Hello all.

Every since I've started to LASIK my sprites, I have never been able to create a nice, clean mask for my ships. I want to use LASIK because it does vastly improve my ships, so not using it isnt an option.

I've tried a few different things. Just the normal Magic wand around the LASIK'd sprite (black background) then the same with a Green background (which when i LASIK'd it, turned parts of my ship purple?!) I've tried selecting the mask before LASIKing it, then shrinking the mask to half the size, but nothing seems to work properly.

I looked at jule's method of rendering a white version and using that as a mask, but apparantly that won't work if you LASIK your ship.

I used to be perfectly happy with the mask m2's created, but as I need to LASIK them, I can't use that either.

So, anyone got any tried and tested methods for me to try? This has been a really drawback for me over the past few months, seriously frustrating and slowing down progress on the TC.

I use Photoshop 5 LE by the way.

Thanks.

For me, I render my ship graphics at twice final size for LASIKing, and a mask version at final size without any antialiasing. Works perfectly every time.

TheRedeemer, on Mar 5 2005, 03:44 AM, said:

Every since I've started to LASIK my sprites, I have never been able to create a nice, clean mask for my ships.

Why not? What happens?

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I've tried a few different things. Just the normal Magic wand around the LASIK'd sprite (black background) then the same with a Green background (which when i LASIK'd it, turned parts of my ship purple?!)

Yep. Unsharp Mask (and most sharpening techniques) are actually increasing contrast between very small areas of an image, like edges. Increasing local contrast means making one area less like the areas nearby. Making part of the ship less like a green background means making it purple.

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I've tried selecting the mask before LASIKing it, then shrinking the mask to half the size, but nothing seems to work properly.

If you weren't having problems making a mask before you started using LASIK, why doesn't this work?

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I looked at jule's method of rendering a white version and using that as a mask, but apparantly that won't work if you LASIK your ship.

Sure it does. I do that all the time. LASIKing is basically the inclusion of sharpening when processing your sprites - that increases local contrast but won't change the outline of the ship. I render sprites 2x on each dimension, apply USM, shrink to half size. I render masks by making all surfaces pure luminous white (with antialiasing, unlike Hudson) at 2x each dimension, sharpen just as much as I did on the sprite, shrink, then apply Threshold with a value of 64 (or value close to that). "Works perfectly every time."

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I used to be perfectly happy with the mask m2's created, but as I need to LASIK them, I can't use that either.

Again, why not? Apply LASIK after m2s makes its mask. If you were happy with the mask m2s produced before, LASIK-ing the sprite portion shouldn't change that, I don't think.

You really ought to get into the habit of rendering a separate mask pass, however - what if you want an area of your ship to be perfectly black but still obscure stars and planets behind the ship? You have to render a mask, or hand-alter an automated mask, which is usually created by simply selecting all the black in the image and making the rest white.

This post has been edited by Weepul 884 : 05 March 2005 - 07:25 AM

TheRedeemer, on Mar 5 2005, 10:44 AM, said:

Hello all.

Every since I've started to LASIK my sprites, I have never been able to create a nice, clean mask for my ships. I want to use LASIK because it does vastly improve my ships, so not using it isnt an option.

I've tried a few different things. Just the normal Magic wand around the LASIK'd sprite (black background) then the same with a Green background (which when i LASIK'd it, turned parts of my ship purple?!) I've tried selecting the mask before LASIKing it, then shrinking the mask to half the size, but nothing seems to work properly.

I looked at jule's method of rendering a white version and using that as a mask, but apparantly that won't work if you LASIK your ship.

I used to be perfectly happy with the mask m2's created, but as I need to LASIK them, I can't use that either.

Thanks.
View Post

I wonder what you mean with a nice clean mask?
Like that in NOVA. If so, this is what i do.

I usually do this.

1. Render my ship twice the size, with an alpha mask, and black Background
2. Drop both movies onto m2s
3. Open the files created in photoshop.
4. Do a lasik on the main image before i reduce to 50%.
5. Make the size the mask 50%.
6. contrast to +100 on the mask to get rid of the anti alias.

This post has been edited by modesty_blaise_us : 05 March 2005 - 12:40 PM

Hm, my lasiked sprites and masks generally turn out fine. Here's what I do:

1. Render image twice the size w/o anti-aliasing.
2. Open all these images in PS and LASIK them with the suggested values (I have a makro that automatically LASISs, saves and closes – a chain of these makros executes 36 times).
3. Open the resulting images in MakeSpďn, which produces both, a fitting sprite map and a mask.

I have to lasik before using MakeSpďn, because it has problems if it has to open too large images.

What you can also try is to render the ships pure white (give the texture a luminance of 100% white and deactivate any other settings) and do everything as above. Use the masks of this result. This is useful if you have shadows that are so dark that the masking program considers them empty black.

What I do for Masks is render them white at 2X final size, then scale it down.

Then use the Colorize option in the Hue/Saturation tool to make any grey pixels various shades of red. Set the saturation to 100.

Use Brigtness/Contrast to push the contrast up to 100. At this point, all of the grey pixels should be either red or white. Replace Color can then change all of the red pixels to white.

Sorry the replies a little late, but a big thanks to all you guys, I've got my masks correct now.

Thanks all!

Well, even though it's too late, I'll give my input. What I do, is I have the ship, and I have a pure-white version of the ship which I also render. I make the 6x6-tile grid of the mask with Graphic Converter, and then I size it down to what I want, decrease the colors to the second-highest number, minimize color table, then edit color table and change the tiles so that any shade of grey is pure white (save the color table so that you don't have to re-make it every time).

I can't find the 'official' way of doing this, but this is what I do, just for completeness:

-Render at 2x and pass the files through p2s
-Unsharp mask and reduce by 50% the resulting file from p2s

-Render white mask versions of the same ship in mech at 2x and run those through p2s
-Blur More and bump contrast to max to expand border
-Reduce by 50% and convert to BW

-Trash the mask files generated by p2s. I don't use them

This seems to work OK and produces a nice black border around the sprite.

Mech' makes thta easy, eh?