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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Alpha Maps on Models

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Bulleyes
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Posted: 29th Mar 2003 23:27
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Does DBpro support Alpha maps on the models? I heard that transparency (or 1-bit alpha channel) is supported, but I need is more that just transparency. Some part of my models will be appear totally transparent, some are more transparent than some other parts.

Any ideas how to do this?
Thanks!
Bad Nose Entertainment - Where games are forged from the flames of talent and passion.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 03:16
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yes alpha maps for textures is currently support and is 8bit Memblock images of 32bit colour RGBA 8-8-8-8 (^_^)
hope that helps

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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IanM
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 03:53
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... Or you could just use TGA images.
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mimesis
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 04:48
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Hmmm, that dont work for me.
How are u setting up your object for texturing when using
tga files with alpha channels?
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 05:20
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well you must make sure the .tga actually has saved the alpha channel (this is the biggest problem everyone has) ... failing that use PNG works just as well but on 16bit.

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
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Bulleyes
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 07:21
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I tried on 32 bit TGA on my texture, and it works!! But somehow it seems that PNG with alpha channel doesn't work. Raven, what do you mean by 16 bit PNG? From what I know, PNG had a bit depth of 32, right, i.e. R-G-B-A.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 14:11
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nope... PNG is a 16bit internet format
RGBA 5-5-5-1

so you only really get something like 32k colours + 1bit Alpha Channel which i think is added to the colour value to make up the 65,535 Colours, except with like the 256 for Alpha taken off i think ... i dunno ask Rich he'll know

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mimesis
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 14:18
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@Raven

Of course I am setting up an 8-bit alpha channel with my tga texture,
I'm doing this in photoshop 7.0. However the tga alpha has no effect
on the model I'm texturing.
Are there any other parameters/commands to set up in DBP when texturing
with tga+alpha?
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 15:26
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but are you SAVEING the alpha channel... this is the downfall of many people
because they set a mask to a single layer but never the actual image as a whole.

the easiest way to make sure of this is to duplicate the image and then merge flat ... load the alpha channel from another image's intensity (black = tranparent to white = opaque) and then save it.
that should now be attached to ALL levels of the image - but then i'm still fumbling around Photoshop, however thats how it works in Paintshop because it'll only maske the current layer and if there is more than one layer you have to make sure there is a single Raster Layer and a single Alpha Mask

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
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mimesis
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 22:43
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Ok, it's working now lol
Both tga and png formats works for me
I've been using png with alpha a lot on my 2D stuff, and I'm very pleased
with the results of it, however I'm positive I tryed this befoure on 3D objects and it didnt work then. Is this a "much appreciated" patch4 fix?
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 23:29
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I find it's easiest just to delete whatever background layer you may have in photoshop, so the transparency grid shows through. Then you can play with the opacity of different parts of the image, and just leave it like that. When it comes time to save, Photoshop flattens the image, and saves it, giving the transparent parts white as it would in a bitmap. It then adds the opacity map which it generates itself from the opacity in the image.

Get it?

PS- If that's what you were saying, then nvm because I didn't understand lol

Alex Wanuch
aka rapscaLLion
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Bulleyes
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Posted: 30th Mar 2003 23:39
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Hmm... does PNG has only 1 bit alpha channel? I recalled that I created few PNG images with 8-bit alpha before. Yep, I am positive about this as I used the alpha channel to perform sort of like anti-aliasing on my images.

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Impulse
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Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 01:02
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Bulleyes, how did you save the alpha channel? What program did you use? I used all three of mine, and none of them saved it.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 01:15
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maybe png does have 8bit alpha... but that would also mean it has 8bit colour
i've never seen the raw of the format, all i know is its a 16bit format

maybe its really a 24bit format, 16bit Colour + 8Bit Alpha?
doesn't really matter because you load it into DBpro and it is converted to 32bit because of the alpha channel so you get a nice layout of
Red Green Blue Alpha 8-8-8-8

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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Bulleyes
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Posted: 2nd Apr 2003 07:57
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Well, to answer yout question, Impulse, I used Paint Shop Pro 7.0. I like the simplicity and the power of it.

I work for quite a bit on saving the alpha channel in TGA files. As what Raven said, you need to make sure the alpha channel is saved, not just create an alpha mask and save the image as TGA.

Good luck!

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Impulse
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2003 04:04
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Thanks Bulleyes, I already fixed it with photoshop by adding an alpha channel. How did you get it to work with psp? Whenever I tried to save the .tga, everything went fine but the alpha channel didn't get saved? It didn't work in photopaint either. The alpha channel saved with photoshop, but when I tried to texture a sphere with it, the transparent areas were white. How can I fix this?Oh, and png comes in two formats: png-8 and png-24.

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