CompuServe Messages

Cristopher, >> animated opacity map: >> the very end of the object is exposed the entire time… >> get nothing at all with DECAL… I am curious about this since I have been using DECAL with this method to get rid of the "end" visiblilty and it works fine. What does your "wipe" flic look like? What mapping parameters do you use when lofting? I use a vertically moving flic (white, moving bottom to top), with the white the full width of the flic. AhHa!, this is your problem (I just tried it on my other machine): The upper left pixel (as per the DECAL specs) will always be the transparent color. If you use a horizontally moving flic applied as DECAL, on the first frame (all black), the pixel will be black – all transpanent. On all other frames, the upper left pixel will be white – white will be transparent, black is already transparent, so all is transpanent! Apparently, the ROTATION ANGLE in the Mapping Parameters dialog does not rotate the magic upper-left pixel. The moral of the story: use a vertically moving map, which B.T.W. won't require rotation. (Aside: I make most of my animated maps in 3DS by rendering a flic of some geometry moving in an ortho view.) One side effect of using DECAL instead of TILE: with TILE, a 30 frame animated opacity map (black, increasing to white) will work as expected, increasing opacity until the object is completely visible on frame 29. With DECAL, however, on frame 28, the object is nearly fully opaque, then it suddenly disappears on frame 29! This again is due to the way DECALs work, having their upper-most left bit defining the transparent color. When the flic finally hits the last frame and is totally white, the upper-left pixel is suddenly white and the whole thing gets transparent! If this is important, it may be easy to fix by editing the animated opacity flic in AniPro and coloring the guilty pixel in the last frame. Hope this helps. JKJ PS: Jonas, keeper of wishlist: desire (1) a fix of the dreaded "end of object visible with tiled opacity map" problem, and (2) user-selected opacity color option in addition to the current automatic "upper left pixel" method.