Blade Pro Lesson Four

Today Presets, Tomorrow the World!!!!

 

Once again, our handy enumerated BP interface, to refer to when you get lost...    Today's lesson is brought to you by buttons #6, #10, and #11 and the letters P,S and P again (hehehehe well I had to use it twice.)

Using The Built-in Presets -

Blade Pro comes to you with a ton of built-in preset effects, enough to keep you happy for quite a while.  The original Blade Pro CD-ROM also contains some tutorials and extra preset files you can install when you run out of effects already installed.  Unfortunately, it's no longer sold commercially, ;-((.  Super Blade Pro is only available as an electronic download.

To use any of the presets, click on button#6 and navigate to the environments and textures folder.  There you will find all the presets, with .q5q (or .q9q in the case of Blade Pro) extensions.  The bitmaps are in this same folder but you will not see them in this view, you will only see the files with the .q5q extensions.  (That is the registered file extension for Blade Pro presets, by the way!)  Click on any preset that suits your fancy (see, your fancy didn't get struck today, it's wearing a suit!!!)  If you like what you see, hit OK (button#9 ) and the interface closes.  If you don't like it, just browse to another preset and try that effect.

The various presets have different bevels, bitmaps, texture files, and slider setting associated with them.  Once you get the preset applied to your image in the preview window, you can start adjusting height, radius, etc, if it's not quite right.  Hit ok and your image will be amberglass or dental plaque or dirty acrylic, whatever you chose.  The preset will always maintain it's original settings in the environments and textures folder unless you overwrite it (but don't worry about overwriting it accidentally, that's not so easy to do.)

The e & t folder is a little inconvenient to navigate to, in my opinion, so I made a copy of it and put it on my desktop.  Actually, I have 2 folders, one named "environments and textures" and the other named "E & T 2."    This is for the presets I make or download, because after you get about a hundred presets in one folder, you begin to get a little tired of navigating through them all to find the one you want.   You can put subfolders inside your E & T folders, and name them for either the author of the presets, or the type of presets they are ( color, or effect, whatever!)   You can organize your bitmaps and texture files similiarly within the E & T folder as well.   Just don't keep moving them around and then making presets, Blade Pro will expect the path to the bitmaps to be in one spot, if you move it, it will have to search for it.  Occasionally, you will get an error message saying suchandsuch.bmp was not found, just navigate to the spot where suchandsuch.bmp is, and hightlight it.  Sometimes it's already in the folder, BP just doesn't know it yet, for some reason!

Every once in a while, Blade Pro freezes while applying the preset, and I find that a settings file dialog box is still open.  All you need to do is go to the task bar, right-click on "Open a settings file,"  hit Close, and BP should unfreeze. 

I've Run Out of Presets To Play With, and Now I Want MORE!!!!! 

 NO PROBLEM!   First of all, there are probably a hundred more presets on the Blade Pro CD from people like Fritz Wagoner, who has an excellent website at http://www.kconline.com/fwagoner/indexpsptu.htm .   You should search the tutorial section of the CD, the extra presets are in there.

Here is one of my favorite sites, I really like how the presets are presented, on a button and text so you can see the effect http://www.northlite.net/bladepro.html .

Member Sites from Yahoo's email list BladeProPresets@yahoogroups.com (If you'd like to join this email list, send an email to BladeProPresets-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .  Be prepared for a high volume of mail, there are many custom bitmaps and unique presets exchanged on the list.  The list is large and has an excellent mix of "old-timers" and new people interested in learning Blade Pro and Super Blade Pro.  You'll find it's a very helpful and friendly list.)

http://www.omsds.com/bladepro - (Keya)

