I've decided that I should learn how to make my own sprites when I want to make plug-ins. I choose Blender to model and render my ships. I have to to choose .png as my file type and animate the ship. This make 36 images. Problem is that the images come out individually and not in one nice big image. So I have to use Spinapp so link the images together.

Problem is that EVNEW masks everything in the image thats black. So you end up seeing through the windshield, which turns out very ugly. So I make images with an alpha channel and try to make Spinapp extract a mask from them. This should work perfectly, except that Spinapp dies without so much as a wimper when I try to do this. Any thoughts?

@jacabyte, on Sep 30 2006, 12:41 PM, said in Spinapp:

I've decided that I should learn how to make my own sprites when I want to make plug-ins. I choose Blender to model and render my ships. I have to to choose .png as my file type and animate the ship. This make 36 images. Problem is that the images come out individually and not in one nice big image. So I have to use Spinapp so link the images together.

Problem is that EVNEW masks everything in the image thats black. So you end up seeing through the windshield, which turns out very ugly. So I make images with an alpha channel and try to make Spinapp extract a mask from them. This should work perfectly, except that Spinapp dies without so much as a wimper when I try to do this. Any thoughts?

your best and simplest bet on a mask is to use photoshop r a similar tool to delete the ship ans replace it with a white outline. in photoshop, use the magic wand tool to select the all the black, go to selection>inverse and the hit delete. (making sure first that the background color is white)

Only problem is that I'll have to do this for every single 36 images. Which isn't cost effective. And I don't have Photoshop and don't plan on buying it.

@jacabyte, on Sep 30 2006, 01:32 PM, said in Spinapp:

Only problem is that I'll have to do this for every single 36 images. Which isn't cost effective. And I don't have Photoshop and don't plan on buying it.

not if you do it AFTER using spinapp, on the compiled image

But I HAVE used Photoshop and know enough about it that I'd have to do this THIRTY SIX times. No, the reason I created this topic was so EVWeb (The creator of Spinapp) could glance over this topic and know something was wrong with Spinapp. I addmit that this is better suited as a PM which is what I shall now go do.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 30 September 2006 - 04:25 PM

The buffered images for the masks aren't getting initialised.

I have no idea what you just said.

@jacabyte, on Sep 30 2006, 02:23 PM, said in Spinapp:

But I HAVE used Photoshop and know enough about it that I'd have to do this THIRTY SIX times. No, the reason I created this topic was so EVWeb (The creator of Spinapp) could glance over this topic and know something was wrong with Spinapp. I addmit that this is better suited as a PM which is what I shall now go do.

eh, i dunno what your smoking, but i just created 3, 72-frame ship spins and i made the mask for each one with only one pass in photoshop. the app may have a few holes in it, and that may be the primary point of your topic, but my main point here is that there are ways around the holes, photoshop is a very reliable alternate method.

@jacabyte, on Oct 1 2006, 12:38 PM, said in Spinapp:

I have no idea what you just said.

Heh, that was more meant for EVWeb if he reads this topic

@edwin-, on Sep 30 2006, 07:23 PM, said in Spinapp:

eh, i dunno what your smoking, but i just created 3, 72-frame ship spins and i made the mask for each one with only one pass in photoshop. the app may have a few holes in it, and that may be the primary point of your topic, but my main point here is that there are ways around the holes, photoshop is a very reliable alternate method.

Guess what! I don't have Photoshop! That doesn't help me right now and it's non-critical that I make this ship.

Okay, I'm unable to reproduce your error, so I'll need a little more info on how you're making your images, and also, make sure you have the latest version. ( Which hasn't been put on the Ambrosia Addons page yet, so visit my site )

And Guy, yes they are.

I'm using Blender to animate the ship spinning 360ş with the output format selected as .png RGBA. (32 bit) This creates 36 separate images which I then link together with Spinapp. I select the images Blender makes and Spinapp offers to make a transparency mask. Then I get no futher word from Spinapp. If I open up taskmanager it says that the process spinpp.exe isn't running. When I open up taskmanager while Spinapp is running and then try to make a transparency mask, Spinapp chews up some processor and then dies. Simple as that. No errors no nothing.

And I did update Spinapp from your website. That didn't help anything.

For what it's worth, the latest version of SpinApp is now available on the Add-ons page.

Your images don't all have an alpha channel, so when it reachs one that doesn't have one, it dies. MAKE SURE ALL YOUR IMAGES HAVE AN ALPHA CHANNEL.

They all have alpha channels. I'll get off my lazy bottom and post them if you want.

Edit: Okay. Here they are.

<attachment removed>

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 02 October 2006 - 12:05 PM

@evweb, on Oct 2 2006, 08:21 AM, said in Spinapp:

And Guy, yes they are.

In the extractMaskMulti method a constructor is never called for the BufferedImages. They've been declared as an array but not initialised so when it tries to setData on them it gives a null pointer exception. You'll have to initialise them individually inside the loop.

Ah, I see what you mean, the code looked like it had. Anyway, I fixed it so if there is one without transperency it'll tell you, otherwise, it'll just work. ( Check out my site )

This post has been edited by EVWeb : 01 October 2006 - 06:26 PM

Jolly good :). I'd suggest that if this is still a "work-in-progress" or if you're going to be updating it frequently like this that you don't keep uploading it to the addons.

This post has been edited by Guy : 02 October 2006 - 02:54 AM

It works perfectly! Now I'll have to see how it looks in Nova.

Well, until someone tells me there is a bug, I don't update it, so usually the updates are far and few between, but I had to put out the latest bug fix as it was a major problem.