making transparent characters

Hi. I'm really new at this. I am wondering if anyone knows how to do this. One of my characters is a ghost and I want them to appear translucent on the map (meaning that we can see both the character and what ever is behind the character).

Thanks for the help.

Pedrith

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The prettiest way to do this would be to use alpha-masked PNGs (instead of the usual PICT graphics, which just use "white = fully transparent, all else = opaque") so that you can use partial transparency in your creature.

(If you're not familiar with graphics formats and the nature of alpha masks, may I (less than modestly :)) suggest looking at (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum48/HTML/000518.html")http://www.ambrosias...TML/000518.html(/url) )

This method might slow your game down appreciably, especially on slower systems, as I believe that Coldstone's translucency engine is not particularly optimized (notice how slow Pillars of Garendall gets when you walk around campfires or spiderweb-filled crypts - two places where it uses translucency fairly heavily).

An alternate method which would be less pretty but probably somewhat easier on the game engine would be to fake translucency by dithering the images with white. That is, make every other pixel in your image white so that that background objects will show through in places. This is a lot less pretty, but it may be worth it for the speed boost.

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I would rather discover a single fact, even a small one, than debate the great issues at length without discovering anything at all. - Galileo Galilei

Quote

Originally posted by Glenn:
**The prettiest way to do this would be to use alpha-masked PNGs (instead of the usual PICT graphics, which just use "white = fully transparent, all else = opaque") so that you can use partial transparency in your creature.
**

Every time I do an alpha channel PNG and import it, it brings a white background with it, (even though the original back ground is transparent) and the entire graphic is full of lines. The transparency is great though. What am I doing wrong? I've used Photoshop, Canvas, and Snapz Pro, yet without success. :frown: If I import a PNG graphic from the Coldstone art folder It looks fine. I tried various size graphics thinking the size may effect it. Still no success. A pict dither works OK on larger images but the animation Hero is too small to have the dither method do much good. I know PNG should work, because they work OK from the art folder.

Just trying to keep this up top till I hear from someone with the answer.

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(This message has been edited by Toast (edited 06-24-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by Toast:
**Every time I do an alpha channel PNG and import it, it brings a white background with it, (even though the original back ground is transparent) and the entire graphic is full of lines. The transparency is great though. What am I doing wrong? I've used Photoshop, Canvas, and Snapz Pro, yet without success.:frown: If I import a PNG graphic from the Coldstone art folder It looks fine. I tried various size graphics thinking the size may effect it. Still no success. A pict dither works OK on larger images but the animation Hero is too small to have the dither method do much good. I know PNG should work, because they work OK from the art folder.
**

Just trying to keep this up top till I hear from someone with the answer.

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Toast asked:

Every time I do an alpha channel PNG and import it, it brings a white background with it, (even though the original back ground is transparent) and the entire graphic is full of lines. The transparency is great though. What am I doing wrong? I've used Photoshop, Canvas, and Snapz Pro, yet without success.

TomatoMan figured this out. Verify that your colors are 16 bit. I suffered the same thing until changing the bit depth and no more lines or annoying moving black rectangle.

Apollo16

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(This message has been edited by Apollo16 (edited 06-24-2002).)