Hyperspin 16:9 Artwork and Themes (Converted from 4:3)

[BakerMan]

Hello out there to anybody that's listening......**echo **echo

**Crickets chirping**

Well, for what's it worth I'd like to make a particular post.

I'm a long time Hyperspin user and for the past year or so, have tinkered around with Photoshop A LOT. I'm not an expert by any means, but I've designed and altered a bunch of artwork for my 16:9 laptop and 40" LED 1920x1080 screens. Mainly, I've taken a lot of 4:3 themes and converted them to 16:9. I'd like to post some of them to see if anyone thinks they're ok. If not then, oh well. Hopefully some big time artists in the community can give some pointers, touch up my artwork, or something to help me with creating artwork. Any advice would be appreciated. ESPECIALLY if there are better and faster ways to convert 4:3 images to 16:9. I would love to know.

My main method for converting the themes is as simple as this:

I take all the images out of a theme and place them all on their own 16:9 canvases. (1366x768)

Then I shrink the canvas to 1024x768 and extract the artwork to it's own fitted canvas. I reinsert all of the art work and background back into Hypertheme. Keep in mind I also resize 1024x768 backgrounds to 1366x768 and convert them back to 1024x768. When it's all said and done, none of the images are stretched on either of my displays and look simply amazing. Beautiful, actually.

I'll post some screen shots and if anyone likes them or wants to do their own alterations please comment and let me know below. Then I'll start uploading them to my FTP.

And also, I take NO CREDIT for the origin or creation of most this artwork. Most of it is alerations to other people's work. So, to reiterate, if you recognize your artwork up here... I am taking NO CREDIT for "your" work. In fact, thank you for the hard work!

Anyways,

Lately I've been separating my MAME collection into different manufacturers. It makes sifting through the games a lot easier and it makes another excuse to create more awesome artwork! Here's an Atari Collection theme converted to 16:9.

I love this Midway Collection one. (16:9)

This is an old Koolbrez creation with some extra added to it. Kinda corny, but I love it. (16:9)

PS2 (16:9)

Mario Theme (16:9)

An O.G. 4:3 NES System Theme converted (16:9) The Box art and Cart art in the screenshot were converted to 16:9 as well.

An older 4:3 snes system theme converted to 16:9. All carts and boxes as well.

Some Arcade Game Themes converted to 16:9

A crappy Data East Main menu theme I made. 16:9

A Data East system theme I made, which, I actually kinda like. Definitely better than the system theme. The Wheel Art Template I made as well.

And just for the fun of it. Some bezels...

Well, that's it for now. Hopefully someone likes 'em or is willing to at least make a comment. No extreme rudeness. You can be a little rude, but keep in mind I'm not really a f**ing artist.

But that's it for now.

Thanks.

[relic]

thats a preety good set right there cant wait to see more are you gonna share it somewhere

[BakerMan]

Absolutely. Point me in the right direction to an FTP upload tutorial within the forum and I'll get started on it...

Just not right yet though... I'm typing to you at almost 7am where I'm at. Gonna be hittin the hay. I get off from work later today at 11pm. Would be more than glad to get started then.

[relic]

sure thing baker this how you get on http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?30079-Ftp-access-must-read&highlight=login

[relic]

sure thing baker this how you get on http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?30079-Ftp-access-must-read&highlight=login

first login then go to upload folder make a folder for your user and drag and drop your content to your folder

[BakerMan]

Dude, I had your tutorial logged as 1 of my bookmarks for the longest time. lol That's awesome. I feel kinda starstruck (dumb, I know) but I know you've been pretty involved with Hyperspin for a long time.

Anyways, I know how to log on and download from FTp. Just need to know how to upload.

[relic]

you just drag and drop content from your pc to the upload folder

[BakerMan]

Easy enough. Give me until later tonight and I'll post when I've got somethin' up. Thanks for your help. Also, if you want to - Get some True Hyperspin Artists to take a look at these as well. I need pointers and have no plans on slowing down with these conversions. But anyways, thanks again.

[BakerMan]

I've uploaded a bunch of conversions to my FTP. You can find it under my username Bakerman

[relic]

sweet if only we a had a program to do

the lot in 1 go

[Agrajag]

Nice work! I've been hoping someone would take up the challenge of converting existing themes to widescreen. It would be great to have 16:9 versions of everything available eventually, but that's a herculean task.

[SIMPLYAUSTIN]

Im yet to find a standard MAME theme in widescreen that takes my fancy It and the default always looks out of place to me

[Agrajag]

Yes, we could really do with a nice new default theme for MAME.

