Pasting Active Objects With Shaders Applied

[xmetalxthrasherx]

This is driving me nuts. I just added HWA and have been trying to make the necessary changes to have my project "normal" again. One such change is giving me a lot of trouble.

I had the "AND" ink effect applied to a blood active object. Then I would add the object to the background to prevent the game from running slowly. In the HWA version I can't use the "AND" ink effect, which is fine, I'm trying to apply the Multiply or Hard Light effects from Looki's photoshop pack. Well, so far so good, that is until it pastes the blood object into the background.

When I paste an active object with a shader applied into the background my game immediately crashes.

I've tried to remedy this by utlizing the surface object and blitting the blood active to the surface object which has the necessary effect applied to it. The issue here, however, is that I can't seem to find a way to also blit the alpha map of the active I'm blitting. So I lose the alpha transparency for that pasted active.

I'm posting here for two reasons: I can't find a solution anywhere I've searched; and because I'm curious if this is a known issues or a bug. In either case, does anybody have any sort or remedy for this sort of issue.

Thanks in advance, and i hope I'm posting this to the correct forum.

[Crash86]

Is AND not similar to subtract? That might work.

You could just keep them as actives maybe. HWA should handle it. Turn off the fine detection of the blood splatters.

That's until you get a proper workaround anyway.

[Pixelthief]

Backdrops don't have alpha channels afaik when pasted, do they? I cant imagine its possible to paste its alpha channel as a separate object. You could try written a pixel shader effect that does the same thing as alpha blending- using the background to shade the image in the nontransparent pixels- but depending on how many objects you have at once it could be slow.

[xmetalxthrasherx]

Crash, unfortunately with the level of carnage which would and does occurs in a typical play through of my game HWA wouldnt be able to handle the amount of blood actives even with fine collision disable. I've already tried. To give you an idea what I've been working on is a overhead game based on Doom canon. So typical of Doom there are many enemies even at any given time and for each blast of the shotgun, for instance, at least four or five blood actives come out. I'm not incredibley interested in minimizing the amount of blood either or having it fade away.
However, I really appreciate the response and will use this as temp work around.

PixelTheif, unless I am misunderstanding you when you paste actives with alpha channels into the background they DO maintain their alpha channgel. I know this because before I went on the use HWA I was able to do this.
Unfortunately, I'm not at this point savvy enough to write my own pixel shader. Granted, I could learn for the sake of solving this problem. But I was hoping for a quicker fix than that.

For now I think I've discovered a solution. It doesn't directly address the problem but work to the same effect none-the-less. I'm going to remove the blood actives I have currently with the alpha channels and replaces them with blood textures which are red blood on a white background. Then using the "Dark" effect I can completely knockout the white and blend the red into the background by way of the surface object to achieve that bloody look.

If anybody has a better way of doing this or a way to address the original problem I'd be very happy to know.

Thanks for the answers, and thanks for any future responses.

[xmetalxthrasherx]

Unfortunately my idea doesn't work either because, as I've quickly realized, when I paste the image with the white background onto the surface object, even though the effect is there, that doesn't prevent the image with the white background have its white background overlap the previously pasted images and thus obscuring them making the area of the newly pasted blood image a transparent square with the new blood image on top =/ Can anybody helping me. This is really become a hassle, but I absolutely need HWA and i absolutely need blood to be render but not at an active.

[Yves]

The issue here, however, is that I can't seem to find a way to also blit the alpha map of the active I'm blitting. So I lose the alpha transparency for that pasted active.

I cannot reproduce this problem, just tried to paste an active object with alpha as backdrop and that worked.

When I paste an active object with a shader applied into the background my game immediately crashes.

I can't reproduce it either.

Could you post or send me an example?

[xmetalxthrasherx]

The issue here, however, is that I can't seem to find a way to also blit the alpha map of the active I'm blitting. So I lose the alpha transparency for that pasted active.

I cannot reproduce this problem, just tried to paste an active object with alpha as backdrop and that worked.

When I paste an active object with a shader applied into the background my game immediately crashes.

I can't reproduce it either.

Could you post or send me an example?

When I get the opportunity I'll send you a pm of the mfa or exe or something, if you're interested. Thanks.

[Yves]

MFA please, no EXE, thanks!

[xmetalxthrasherx]

MFA please, no EXE, thanks!

Okay, no problem. It was just because I was thinking since I have looki's photoshop shaders. Well, come to think of it, you probably do too. Yeah, I'll send you the mfa as soon as I get the chance to, well actually, I'll spare you all the extra stuff and just send you an mfa of the problem reproduced.