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/8535/bp/bladepro.html (Lisa Wilson)
http://www.geocities.com/cherilynne38/bladepro/presets.html (Cheri)
http://users1.50megs.com/farma/index.html  (Glen)
http://psp.tephras.com/  (Tephra)
http://khgraphics.faithweb.com/bpp.html (Kh Graphics)
http://www.geocities.com/becky39507/ (Beckie Lott)
http://totallysweetpixels.com (Becky D.)
http://imjayj.tripod.com/ (JJ)
http://www.geocities.com/cherrycarrie2001/CarriesCreations.htm (Carrie)
http://www.annsgraphics.com/  (Ann)
http://sbppresetgallery.tripod.com/ (Elizabeth)
http://www.wonderfulworldofgraphics.com/  (Also Elizabeth)
http://www.the-taskbar.com/tb_designs_blade_pro.htm  (Renée)
http://www.bailweb.funurl.com  (Theresa)
http://www.cableone.net/rweeks/bladepro  (Roy Weeks)
http://www.planetpreset.com/ (Planet Preset)

http://fractalvision.hypermart.net/sbp_presets1.htm (Charlene Russ)

www.geocities.com/tessa_f29/ (Rhonda)

For  good old-fashioned links to all the best stuff, please visit my friend Robin's site.  If it isn't there, it's probably not anywhere!  Angela Cable also has lots of links at www.psplinks.com. 

Now I have to caution you right here, before you go download ten thousand presets, keep the following in mind -

       1.The more presets your system maintains, the bigger the load on your resources (like having too many fonts, or tubes, or filters!)  So set up your file system of managing your presets BEFORE you start downloading all those neato presets.

       2.How many gold presets do you WANT????   Don't grab everything you see, chances are you will never use it, or it's exactly like something you already have, you just can't find it.   There are THOUSANDS of places on the Web to get presets, some of them are really lovely and some of them are not, just like everything else.   Bookmark a site if it's got lots of resources that you want to go back for.

      3.  It's really nice to know who made what, so if you can find a way to identify your presets, either put them in a folder by author or rename them with the authors initials in front, that is nice.   That way, if you pass the preset on to someone else, the author won't get lost along the way.   Obviously, if people post their presets for others to use, it's possible that they will lose the pride of authorship for it, but it's still nice to give a little recognition!

 OKAY, I found some presets I want, what do I do now?

Presets are almost always posted in .zip file form, so you will need WinZip or another zip utility to unzip them.   Click on the file to download it as you would any other download.  I usually put the zip file on my Desktop so I know where it is.   Once it's downloaded, right click on the file, and extract it to the "environments and textures" folder, or subfolder of that if you have one set up. 

 Preset .zip files usually contain the .q5q file and any bitmaps needed to produce the effect.  Sometimes the presets use the built-inbitmaps that come with Blade Pro, and sometimes the author uses custom ones that he or she includes with the preset so you can achieve the same effect.  

Once you have the preset extracted to the "environments and textures" folder, you should be able to navigate within the BP interface to find it. 

 I Don't Like Anyone Else's Presets, I Want to Make My Own!!

NOW, you're cookin'!!!!    This is more fun than a barrel of monkeys!!!    Here's what you do -

      1.  Start playing with textures, environments, custom bitmaps, bevels, etc.  Do your playing on a white background, that way you can tell what the preset is going to look like without additional color enhancement.  Try it on text, and a dingbat.  Try it on a border, because lots of people use Blade Pro for frames.

      2.  When you find something that you really really like, something so unusual, so beautiful, so YOU that you want to save it for all eternity, hit button #11 and give it a nice name.  Now remember, this is YOURS, so put your initials in front of it or identify it in some way.  Also, it's a good idea to put it in it's own little subfolder if you use custom bitmaps with it, put the bitmaps in there as well.  That way, if you ever want to send it out, you can find the bitmaps easily. 

      3.  If you want to share your presets, zip them up with the necessary bitmaps and send away.  I think it's nice to add a little .jpg file with the preset showing what it looks like on a button, text and a dingbat, so if a person doesn't want it they don't have to go to the trouble of installing it to look at it.   

 

 The Often Imitated, Never Duplicated (well maybe not) Randomizer

    Roll the dice, hit button #10 !   This is the randomizer, and if you got no ideas, got nuthin', wanna take your chances, hit the randomizer and see what you get.   Just keep hitting the button til you see something you like, but if you DO see something, you better save it as a preset if you ever want to use it again, cause your chances of duplicating it are not good otherwise!  


Okay, go play with the presets now, I expect to see some good ones flying shortly!!!