#cookiecut
12 messages in this thread
Steve,
The cookiecut still doesn't seem to work even with white as a
background color. The texture on the segment was applied in character; the
decal wraps square over it. I'll be happy to send you the files if need be.
Thanks a lot.
Doug
Doug, send me a finished render and I can tell you what is going wrong…
Steve, Hash Inc.
I'm having the same problem with the cookiecut… unless I'm doing it wrong,
even after I save as a tempate and modify it, it still trys to decal as a
square.
GRady O. Williams III
Dougs problem was related to using 32 bit targas from photoshop… save as 24
bit instead of 32 bit and your problem will be solved!
Steve, Hash Inc.
>>>save as 24 bit instead of 32 bit and your problem will be solved!
Steve, there is much more to that! I wish you could enlighten all of us to what
the "background" color is… I never use 32 bit image maps but still get in
trouble with both decals and regular image maps.
Pawel
Pawel, I'm not quite sure what you are referring to, in cookie cut mapping the
background (ie:the part you want transparent) should be pure white (255) for
totally transparent and black for opaque…. anything in between will give you
variations in tranparency… Dougs problem was that he was saving his images
from Photoshop with alpha channels (32 bit) and that interferes with our
programs ability to read the image. His problem was solved when he saved the
same image as a 24 bit image…
Steve, Hash Inc.
oh… I thought It was the other way around.. Black transparent, white
opaque… I feel so silly now… another thing that bothers me is the sequence
when rendering an animation to TGA, it doesn't append 0's to make it compile
under DTA in the correct order… any suggestions besides manually reordering
them???
Grady O Williams III
re:"another thing that bothers me is the sequence when rendering an animation
to TGA, it doesn't append 0's to make it compile under DTA in the correct
order… any suggestions besides manually reordering them???"
I agree that it would be _nice_ for Hash to do this for us (based on the total
number of frames to be rendered, figure out the maximum number of 0's to be
prepended to frame 1).
There _is_ a DOS utility to do this — I believe you'll find it in the
Graphics Developers Forum here (GO GRAPHDEV).
Incidentally, there is much good information available in the other 3D forums
such as 3D Studio that can be applied to Animation Master.
Gavin.
A real simple way to handle this is to name your .CHO files with 0's at the
end. Then every frame will have 0's in it up to the frame number.
-Kevin
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).
Grady,
>>>I'm having the same problem with the cookiecut… unless I'm doing it wrong,
even after I save as a tempate and modify it, it still trys to decal as a
square.
The problem is with what Animation:Master considers as "background" color. It
creaps in in regular image maps as well, both in Character and Decal but in
this case the "background" color shows the original color of its patch surface.
I spent hours chasing this misterious "background" color in A:M… First I
thought it was the color of your segment, until I started getting red (original
A:M color) in areas that were white… than I thought it was the the color of
"number 1" pixel in your bitmap… The upper most top left pixel in your
image… or the color that comes from the "frame" of your bitmap… Wrong
again!
Although, there are a few tips I could give you to help you, it would be nice
if Steve could jump in and enlighten all of us…
Pawel