wishlist: automatic .png transparency support

kwistenbiebel · Post by **kwistenbiebel** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 2:44 am

Hi all,

At the risk beating a dead horse, I would want to ask whether rendering .png transparency is on the to do list for skindigo. I mean without having to point to clipmap textures.

I just ask as both Podium and Fryrender support it by now (Vray not yet afaik).

What do you think?

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 3:33 am

Hi kwistenbibel, you know I'm not a Skindigo user but I believe that the horse is rather not born yet !

Indigo won't read those images, if you tried already it would complain about pixel depth being inadequate. So using png with embedded alpha channel in Skindigo would mean splitting the images with a third party software afterwards in all cases, at least until Indigo supports transparent png's...

It's first about the renderer, the exporter follows.

kwistenbiebel · Post by **kwistenbiebel** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 5:51 am

Thanks for the clarification CTZn, that explains a lot.

[Nagging Mode:ON]: Can we have it Ono? PPPPlease? [Nagging Mode:OFF]

crojack · Post by **crojack** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:20 am

It would make life easier, that is for sure!
I have system down but it is not smooth or quick, and takes a good knowledge of sketchup.

kellpossible · Post by **kellpossible** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:53 pm

I agree with Kwinsten, this would be very useful, considering that a lot of the models on the 3d warehouse use png images with an alpha channel. And doesn't POV-Ray support them as well?

BBjam · Post by **BBjam** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:19 pm

What language is Skindigo written in? If there is an easy way to load a png in said language Skindigo should load png textures and then write out the alpha chanel to a png image and use that as a blend map with a null mat. It would not be hard to do in my native language, Java, but I don't know if it is possible in Skindigo.

Sir · Post by **Sir** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:14 pm

so has anyone discovered a work around for this yet? you can see what happend to my trees yesterday below

kellpossible · Post by **kellpossible** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:42 pm

at the moment you have to make a clip map for the trees by extracting the alpha map from the png and saving it as a black and white jpeg, then put that jpeg as external with the same uv coordinates as su(if your using the new version), or with the old version just load it into sketchup with the same uv coordinates. You might already know this, but I said how to just in case!

Sir · Post by **Sir** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:19 am

thanks ill give it a try

kellpossible · Post by **kellpossible** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:38 pm

try testing it on something simple first to see whether you can get the clip mapping working, then work your way up to something more complicated like your tree scene, that's what i've learned to do anyway!

wishlist: automatic .png transparency support

wishlist: automatic .png transparency support

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