Retrofrogg Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 (edited) I've started creating real-looking 3D boxes for the Amstrad CPC464. There are a lot. If anyone wants to collab on this, that would be great The process uses the box scans (mainly found at cpcrulez) and a Photoshop template. Outcome looks like this: Update 20 April 2020: there are now 2 of us working on this project. I have compiled a master list of games which I will put online to allow us to collaborate on the same list. Looking for more people to join us to get as many of these done as possible, as quickly as possible. Current workflow for making these is listed in a post below. Update 14 August 2021: the first pack is now available in the downloads section: Edited August 14, 2021 by Retrofrogg 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatuswalrus Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 I only add systems that have a decent amount of 3D box art available for them so whenever someone works on or releases some I am quite chuffed. These look fantastic, great work! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. RetroLust Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 Great work man! ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMOSS Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 4 hours ago, Retrofrogg said: I've started creating real-looking 3D boxes for the Amstrad CPC464. There are a lot. If anyone wants to collab on this, that would be great The process uses the box scans (mainly found at cpcrulez) and a Photoshop template. Outcome looks like this: I could give you a hand with this... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goofers Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 6 hours ago, Retrofrogg said: I've started creating real-looking 3D boxes for the Amstrad CPC464. There are a lot. If anyone wants to collab on this, that would be great The process uses the box scans (mainly found at cpcrulez) and a Photoshop template. Outcome looks like this: How many you done so far pal? I do the covers for the ZX Spectrum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 19, 2020 Author Share Posted April 19, 2020 @CMOSS - that would be great, if you are able. Do you have Photoshop? @goofers - I've done around 25-30 so far. I'm sorting and tidying up the collection also as I'm going along. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMOSS Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 6 minutes ago, Retrofrogg said: @CMOSS - that would be great, if you are able. Do you have Photoshop? @goofers - I've done around 25-30 so far. I'm sorting and tidying up the collection also as I'm going along. I do have photoshop and know how to use it (more or less :)) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goofers Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 Ok cool are you downloading and doing repairs to the artwork then going to batch the set? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 19, 2020 Author Share Posted April 19, 2020 (edited) @CMOSS Appreciate the offer. I'm just learning Photoshop so you probably know it better than me. The procedure for making the 3D boxes is fairly simple when using the Photoshop template. My workflow for each game: 1. Get a scan of the game cover: - scan should be for the Amstrad CPC464 (or 664 6128 if those are the only ones available); scans for other similar platforms like the Spectrum or C64 are not used - the 464 was tape-based and so this is primarily a tape-based box art set; some games/artwork is only available as a disk version (all 3 units could also use a disk drive) and in those cases the disk version is used - the scan should include the front cover and spine art - this site appears to be the best all-round site for finding the art: https://cpcrulez.fr/ - it's French but you basically search for the game in the search box; this one is also quite good: https://www.cpc-power.com/ ; CPCWiki is good also - http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Main_Page - where multiple languages are available, English is preferred; if the game is from a different region then other languages can be used - NOTE: most scans are for the standard cassette size; some games used a kind of "wider" box, including those that had 2 cassettes; the disk boxes tended to be square; I have therefore used 3 Photoshop templates to address this and pick the appropriate one depending on the type of box 2. Separate the game cover into 2 files - the front cover and the spine (I create 2 copies and crop each in Photoshop) 3. Using the appropriate template already open in Photoshop, I double-click the "J-card cover" layer to open this in a separate tab in Photoshop; then, I drag the front cover onto this; a small bit of resizing may be required but it shouldn't be much if the correct box size template is used; you can then save and close that tab, and the 3D box will be updated with the new cover 4. Do the same as step 3 but for the spine 5. Once the box is ready, in Photoshop I select file/export/quick export as png - and save the 3D box to my desktop 6. I then rename the 3D box to the correct game name, and move it to my Launchbox 3D box directory I can share the 3 Photoshop templates with you. The main one is perfect dimensions; the other 2 I just stretched to approximate the other 2 box sizes. If you can see a better way of doing the other 2 box sizes let me know. I don't think my disk ones are that good, but there aren't many of them - most are cassette box cover scans. @goofers - I'm doing them one at a time at the moment, rather than batch. Edited April 20, 2020 by Retrofrogg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMOSS Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 @Retrofrogg Perfect. Can you PM me the templates? I will take a look and come back to you in case of doubt. Do you have a list of games you are working with (so as to split the work between us)? Best! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 19, 2020 Author Share Posted April 19, 2020 PM'd. I should be able to make a list of the games. Do you use a particular romset for the CPC464? I think mine is a combination of sets that I found online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMOSS Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 2 hours ago, Retrofrogg said: PM'd. I should be able to make a list of the games. Do you use a particular romset for the CPC464? I think mine is a combination of sets that I found online. Thanks! I have the same... a combination of roms from different sets. I also have 6128 together with 464. No distinction.ç I am going to play with the template and generate a couple of boxes, to get to see how it works. I'll keep you posted. Best! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 19, 2020 Author Share Posted April 19, 2020 Great, thanks! Let me know what you think about how to collaborate on the shared spreadsheet too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMOSS Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 By the way... I was very surprised to see that the game you have in the cassette template psd is La Abadía del Crimen. My favourite game of all time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 20, 2020 Author Share Posted April 20, 2020 Lol....that's a coincidence if there ever was one! As it happens I haven't played that game, but I believe that it is based on Umberto Eco's book The Name of the Rose which I have read though found a little hard going! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMOSS Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 Based on that book, yes. It is probably the most iconic game of Spain's golden era of video games development (80's mostly), with tons of amazing games and studios rivalling UK's (I'm Spanish... I played them all). Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum were our choices back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMOSS Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 By the way, there is a free remake version of it on Steam. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sucramjd Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 (edited) hey mate can I have access to the template, I brought one from deviant art but its crap,the cassette is very good though, you can have it if you want:) Edited April 25, 2020 by sucramjd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 27, 2020 Author Share Posted April 27, 2020 @CMOSS - how are you getting on with Skraper in terms of the media? I've signed up for it also and am going to investigate. They do seem to have a good amount of media, including the front & spine images for many of the boxes. I have yet to see their full size 3D boxes. It seems that these are auto-generated by the site from the front & spine images. I wonder if they might be able to use a better template - perhaps ours or something similar to improve the quality of the 3D boxes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrofrogg Posted April 27, 2020 Author Share Posted April 27, 2020 (edited) OK - I have an example of the 3D boxes that are generated on the Screen Scraper site: As you can see, they are "correct" in that they use the original scanned front cover and spine. The quality of the original artwork used looks reasonable. The box template is however inferior to the one we have been using here (as posted at the start of this thread). Also, the spine appears to be the wrong way round (though this example uses disk artwork which they have put into a cassette template). Furthermore, I think this is an automated process, so the many "double" cases will be squeezed into the same template. So I think to get a better quality result, I would plan to continue with this project. It may be worth exploring with the Screen Scraper site mods whether they would consider using a better template than the one they have. Edited April 27, 2020 by Retrofrogg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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