I think I know a better way, what you just mentioned up there on how you were doing it, do it in reverse, make all the 3D components black, because black has no reflection or shadow, it's just a flat plain color. Meanwhile you change the environment rendering and working color to white. After you have done so, animate your ship into a pics file format. If you have Pics25 Sprites or something like that, then use it on that pics file. When the sprite mask is uploaded in your clipboard, paste it in your Photoshop and invert the color, copy the whole thing and load it in your plug-in. It works wonders for me.

Of course what I just said could work if you have at least a MetaTools Infini-D, Photoshop, and Pics25 Sprites.

i found a way to make masks that is infinitely better than using the horrifically inaccurate magic wand tool. i turn off all of the channels in all my textures so the ship is a pure, flat black, and make the background pure white, then use photoshop's "invert" command. works like a charm.

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Don't go to school to learn that 2+2=4. If you do you're missing the point. Go to school to learn how to add, then figure out that 2+2=4.
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Originally posted by Commander Arashi:
**I'm not sure why we didn't bother mentioning this. Probably for the same reason we didn't mention P2S and M2S

**

P2S and M2S is that short for Pics25 Sprites or is it something else? If it is something else I wanna know how to get my hands on one of these, it saves me lots of time and trouble from converting every single 3D component of a ship into black pieces. If it works just as you say it will, then I'll just add the masking option for the next time on my Infini-D.

Quote

Originally posted by Coraxus:
**
P2S and M2S is that short for Pics25 Sprites or is it something else? If it is something else I wanna know how to get my hands on one of these, it saves me lots of time and trouble from converting every single 3D component of a ship into black pieces. If it works just as you say it will, then I'll just add the masking option for the next time on my Infini-D.**

p2s, px2s and m2s are part of w00tware's editing tools, available from the addons page. They are very helpful indeed: you can drag a collection of PICTS, a PICS or a Quicktime movie onto them and they create a sprite from it, including doing all the mask creation for you.

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"A taco is merely a rigid, deformed tortilla."
- Thomas Castiglione
"There will be MUCH CRUSHING!"
- Pink

Quote

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
**p2s, px2s and m2s are part of w00tware's editing tools, available from the addons page. They are very helpful indeed: you can drag a collection of PICTS, a PICS or a Quicktime movie onto them and they create a sprite from it, including doing all the mask creation for you.

**

These tools attempt to do automatic mask creation, by setting any pixel in the ship image that is not exactly black to white in the mask and black pixels are left black in the mask. If your ship has areas that are indeed black then the tools can be tricked - giving unwanted holes in your ships. In this case I generally edit the problem mask layout file, usng an eraser in a editor such as Photoshop or Colour It., to wipe out the problem spots in the white part of the mask.

BTW the mask is meant to be a bitmap, 1 pit per pixel. If you try to make nice smooth grayscale anti-aliased masks, the Nova engine will render them internally as B&W; anyway.

DrR

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(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dr_ralph/index.html") w00tWare: NovaTools are here!(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by DrRalph:
**These tools attempt to do automatic mask creation, by setting any pixel in the ship image that is not exactly black to white in the mask and black pixels are left black in the mask. If your ship has areas that are indeed black then the tools can be tricked - giving unwanted holes in your ships. In this case I generally edit the problem mask layout file, usng an eraser in a editor such as Photoshop or Colour It., to wipe out the problem spots in the white part of the mask.

BTW the mask is meant to be a bitmap, 1 pit per pixel. If you try to make nice smooth grayscale anti-aliased masks, the Nova engine will render them internally as B&W; anyway.

DrR
**

Haven't been too pleased with the Sprite Tools' efforts at reducing from 32 bit to 16 bit, I seem to end up with lots of areas that have the grainy half tone patterns. Graphic converter et al seems to do it better. Wonder if there's a way to get Sprite Tools to not even try to reduce depth from 32bit. And of course, the masking from Sprite Tools is always needing fixing up becuase ships are rendered with bits of black on them as others have said.

I still don't see whats so hard about rendering with everything as a white texture, unless you have some wierd rendering application. Just jack the ambient light (white) up to max, give it a diffuse of pure white maxed out, and get rid of light sources.

Or: As the background color for the render, instead of black, which will appear on the ship where there is an absence of light, choose some color you know isn't used in the ship, like neon green or something. Then using the magic wand tool is much easier. Of course, this strategy will leave you with edge spill issues.

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Modo Numerus Nemo Vir Est.
Sic Semper Omnibus!

(This message has been edited by SD (edited 03-31-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by SD:
**Haven't been too pleased with the Sprite Tools' efforts at reducing from 32 bit to 16 bit, I seem to end up with lots of areas that have the grainy half tone patterns. Graphic converter et al seems to do it better. Wonder if there's a way to get Sprite Tools to not even try to reduce depth from 32bit. And of course, the masking from Sprite Tools is always needing fixing up becuase ships are rendered with bits of black on them as others have said.
**

Yes, they are simple apps, they just draw the graphics they are given at the 16 and 8 bit depths.
You will get much better results using BlitZen to prepare 8 bit and 16 bit images from 32 bit master files, and then feed the prepared files into p2s for just the straight layout and mask making.
Photoshops support for 16 bit PICTs is poor to say the least.

Quote

Originally posted by SD:
**

I still don't see whats so hard about rendering with everything as a white texture, unless you have some wierd rendering application. Just jack the ambient light (white) up to max, give it a diffuse of pure white maxed out, and get rid of light sources.

Or: As the background color for the render, instead of black, which will appear on the ship where there is an absence of light, choose some color you know isn't used in the ship, like neon green or something. Then using the magic wand tool is much easier. Of course, this strategy will leave you with edge spill issues.

**

Look I couldn't agree more. Each person can come up with their own solution. Mine was to render master images at 32bit. BlitZen them to controlled 16 and 8 bit images usng ditehring if necessary,
and then use p2s to make the sprite layout and mask. Once the spin or shan has been created with NovaTools you can use EnRLE to make the RLE sprite versions.

DrR

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(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dr_ralph/index.html") w00tWare: NovaTools are here!(/url)

I found a way to bypass Photoshop. I was testing this for awhile and it seems to work. If you have **** -Tools Infini-D, then this what you can do. Copy the white aluminum color and edit it by cranking up the glow field all the way up. What it does is give you pure white with no reflections shadow or anything, just flat out white. Change all the elements of your ship to that white you just created. With the black background as your default environment rendering color, all is left is to render the animation in a pics format file and you can now cut directly to using the P2S sprite maker to create the sprite to upload in your plug-in.

Dude. For nova, if you have Nova tools, you really dont need to make sprites. Just make a movie of the spin, use m2s to make sprites/masks, and then convert to rleD, or rle8 - if you need help there, I can dish out some assistance.

I find that making separate movies for masks and/or sprites is too time consuming. But, If you want to stick with that, you dont have to worry about shading. Just jack up the luminosity to maximum, turn off the diffuse, and BAM! instant sprite movie.

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Admiral Zombat
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