cookiecut
Steve,
>>>in cookie cut mapping the background (ie:the part you want transparent)
should be pure white (255) for totally transparent and black for opaque….
It sounds as if you are describing a transparency mapping not the cookiecut…
My understanding (and experience) of cookecut is that it is a simple color
bitmap. From reading the manual I understood that there is a single
"background" color in your bitmap will be _Totally_ transparent, and all other
colors would be _Totally_ opaque (and this is another clever example how
simple and unique this program is). I did some experiments trying to figure
out why sometimes I was getting the patch color in areas that ware white in my
bitmap (and I am not even talking cookecut here). Incidentally, when I used the
same image as a Cookiecut — the white areas started to make holes in my
patch… So here was my "background color" mentioned in manual.
The funny thing is that it is not necessarily always white… Nor it is the
background color of my segment (I sometimes use black as cookecut color).
There are also number of problems. Try to put some Mirror and higher Ambiance
values on your cookecut with a reflective object behind… It will reflect
ambiance of cookiecut areas…
Another thing; in Playmation 1.48, 8-bit PCX file were enough for image
mapping. Ever since I upgraded to A:M (Win v.2.06 now) the 8-bit files with
custom palettes, both PCX and TGA, give me "psychedelic" colors on my renders.
(My theory is that they use the "standard" window's 8-bit palette instead, but
I didn't really go to check it out). To make it right I need to convert it to
24-bit which take much more disk and memory space for the same resolution (if
you have less than 256-colors in your image map).