• Boris FX Particle Illusion

  Alpha exports are ugly? Can’t loop with image sequences?

  Posted by Docbass on August 11, 2006 at 8:46 am

  Hey all-
  I’m working with particle illusion on a video game a small team I am on is developing. This particular scene consists of a waterfall splashing into a pool of water. I am doing the waterfall and the splashing as two separate layers. However when I try and export these animations with an alpha channel they acquire a very ugly gray border that is not there within the program. Is this impossible to get around? They of course do not appear if they render straight to video but I can’t do anything with that.

  On top of that that looping tutorial does not work for image exports because of the alpha mask. Is there a way to do this? Obviously a seamless loop would be essential for a video game where the background is static and one can watch the screen for as long as they wish. Thanks all!

  Elvis Deane replied 20 years ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Alan Lorence

  August 11, 2006 at 4:00 pm

  The “ugly” colors are due to the “remove black bg from RGB… ” option. Uncheck that.

  You can load each layer (sequence) into another compositing app and loop them there. The tutorial on our site is for those who don’t have a compositing app.

  Alan.
  wondertouch
• 

  Docbass

  August 11, 2006 at 4:18 pm

  I don’t have that option checked. I also put shrink up to 20% and did a “non-hard” alpha or whatever it was called. I still get a gray outline but to a much lesser extent, but it’s not quite the same as the beautiful quality if what you see straight in particle illusion.

  Any recommendations on a good compositing program that won’t break the bank? Thanks!
• 

  Alan Lorence

  August 11, 2006 at 4:25 pm

  Check the pIllusion docs in the alpha channel section for more info on getting a good alpha channel (depends on what sorts of particles you have).

  Any video editing / compositing software will work. I’m pretty sure that people have posted about free ones here before… hopefully somebody else will remember more details.

  Alan.
  wondertouch
• 

  Elvis Deane

  August 11, 2006 at 5:23 pm

  There’s Wax, which I think should do the job. There’s also the open-source Jahshaka, which just put out a new release. Some editing programs should be able to do it too, just so long as you can have more than two video tracks and you can export a clip with an alpha channel.

  —
  Elvis Deane!
  
  The Apprentice Magician’s Guide to particleIllusion
  

  The particleIllusion FAQ

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