Alpha Channels makes me confused :/

[Outcast]

Can someone explain Alpha Channels and how to work with it or point to a tutorial because i feel generally lost when adding alpha channels to my pictures and animations smirk

I know how to add the AC but after i do it it seems to complicate things very much for me if i just want to manipulate or edit the picture in any way. Some times it dont let me add paint to some areas, and others it seems to add black dots or borders when i move the picture to animate. I am sure this is logical but i cant really get a grip on it. Should Alpha Channels be the very last thing you add to your image after its fully animated and done or is it possible to still edit it easely without to much work to fix the Alpha Channels?

[BrashMonkey]

keep your life simple, DONT use alpha channels in MMF's editor. You should not be making the art for your game in MMF, you should be using somehting like Pro-motion,Gimp, Photoshop, etc.

Especially Gimp or Photoshop if you want the benifits of alpha with none of the pain that using alpha in tMMF's editor would cause.

Alpha is simply the amount of translucency each pixel has. If you use an art package that has alpha support built inti its brushes, scaling, etc, then it will all seem very natural to you. MMF's graphics editor is much better than nothing, BUT should only be used to make temp art so you can "code" your game faster. Make the real art in software dedicated to creating images.

[Jahkri]

Hi Outcast,

HolyMonkey is right. If you d' like to have a proper alpha-channel with your pictures or animation, then you should use the png-format, because it can store a clean and MMF-compatible Alpha-Channel. If you import an png-file with alpha into the picture-editor of MMF, it imports the Alpha-Channel automaticaly.

Create your Animations as PNG-Image-Sequence (ex. Anim0001.png, Anim0002.png, Anim0003.png, Anim0004.png, and so on...) in an external Animation-Programm that can export image-sequences of png-files.

I found that way the most reliable if you d' like to work with alpha-channels in MMF.

And you can edit the Alpha-Channel after import in the MMF-Editor. Just click on the "greek Alpha"-Symbol in the Picture-Editor.

Greets,

jahkri

[Konidias]

Also, since nobody pointed it out... the alpha channel is based off of a grayscale. Total black color means 100% transparent, total white color means 100% solid. So if you made the alpha all gray, you'd get 50% transparency.

Just think of alpha as a separate layer that tells a program what transparency to set each pixel, based off of that grayscale.

But yeah, I'd still avoid editing the alpha in MMF... even people who totally understand alpha channels still get confused using the MMF editor.