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background image undesirably renders with ~50% transparency
Hello,
– start a new file.
– dbl click on the gray box in layer 0 to add an image
– render to a png sequence, with the “save alpha” check box checked.
Result: 100% opaque pixels in the background image will render with ~50% transparency.’
Meaning, I see no way to accurately bake a background image into a particle render.
Tested multiple cases / settings.
I must be missing some setting…? I don’t see anything in the manual…..
Tx,
Scott
PS: would be nice if there were a link to the manual on your home page..only way I found it was from the help menu inside the app.
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10 Replies
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HI
Seems we are having the same problem with emitters creating a transparent/translucent effect when applied to PNG file.
I attached several pictures of “my problem” to the post right above yours.Over the past year or so, I have tried lots of different solutions, both in photoshop (varied bit rates and/or resolutions) as well as the rendering settings in PI to no avail.
Best
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yeah the solution i am working with right now is to:
-place the particle on a transparent stage in pi.
-render out to a series of pngs
-pull those pngs into a series of photoshop layers via adobe bridge
-copy in my background png to the newly created particle psd file
-duplicate the background png layer a number of times equal to the number of particle layers.
-sandwich in the background layers between the particle layers and merge down one at a time.a pretty big pain, even when i can script some of that in ps.
i strongly suspect there is a solution here in pi; let’s see what they guys at wonderotuch have to say. If the forums are any indicator, they are patient and timely in their responses….
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Do you have motion blur turned on? High-quality motion blur specifically? That’s one reason I can think that the bg image might be partially transparent. Turn it off or switch to “regular” motion blur.
It could also be:
1) a bug in pIRender. Is the render happening in pI3 itself, or in pIRender?
2) an OpenGL issue. Try “run with software rendering” or open pIRender manually and turn off hardware acceleration there in the “options” dialog.
Alan.
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I should mention that I am on a Mac running PI 3.0.8.1; I am rendering out of Pi3.
I see a motion blur toggle under the view menu. It is off. I do not see any button/check box/etc for ‘high quality motion blur’.
Under the prefs menu / open gl tab, the check box for “user hardware acceleration” is checked and disabled; I cannot change it. The same is true in the application pIllusionRender, under the options button; checked and disabled.
The dump on my graphics card is at the bottom of this thread.
Am I missing a couple of settings, or…?
Tx
S-
** dump **
ATI Technologies Inc.
ATI Radeon HD 5770 OpenGL Engine
Version: 2.1 ATI-1.6.20Accumulation Buffer RGBA: 16-16-16-16
Max texture size: 16384 x 16384
Max viewport size: 16384 x 16384Supported Extensions:
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
GL_ARB_vertex_program
GL_ARB_vertex_blend
GL_ARB_window_pos
GL_ARB_shader_objects
GL_ARB_vertex_shader
GL_ARB_shading_language_100
GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint
GL_EXT_rescale_normal
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements
GL_EXT_fog_coord
GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters
GL_EXT_geometry_shader4
GL_EXT_transform_feedback
GL_APPLE_client_storage
GL_APPLE_specular_vector
GL_APPLE_transform_hint
GL_APPLE_packed_pixels
GL_APPLE_fence
GL_APPLE_vertex_array_object
GL_APPLE_vertex_program_evaluators
GL_APPLE_element_array
GL_APPLE_flush_render
GL_APPLE_aux_depth_stencil
GL_NV_texgen_reflection
GL_NV_light_max_exponent
GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
GL_ARB_imaging
GL_ARB_point_parameters
GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_ARB_texture_env_add
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3
GL_ARB_multisample
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
GL_ARB_texture_compression
GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_ARB_shadow
GL_ARB_depth_texture
GL_ARB_shadow_ambient
GL_ARB_fragment_program
GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow
GL_ARB_fragment_shader
GL_ARB_occlusion_query
GL_ARB_point_sprite
GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two
GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object
GL_ARB_draw_buffers
GL_ARB_shader_texture_lod
GL_ARB_color_buffer_float
GL_ARB_half_float_vertex
GL_ARB_texture_rg
GL_ARB_texture_compression_rgtc
GL_ARB_framebuffer_object
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_draw_buffers2
GL_EXT_framebuffer_object
GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit
GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample
GL_EXT_texture_rectangle
GL_ARB_texture_rectangle
GL_EXT_texture_env_add
GL_EXT_blend_color
GL_EXT_blend_minmax
GL_EXT_blend_subtract
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color
GL_EXT_secondary_color
GL_EXT_blend_func_separate
GL_EXT_shadow_funcs
GL_EXT_stencil_two_side
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_compression_dxt1
GL_EXT_texture_sRGB
GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate
GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp
GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil
GL_EXT_bindable_uniform
GL_EXT_texture_integer
GL_EXT_gpu_shader4
GL_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB
GL_EXT_provoking_vertex
GL_APPLE_flush_buffer_range
GL_APPLE_ycbcr_422
GL_APPLE_rgb_422
GL_APPLE_vertex_array_range
GL_APPLE_texture_range
GL_APPLE_float_pixels
GL_ATI_texture_float
GL_ARB_texture_float
GL_ARB_half_float_pixel
GL_APPLE_pixel_buffer
GL_APPLE_object_purgeable
GL_NV_blend_square
GL_NV_fog_distance
GL_NV_conditional_render
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once
GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate
GL_ATI_blend_weighted_minmax
GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3
GL_ATI_separate_stencil
GL_ATI_texture_compression_3dc
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp
GL_SGIS_texture_lod
GL_SGI_color_matrix
GL_EXT_texture_array
GL_EXT_vertex_array_bgra
GL_ARB_instanced_arrays
GL_ARB_depth_buffer_float
GL_EXT_packed_float
GL_EXT_texture_shared_exponent -
Sorry — I forgot on the Mac version you can’t disable hardware acceleration.
You won’t see the “HQ motion blur” option if motion blur is off.
I’m really puzzled by this. A couple things to clarify:
1) What you see in the stage window in pI3 looks fine during normal playback?
2) If you render without “Save alpha” checked, do you see the same problem?
Alan.
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1) what is displayed in the stage window looks correct, yes.
2) if “save alpha” is unchecked, I do not see the problem. I of course do not see the alpha transparency of the background png port in, but the pixels in the image are ok.
point of clarification on “~50% transparency:”
seems the color is getting stripped out of the png image, as compared to just a straight alpha reduction.
i uploaded a couple images for comparison. not sure where those land in this forum as it is my 1st upload.
Tx
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When you check “save alpha”, make sure “remove black background…” is NOT checked.
Alan.
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“remove black background” is unchecked.
fwiw, i”ve regressed this pretty hard and am coming up dry.
happy to get on im (skype, etc) and share screen if you care to look.
I am developing our latest video game (see fluidentertainment.com) and would love to use PI in our product.
tx
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I think there’s a basic usage issue here. With “save alpha” checked, an alpha channel is created only for the particles. The thinking was you’d want to layer the particles over something else in another application.
If you just want the particles composited on the background image, then don’t save alpha.
If you want the particles with alpha, then turn off the bg image (click the “bg” icon to toggle”), render with “save alpha” checked, and composite on your image in another app.
Make sense?
Alan.
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understood. I think it boils down to a feature request.
…I would like pi to recognize the alpha channel of a background image that I load in to a layer.
I misunderstood the “save alpha” button to mean just this, and not that it meant alpha-ing out the built-in background of pi (the color of which is determined in the pref dialog).
The implementation of the feature request would be a big time saver in terms of compositing. Gandalf’s gem that glows _between_ the tines of his staff, as example. (staff.png = layer0, particle = layer1, tines.png = layer 2).
Anyway, thanks for the extended thread and hope to see the feature soon.
S-
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