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I have to admit, I must be one of the worst lurkers around. I have been reading almost every topic ever since Beenox beta 7 (before Ambrosia), and never posted a single thing. So now I am coming out of the darkness with a question which has been nagging me ever since then. What transparency effects does CS support? I know it has masking, but is it simple black/white masks? How many bits are the sprite masks? I'm really spoiled on 8 bit masks, and I think they would add immesurably to the value of Coldstone (if they are not already present). When used properly, thay can do wonders to dispel the outdated, jaggy look. Also, they would provide all of the fancy special effects people have been asking about, i.e. night/day, rain, fire, lighting, and all that jazz.
There are no masks, if you leave white space on your sprites, CGE automatically knows what to mask out.
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Does that mean we can't use white in our sprites?
I've found that extremely light grey often works for this situation, a cream color if you will.
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Welcome to the Webboards! (Finally ;)) I'm fairly sure I heard something a week or so back about 'no rain, fog, snow, etc'
Not sure but then again you probably read these more often than me.
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if CGE does automatic white-masking, does that mean that we won't be able to use alpha masks for effects? say it aint so...
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Quote
Originally posted by Terminsel: **I've found that extremely light grey often works for this situation, a cream color if you will. **
--------------------->> -29° He is here...
DO NOT USE GREY , it still looks dull compared to white , here's an old graphics trick, most of the time when someone wants to make something appear "ultra white"(or bright), they'll use a nery light shade of blue...trust me and it won't look as dull as gray...
...SO SAYS THE CHILL!
+29° He is...gone??
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That may work with hand drawn sprites, but it will be very hard to control the precise colors in a render. By the way, in some of the screenshots, it seems that the shadows of trees are partially transparent, and there are lots of shadows in the scenes in PoG. How is this done? Is it just a trick, or is there some alpha masking going on there?
So what you're saying is there is absolutely no support for alpha channels/masks? I find that very disappointing, but I suppose if I end up getting Coldstone I'll find a way to do without it.
Transparency is really not that hard, even SNES games had it, to a certain extent (Tales of Phantasia did simple yet effective shadows by having a partially transparent layer over certain areas, filled with solid color).
Well that is an idea, chill. If grey get's too dull I'd mix a little of it in with some cream color, aka the lightest yellow in existence. And don't go with just one shade of it, but I guess you knew that...
Terminsel
Originally posted by ben1cohen: That may work with hand drawn sprites, but it will be very hard to control the precise colors in a render.
What, you aren't going to touch up your renders at all?! 'Tis but a moment's work in Photoshop: set the foreground color to pure white, do "Select:Color Range"..."Sampled Colors"..."Fuzziness = 0". This will select all of the pure white in your image. You can use the Magic Wand tool to deselect the actual "transparent background" of the sprite, then do an "Edit:Fill" with whatever color you choose to use as a replacement.
...but I agree, alpha masking would be a very handy feature. shrug
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Can't do this in Photoshop LE.
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Originally posted by ben1cohen: **Can't do this in Photoshop LE.
**
What sort of setup do you have, that you can afford a specialized character-animation CG program, but not a much more general-purpose tool like Photoshop? Just curious. GraphicConverter might also be able to do the job in this case; I haven't tried, so I don't know.
I snagged a copy of Pixels: 3d (url="http://"http://www.pixels3d.com")www.pixels3d.com(/url) a while back when they were giving it away as a promotion. Unfortunately, it seems that these days, their marketing staff is a little less insane ;).
Actually, I don't know if I plan to use CG, or even if I plan to make a game with Coldstone. I'm just evaluating my options as of now.
I wish I had something intelligient to say but what the heck,
welcome to the boards.
pixels 3D seems to appear on macaddict cds a lot, if any of you feel like taking a look.
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