image prop transparency

[jnr]

Please please please can we have control of the transparency of a texture applied to an image prop? Its a pain to have to go back to photoshop, adjust the transparency (say for example people or trees), then bring it back in, hope that you got the right amount of see thru, and re render.

Would radically help work flow if there were a way to control it. Maybe I'm missing something. As far as I can tell the only thing you can tweak is the amount of light it emits (nighttime scenes with glowing trees are really a bummer).

-J

[jnr]

Hey Jim:

Let me know if I missed something (operator failure).

Posted this over in the wish list:

Please please please can we have control of the transparency of a texture applied to an image prop? Its a pain to have to go back to photoshop, adjust the transparency (say for example people or trees), then bring it back in, hope that you got the right amount of see thru, and re render.

Would radically help work flow if there were a way to control it. Maybe I'm missing something. As far as I can tell the only thing you can tweak is the amount of light it emits (nighttime scenes with glowing trees are really a bummer).

-J

[PVA - Admin]

I believe this is most easily done by editing the texture that is generated when you create the image prop.

Edit the texture in the resource browser, I think by default it will be called "(Imagename) Prop Texture" and set the Transparency shader to Plain, then editing that shader will let you control the level of transparency for that image prop as well as any other instances of it within the document.

[jnr]

J:

Not so fast there. Setting the transparency shader to plain, causes the image mask (in this case for people props) to turn white instead of remaining transparent. so instead of just seeing the person, you see them as a white card.

any other ideas? I recall an email conversation about trees with Tamisin and came to the conclusion that the only way to affect transparency and glow (emitter) was to do it in p-shop, which is really inefficient.

Any other ideas?

-J

[PVA - Admin]

OH you mean adjust the transparency of parts of the image that aren't being transparency masked already, I thought you meant avoid doing a transparency effect in Photoshop at all for the whole image. Submitting request now.

[mchev]

Yes please!

Like setting transparency levels in the attribute palette for regular shapes, or it could be a slider/percent button in the object info palette.