roberthurt
12-06-2004, 10:02 PM
OK, be warned... frustrated user about to rant... I'll try to stay calm...
I use Lightwave for a lot of astronomical visualizations (NASA press releases, in fact), and thus I often need to do "fuzzy" things like nebulae. I've been working with Hypervoxels since the week they were released and they STILL never make any sense. I like software that behaves in an expected manner, which you can approach with an idea in mind, and make it work. This is virtually impossible in Hypervoxels, doubly so due to the amazingly scant documentation they've received since their inception.
Here's my problem of the day. I want to use HV image clip sprites so I can render a number of illustrations I've created in a 3D environment. I do NOT necessarily want them all to be additive (in HV terms, I need opacity > 0)
So I run a test. I make an orange image in Photoshop. I add to it an alpha channel of a squiggle (soft-edged). I render it in HV, with all basic settings (luminosity, opacity, density) all set to 100% I add the clip, choosing "embedded" as the alpha.
When I render it, all the squiggles have DARK borders. I didn't put them there. The image is flat orange. I can't make them go away. I don't want them. But HV has decided that they need to be there. (image attached)
What use is a sprite with alpha mode if HV adds dark borders to everything?
In fact, I'm a little confused why most of the settings exist at all. For instance, let's look at the alpha setting. What if I try the same thing by just painting an orange squiggle on a black background, then choose the Alpha Black mode? Well, I get ugly aliased squiggles with really dark edges because it only clips out 100% black, and doesn't figure on pre-multiplied. Who would ever make use of aliased clippings like that for sprites? Does it serve any purpose?
As far as I can tell, the only mode for sprites that works reliably is to use opacity of 0 so they're purely additive. That's the only way you can get rid of the black edges. So much for using other values of opacity.
If anyone has had better luck using opaque or semi-opaque image sprites, I'd love to hear about it...
PS - On another aside, some time ago I found that if you use image clip sprites and allow any kind of stretch (like along direction of motion), all HV does is to apply an elliptical crop to your image (as opposed to its usual circular crop) instead of taking the circularly-cropped image and elongating it. <sigh>
I use Lightwave for a lot of astronomical visualizations (NASA press releases, in fact), and thus I often need to do "fuzzy" things like nebulae. I've been working with Hypervoxels since the week they were released and they STILL never make any sense. I like software that behaves in an expected manner, which you can approach with an idea in mind, and make it work. This is virtually impossible in Hypervoxels, doubly so due to the amazingly scant documentation they've received since their inception.
Here's my problem of the day. I want to use HV image clip sprites so I can render a number of illustrations I've created in a 3D environment. I do NOT necessarily want them all to be additive (in HV terms, I need opacity > 0)
So I run a test. I make an orange image in Photoshop. I add to it an alpha channel of a squiggle (soft-edged). I render it in HV, with all basic settings (luminosity, opacity, density) all set to 100% I add the clip, choosing "embedded" as the alpha.
When I render it, all the squiggles have DARK borders. I didn't put them there. The image is flat orange. I can't make them go away. I don't want them. But HV has decided that they need to be there. (image attached)
What use is a sprite with alpha mode if HV adds dark borders to everything?
In fact, I'm a little confused why most of the settings exist at all. For instance, let's look at the alpha setting. What if I try the same thing by just painting an orange squiggle on a black background, then choose the Alpha Black mode? Well, I get ugly aliased squiggles with really dark edges because it only clips out 100% black, and doesn't figure on pre-multiplied. Who would ever make use of aliased clippings like that for sprites? Does it serve any purpose?
As far as I can tell, the only mode for sprites that works reliably is to use opacity of 0 so they're purely additive. That's the only way you can get rid of the black edges. So much for using other values of opacity.
If anyone has had better luck using opaque or semi-opaque image sprites, I'd love to hear about it...
PS - On another aside, some time ago I found that if you use image clip sprites and allow any kind of stretch (like along direction of motion), all HV does is to apply an elliptical crop to your image (as opposed to its usual circular crop) instead of taking the circularly-cropped image and elongating it. <sigh>