[BakerMan]

I think I've been goin at this the right way, but i think it's the long way. I feel though that there's gotta be an automated way to go about this in photoshop. I've been reading up on anamorphic widescreen, but trying to understand it... Any feedback would be appreciated.

[Styphelus]

Nice work! I've been hoping someone would take up the challenge of converting existing themes to widescreen. It would be great to have 16:9 versions of everything available eventually, but that's a herculean task.

Someone already did:

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?35556-Anamorphic-widescreen-versions-of-official-themes

[BakerMan]

Someone already did:

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?35556-Anamorphic-widescreen-versions-of-official-themes

Thanks for posting this because I was able to use them to make sure I was doing things right. And sure enough, I was. But there's 1 catch with those themes. The backgrounds and swf files were not converted. The goomba in the first screenshot is stretched along with the stars in the background.

Take a look at this 1 I did...

As you can see, the stars are the proper size. What I did was take the original 1024x768 background and pasted it in the center of a 16:9 canvas. (1366x768)

Then I copied the exact width of stars I needed to fill the left and right side and blended them in creating a FULL 16:9 canvas. And the final step was to change the dimensions of the canvas back to 1024x768, so when ya turn on Hyperspin on a 16:9 display - The 1024x768 canvas stretches properly to fit the screen. Yes, I had to do some extra editing, but the effort was worth it and gave the theme a "proper" conversion.

Now, if you notice, I didn't include the goomba in that particular theme. I replaced it with the NES console image I grabbed from the Universal 16:9 theme from the FTP. The animated goomba image is an swf file that's way more complicated to convert. I've learned how to extract the images from swf files, but am still learning, after resizing them, how to properly adjust it to animate correctly.

I feel like I'm getting closer to coming up with an automated plan to start cranking these out really fast.

[SIMPLYAUSTIN]

This is some great work!! Problem is that it will be lost soon as the website and how we organize things is just too crazy. Themes on both the website, Gold section FTP and on HS should be organized into both 4:3 and 16:9. Then all the art could be shaped to fit the themes to match and viola.... you have setup systems for widescreen and normal!!

Awakened I believe it was who did an almost entire remake of the widescreen Unified Megetheme. A great idea, looking amazing. Now when I look for art for systems I get a mix of his work, original unified megetheme and some random.

Can we organise the downloads section, Gold section FTP and the HyperSync to help us and others out??

Again, amazing work... I love someof these older themes but unusable in 4:3 format

[BakerMan]

The Unified Mega theme is awesome, but in the end I liked all of my themes to be unique. Trust me dude, right now as I'm typing this, I have photoshop open and am getting more familiar with everything. I can't wait to convert the entire mame set.

[Styphelus]

I would hold off right now because there are about 800 mame sets. No one is making them in widescreen. Not sure how they will deal with it in the next version of hyperspin but I'm sure they will figure something out. Converting everything right now might be a huge waster of time.

This is why I don't do themes!

[BakerMan]

I would hold off right now because there are about 800 mame sets. No one is making them in widescreen. Not sure how they will deal with it in the next version of hyperspin but I'm sure they will figure something out. Converting everything right now might be a huge waster of time.

This is why I don't do themes!

With everything I'm gathering - The only option is to implement anamorphic widescreen to Hyperspin. It would work for all of the images within the themes (artwork 1-4 files), but would not work for the 1024x768 backgrounds. They would either be stretched or cropped, thus losing resolution. In order to preserve the 1024x768 canvases (backgrounds) they have to be pasted to a 16:9 canvas and edited.

I have no problem with converting the entire set and all artwork beyond that. Trust me, I'm enjoying the hell out of this.

And I assume nobody's been making widescreen themes, because nobody knew how to make 16:9 backgrounds. Until now.

Trust me, converting isn't that big of a deal. I can run an automated batch in photoshop that'll convert an entire box set, cart set, or whatever in 5-15 minutes.

[BakerMan]

Here's some more Data East Themes (MAME)...

All fully converted, including video sizes to proper resolutions, and backgrounds. Just added to FTP under Bakerman/Data East Classics/Game Themes.

[Agrajag]

Excellent work, thanks!

Are you keeping copies of the full res 16:9 PSD files in anticipation of native widescreen support being added to HS?

[BakerMan]

Excellent work, thanks!

Are you keeping copies of the full res 16:9 PSD files in anticipation of native widescreen support being added to HS?

No I haven't. Good idea though.

And thanks for the positive comments.

[Styphelus]

WOW!!! Great job! So how exactly do you go about doing this? This is amazing!

[keltoigael]

Bad ass dude, look forward to seeing what all gets converted. Props.