CompuServe Messages

TO: Gary Yost FROM: Shawn Cleverdon @ Training Media Services RE: Possible BUG (frightening organ music in the background…) In a recent animation, I rotoscoped some frames grabbed from our BVW-40. Since I needed the rotoscoped frames to start at about frame 200 (of the animation) I created an IFL file that repeated the first frame 200 times and then continued with the rest of the rotoscoped frames. Pretty normal, eh? Imagine my surprise when the images were washed out with the ambient color of the object. After mucho investigation, I lucked into accidentally looking at the alpha channel of the image-which should have been the first thing to do… Anyway, it turns out that when I grabbed the images using our VIGA+ board, there was an extra 8-bits in the file inversely corresponding to the luminence values of the images. In other words, the brightest parts of the image were the most transparent. After reading all about the hash some programs output which 3DS interprets as an alpha channel, I hit the IGNORE ALPHA button. Guess what? The alpha would only be turned off if I used a single image or an image wild- card (i.e. roto*.tga.) If I used an IFL file, the alpha would not be turned off. This incidentally, would only happen when I grabbed in 720x486x32-if I grabbed in 512x486x32 there would be no alpha channel grabbed, hence no opacity. Now to the real question-Is that a bug? Am I just a simpleton? (Don't answer that!) And for that matter, why do 7-11's have locks on their doors if they are open 24 hours? P.S. I understand that the first one to report a bug gets a FREE Pentium based computer system complements of Autodesk 😉 Thanks….. Shawn M. Cleverdon