Transparent png with alpha mask

[IanH]

I would like to be able to import a png (or any other supported graphic file) that contains an alpha mask and display it with variable transparency on a 2d plan.

[IanH]

To add to my request.

As a garden designer and student who has spent the last 4 years 'perfecting' ones own style of drawing, it would be nice to still retain this style within VW.

VW is heavily promoted to Garden Designers in the UK via Computers Unlimited and I have spoken to a number of garden designers at these presentations and elsewhere. There is still a great deal of apprehension of CAD and one of the main reason is the loss of ones individuality of style when using CAD - another is the loss of the concept of space when using CAD too much within the initial design stages. The latter is easily corrected by reverting to good old soft pencil, but the ability to tailor the look of CAD, even with the improvements in VW 2008, to make it less computer like, still does not go far enough that a design retains the individual designers own style without a huge amount of additional work. For many clients, the quality and individual style of drawing can be the deciding factor when choose one designer over another even at additional cost. CAD can greatly enhance quality (as in correctness and accuracy), but the loss of individualism is lost in the process.

Until CAD is taught from the start of a garden design course and its take up is nearly 100%, there will always be a large emphasis on hand drawn and rendered plans, and even then, I believe that a designer with a distinct and likeable personal style will feature high in a clients preference.

It would be so nice to be able to easily combine individual hand drawn and rendered elements with CAD without having to work within the constrains of layering and additional packages such as photoshop. For this reason, I would like to see VW support the import of images with alpha transparency without having to resort to complex work arounds.

If this became possible, I can see the take up of VW within the garden design community to be greatly increased.

In the mean time, as a student, I will try and adapt my style to the tools available to me. But unfortunately, for commercial work, this would not be cost effective.

[Petri]

While in principle I'm strongly against the idea that a less-than-mediocre designer should, especially by way of CAD software, be enabled to win jobs just because he or she happens to make nice drawings, while a budding - or even mature - Martha Schwartz just does Driveway Extensions, I'd also like to see Alpha-channel support.

If not for any practical purpose, then at least to make Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons envious.