, only these are in circles/ovals
-> Edge merely adds a 1 pixel border to the outside of everything it can reach.
-> Curve below that creates curves. Click and hold, move the cursor, let go, and click where you want the end of the curve to be. I prefer making them from scratch with the pencil tool.
-> Finally, we arrive at the Spray. All this does is insert a "spray" of dots onto the page. It helps to wiggle the mouse when you're holding the spray button down.
So now you're probably wondering what the Toolbar is doing with the word "Selection" in it.
The first two should be pretty self-explanatory. Invert Selection selects what isn't and removes the selection from what is. Cancel Selection Floating may be confusing at first; for it to be available you must select something, and move it. Normally if you leave it selected, you could move it back. What this button does is keep it selected while making it permanently cover up what's below it. If you do it accidentally, you can undo it. Show Edge toggles between a visible edge on the selector and an invisible one. Edge, Add Edge, and Del Edge are almost never used, so there's no use mentioning them here. The bottom two choices let you pick the color (For more about the two colors, see part 5).
IV. Options
There are three ways to open the option windows (and attribute thingies). The first is to double click on the items in the toolbox. The second way is to use the Hotkeys (See part 8). The last way is to click on View in the toolbar. (I will put the explainations in the same order as in the graphic below).
What follows are the windows and their explainations.
The "Square" option, when checked, ignores the lesser value of the Unit Grid and creates a square area. Example: If the Unit Grid is 24x32, this option will change it to 32x32 without changing the actual unit grid numbers themselves.
"From Center" is if you select multiple spaces, it will select them, and the one you first clicked on will be in the center of the selection.
Choose the thickness of the dot, line, rectangle, and ellipse borders and the coverage of the spray.
As far as I can tell, it shows the image zoomed out and in a way so that youcan quickly jump from one part of the graphic to another with a single click.
If you right click anywhere on the image, a menu comes up. You can change what this will display by clicking on Settings, Drawing Settings or by choosing Settings from the menu that appears when you right click.
-> Cut, copy, paste, cancel selection, delete, and select all should all be obvious.
-> Save to file merely saves the file.
-> Paste from file pastes part of an image that you've copied from another picture.
-> Color 2nd Create makes whatever color you right clicked on the 2nd color.
-> I'm not sure what Add and Del color are.
-> Flip Horizontal creates a mirror image of the selection.
-> Flip Vertical creates a mirror image of the selection.
-> Rotate turns the selection. Negative numbers rotate counter-clockwise, Positive numbers rotate clockwise.
-> Stretch either makes a selection larger or smaller.
-> Invert Colors makes a negative of whatever you have slected.
-> Change Color takes the value of each shade of the color and turns them into the same value of the other color. Ex: Red-Green turns all reds into their equivalent greens.
-> Make Mask turns the current 2nd color white and all others black.
V. Various Junk
This stuff doesn't really qualify as options, and I didn't want to squeeze it in anywhere else, so here it is.
Palette and Colors
The palette is where all the image's colors (Used and unused) are stored. While occasionally several images have the same palette, it's not that common.
Now, when you click on a color, it becomes Color 1 (As displayed in the lower right corner). Right click and it becomes your Color 2. Color 2 is the one in RM2k that will be transparent. If you want to add/delete/change a color, double click on the color.
This window will appear. You can select a basic color and improve on the right, or click on the color box. Experiment with this until you get the color(s) you want.
Shift Picture
Select any part of the image with an area of more than 32 pixels. Then open this window. Use the arrows to move the whole selection in that direction (The selection stays put, but whats inside it moves). Or type a number into the boxes and click shift; Positive is right and up, negative is left and down. "X Shift" moves the image halfway to the side and halfway to the top, placing all four corners into the exact center.
Text
Type in the white space. To change the font, click on the "A" button. When you want toput into the image, click on the button in the upper left of the window, hold it, and release over the part of the picture where you want it.
Zooming
I'm surprised if you can't guess what this does. Just click on Zoom in the ToolBar and select one. "1" is what the image looks like regularly. To see the Unit Grid (See part 3), you must be zoomed in at 8 of higher.
VI. Animations
While reading the contents, this probably caught your eye. Believe it or not, it is possible to create animations with IDraw.
First, create or find a file with a number of "frames." For example: the character below.
This little guy is one of the most commonly used (and most despised) of all the default character graphics. So we'll use him. First I'll make the image bigger by using "Stretch" (See part 4). Now he looks like this:
We now set the Unit Grid to 48x64 (See part 3), as the character is now twice the dimentions of the original. Now click on View, Animation.
Click on the square and pick all the frames (in order) for your mini-movie. The delay between them will be the same for every frame, so if you want a longer delay just click on the same "frame" twice. When you're done, play and stop it with the arrow and rectangle buttons, respectively. The button with many triangles toggles single imageand multi-image in the animation window (It's almost always best to use single image). To change the delay between the frames, click on the equal sign and pick Delay. Move the bar to the left or right. One is probably a milisecond between each frame, and 5000 is about 5 seconds. A good time would be about 126. If you want to save it as an AVI, click on the equal sign and select Save as AVI. To save it as a Cartoon Setup File (extention is .IAS), choose Save Setup.
VII.Icons
You heard me. In case you don't know what these are, go into any folder.
Here are the icons for IDraw, a help file, RM2k, an RM2k map, and the RPG_RT.exe. If you want to make your own icon, first take a graphic and select the part to become an icon. Then click on Edit, Icon, and Save as Icon. The Alex graphic turns out to looklike this:
VIII. Hotkeys
| COMMAND | HOTKEY |
| New | Ctrl+N |
| Open | Ctrl+O |
| Save | Ctrl+S |
| Undo | Ctrl+Z |
| Redo | F4 |
| Cut | Ctrl+X |
| Copy | Ctrl+C |
| Paste | Ctrl+V |
| Clear | Delete |
| Pick 1st Color | 1 |
| Pick 2nd Color | 2 |
| Zoom In | Z |
| Zoom Out | X |
| Change Color Class | L |
| Change Draw Limits | R |
| Set Pen Color | [ |
| Set Pen Mode | ] |
| Screen Color 1 | Alt+1 |
| Screen Color 2 | Alt+2 |
Credits
--------------------
If you wish to use this tutorial on your website, you must link directly from your website to this document (https://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/mastersean2k/idraw3.html) unless given permission.
Written by MasterSean2k.
mastersean2k@hotmail.com
http://mstuff.s5.com
© 2002 by MasterSgameS
"Alex" graphic originally created by ASCII corp.
IDraw3.32.1 © 1996-2001 hawk
RM2k by ASCII
RM2k translationby Don Miguel
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