QuaSZ TutorialsCreating PalettesWell, first off, let me say that the various palette files used and/or created within QuaSZ (.PQZ files), may also be used in several other programs that have been made available to the public by Terry Gintz. The one slight exception to this is the Cubics program, which has a different 'file extension' designation found at the end of its palette name (.PCS). But this can be easily remedied by changing the .PQZ to a .PCS, and vice versa. Since these palette files are virtually sharable, then it would be much easier to create a single 'communal' directory path to store them all in, as opposed to a copy in each programs folder. Here are the programs that use this particular palette file format:
And as a side note, there is another form of palette which Terry uses in most of his other programs. This palette has a .PL file extension. The various programs which make use of this palette type are:
The most significant difference between .PQZ and .PL palette types is that the .PQZ contains only a single palette. Whereas the .PL contains twenty-one (21) palettes, making the latter around nineteen times larger byte wise. When Terry originally developed QuaSZ, he had no way to use different palettes with composite figures of quaternions, since the ray-tracing algorithm would use the last palette in the figure list to override any other palettes used. So he revised the palette interface in QuaSZ, and subsequent quaternion-based programs, to use single rather than multiple palettes. Palettes are easily created through the use of the program's 'Palette Editor' (as seen below). I will not go into detail concerning the various controls and fields within the editor, for that should be covered in the program's supplied Help file. Let me just mention there are 236 'color squares' which make up the displayable grid that represents the actual palette.  Depending on the effect and diversity one is wishing to accomplish for the graphic image, many techniques may be employed during a palette's creation. The following example (called "Wood-Pecan") is a very smooth transition of similar shades and colors to produce a consistent and uniform pattern, very much like the hardwood from a pecan tree.  By adding a single new color to a series of 'color squares', one may produce a type of striping effect on the object. This example (called "Wood-Medium") uses the same palette as above with only one additional color copied to every fifth 'color sqaure'.  Another similar example (called "Wood-MediumLight"), but the underlying palette grid uses shades a little lighter than the other two, and then adds a series of stripes that are much darker in nature, giving a more striking difference in the generated graphic image.  The more often and closer together the varying colors exist within each of the 'color squares', the more of a striping effect is predominant upon the generated graphic object. Here are some examples of variations on the same theme. The first one is called "Scarlet-Fever".  And this one is called "Tiger".  A QuaSZ palette is actually closer to 60,000 total colors, since each succeeding 'color square' (except the last) is followed by 255 colors, which are evenly spread from one color to the next. So one may have drastically different colors in every square and still obtain a gradient between them. This one is called "Camouflage".  And here is one called "Zebra_Stripes".  The following illustrates how only three basic colors are used to produce wide stripes upon the object, with a gray background. The generated image will have very small areas between stripes where the two colors are graduated from one to the next. This one is called "Patriotic".  And here is a very simple one called "GreyScale", that has a greenish background.  All of the above palettes, plus several more, are available as ZIP files. They may be found in the FILES section of the QuaSZ eGroup on Yahoo's servers: Please return later as updates are made available to this QuaSZ Tutorial. | ||||||||||
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