Originally posted by spitfire:
(B) Thanks, but don't worry, I'll extract it from you in Poser questions later.
But, I'm still not sure how to solve your problems. It might be Canvas. Why don't you send me your file and I'll tinker with it.
Try (url="http://"http://lemkEsoft.com/us_gcabout.html")GraphicConverter(/url). I don't use it, but it should work with pngs.
BTW: I used photoshop and made a semi-transparent layer.
(/B
I emailed that file to you. Thanks again for all your help. I hope nobody gets mad because I thanked you through the forum.

------------------

(This message has been edited by Toast (edited 08-14-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by Toast:
I hope nobody gets mad because I thanked you through the forum.

I guess we'll forget the public flogging for now. Darn it.

Though if you keep taking cues from Cafall with regards to your password, then maybe we'll rethink that public flogging.

I dunno about Tarn or GlueBubble or the rest of the board mods, but I personally don't mind courtesy on a web board and thanking people is certainly a form of that. Granted, if the boards filled with a bajillion posts with nothing more than "Thanks!" then it would probably get tedious, but much less tedious than flame wars.

------------------
"But soon, soon, soon... the world will be a better place, with meadows and bunnies and fiber optics in every home..."
- Tom Dowdy, Apple Computer

Originally posted by spitfire:
Someday I'll learn to use UBB Code but for now, I'm in a hurry. I just want Spitfire to know I put those transparency graphics on this URL (url="http://"http://www.vvm.com/~rplate/")http://www.vvm.com/~rplate/(/url)
I couldn't get DOT Mac email to behave right. I'm not on my own computer so this is the best I can do. If anybody else is up to the challenge to make the water creature transparent for Coldstone, have at it. Spitfire is my only hero so far. He can do it if anybody can.
BTW Spitfire, that's a great web site you have listed in your profile. Even won some prestigious awards.

------------------
edit: Sorry, but Canvas broke the graphic up into smaller pieces, to save as a web page, you can't save it to disk as a whole grapjhic. :frown:
But, you can take a screen shot odf the top graphic. shift + command + 4 and drag around the graphic.. It saves to the harddrive as picture 1

(This message has been edited by Toast (edited 08-14-2002).)

(This message has been edited by Toast (edited 08-14-2002).)

As to your water monster, I think that your best bet would be to make a solid version in Poser and then take your animation pics or however you do it. Once you have all of your frames ready, use the technique that -LethaLGraphiX- came up with and there you have it: a transparent water monster.

Unfortunately, I just tried this with a character in my game. You have to do each frame individually or it doesn't work. Just a word from the wise.

Augh, another edit: I just got finished editing each individual frame of a character animation using -LethaLGraphiX-'s method and it didn't seem to work. It seems the transparenct went away when I saved it as a png file.

-50B3R K3NNy

(This message has been edited by soberkenny (edited 08-14-2002).)

(This message has been edited by soberkenny (edited 08-14-2002).)

I'm back from school. Anyway, I looked at the water creature. (BTW: Is this the shapeshifter Celchu has talked about?) But I cannot get it to open in Poser 4 (not Pro Pack).
I did not realize that you had photoshop, you could probably do it yourself, if you wanted. How you would probably do that is:
1. Make sure its not on a background layer. If it is, double click the layer and it should let you name it.
2. Delete the white background. You may want to just use the Magic Wand, or you may want make a more precise selection using a lasso, layer masks, and the like. After you've made your selection, delete the white.
3. Make the layer transparent. In the layer palette, there is an opacity slider. Set it to probably about 80% or whatever looks acceptable.
4. Save it out as PNG.

Thank you for the compliment on the site in my profile, but you should know that it isn't really mine. It's mostly my moms, who runs a web design company as well as another. I did do the animation on the front page though.

------------------
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
"Logic is futile"-Scott Adams

Originally posted by soberkenny:

Augh, another edit: I just got finished editing each individual frame of a character animation using -LethaLGraphiX-'s method and it didn't seem to work. It seems the transparency went away when I saved it as a png file.

Now you know! LethaLGraphiX method does not work. :frown: However, if you go to spitfires reply on 8-13-2002 08:53pm about midway up this page and goto his link you will see a blue square that you can click and hold your mouse on. Then choose to save it. Drop it into Coldstone and you will see that his transpaency really works the way I described it to work. Whew! Another suggestion, instead of making all your separate animations, make just one and duplicate it seven times and name and number it as if it were the 8 steps. Just do one direction, say for example East. Drop it into the hero folder and test it for how it looks. So what if it's only one frame that slides across the screen. It saves a lot of work and you get a more immediate feedback.

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by spitfire:
**I'm back from school. Anyway, I looked at the water creature. (BTW: Is this the shapeshifter Celchu has talked about?) But I cannot get it to open in Poser 4 (not Pro Pack).
**

There is another post just above this one I answered both at the same time

I,m sorry I didn't know you had Poser, or I could have sent it as a Poser .pz2 file. But then you would have to have that water creature file to open it. I bought it at Daz3D.com a while back after reading Celchu's Chronicle about the shapeshifter. I have about a thousand dollars invested in Poser characters and motion animations :frown: That was why I became so interested in Coldstone. Now at least I have a good purpose to use them. SO you think I can only make transparencies for Coldstone in Photoshop. I'll need some help. I don't quite get the transparent masks and layers. Canvas, which I'm more used to, is easier for me. But obviously, I can't make it work. But your the pro!!! So if you can help I would really appreciate it.
PS: Where do you go to school. How well do you know Celchu? Are you his age?

------------------

(This message has been edited by Toast (edited 08-14-2002).)

I have no idea why my mehtod should not work unless there is something wrong with your pngs.
One obvious thing that could be wrong is coldstone flattening the png. I don't know if it does this, just to be on the safe toggle the 'compress picture data' button when you build a release.
Another thing is using the wrong program. Did you use Photoshop? Wich version?

(url="http://"http://users.skynet.be/fa250604/sites/gamesite/crescent/img/khidal.png")Here(/url) Is one of my sprites wich uses transparency. That png was made the way I explained. I'd like you to try that sprite and see if it works. First try it in coldstone. Then, if it works, open it in your graphix program and save it again, then try it in coldstone again.

That should at least make it clear where your problem is situated.

Btw, just making a layer transparant is indeed a fast method to get a png with transparency.

------------------

I just realized what the problem is. When I save a file as png in photoshop it automatically flattens it. Do you know why this happens?

------------------
-50B3R K3NNy

Quote

Originally posted by -LethaLGraphiX-:
**I have no idea why my mehtod should not work unless there is something wrong with your pngs.
One obvious thing that could be wrong is coldstone flattening the png. I don't know if it does this, just to be on the safe toggle the 'compress picture data' button when you build a release.
Another thing is using the wrong program. Did you use Photoshop? Wich version?

Here Is one of my sprites wich uses transparency. That png was made the way I explained. I'd like you to try that sprite and see if it works. First try it in coldstone. Then, if it works, open it in your graphix program and save it again, then try it in coldstone again.

That should at least make it clear where your problem is situated.

Btw, just making a layer transparant is indeed a fast method to get a png with transparency.

**

My apologies, my apologies, LethalGraphics! You are also my HERO. I tried what you said and downloaded your transparency, dropped it into Coldstone and there it was. As transparent as ever. You also proved a point I wondered about with spitfire. That was, will the background box of the animations throw Coldstone for a loop? But your sprite was clean and clear. Thank you. Now if I can just figure this out for myself :frown:

BTW I went to your web site you do great work. I really feel like an amature now. :)But then I've got a lot of other things going for me. How are things in Belgium? Now my goal is to duplicate what you and spitfire did. I even more challenged now that I know Coldstone can do it. I think I can, I think I can.

(This message has been edited by Toast (edited 08-18-2002).)

go (url="http://"http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/")here(/url) for png info, in the applications list under image editors it reads this for Photoshop:

"Photoshop (Adobe)
(Windows 3.x, Win32, Mac 68k/PPC) - version 4.0 and
later; read/write; full alpha support, but no palette transparency in versions prior to 5.5; broken gamma and chromaticity
support in versions prior to 5.5 (gamma-writing appears to work in 4.0
only if the ambient-light setting is at `medium'; it is completely
broken in 5.0--i.e., Photoshop records a value that is off by a factor
of two, making images look far too dark; and gamma-reading is reportedly
non-existent); broken iCCP support in 5.5 (writes faulty zlib wrapper on
iCCP chunk, which can crash apps that use libpng 1.0.6's png_get_iCCP()
function, and can't read valid iCCP chunks; claimed fixed in 6.0);
inefficient use of iCCP chunk to store full sRGB profile rather than
using native PNG sRGB chunk (5.5 only?); broken, read-only support for
16-bps PNGs in 5.5 and 6.0 (high- and low-order bytes swapped),
no 16-bit support in earlier versions, and no 16-bit write support in
any version (see Brendan Bolles' SuperPNG plug-in for full 16-bps read/write support);
relatively poor compression
(slightly better but still not great in "Save for Web" mode); doesn't
save text annotations; incapable of saving bi-level PNGs; commercial.
See Chapter 4 of PNG: The Definitive Guide for
information on making alpha-channel PNGs with Photoshop 4.0 and 5.0.
(Photoshop 3.0 for Windows is still supported via the
PNGForm.8BI plug-in, but
Infinop's
plug-in, which provided equivalent support for PS 3.0 for Mac,
is no longer available. See also Macromedia's xRes below.)"

Looks like Photoshop really dropped the ball there
But it does/should work. Wich version do you have?

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by Stark Bledfast:
**I dunno about Tarn or GlueBubble or the rest of the board mods, but I personally don't mind courtesy on a web board and thanking people is certainly a form of that. Granted, if the boards filled with a bajillion posts with nothing more than "Thanks!" then it would probably get tedious, but much less tedious than flame wars.
**

I will definitely impose no penalties for courtesy on the Coldstone boards. I much prefer to see people saying thanks then some of the flames that spring up on other boards.

However, just as a guide, if we could restrict it to the thread in which help was given, rather than creating entirely new ones, it would help a bit.

And it's nice to see that transparencies are indeed working. Very nice indeed.

-Andiyar

------------------
"Any good that I may do here, let me do now, for I may not pass this way again"

Thanks for all the help and stuff guys, but my original question wasn't answered: Where should I place the transparent stamp. Foreground???

Thanks again

------------------