Transparent backgrounds?

[chablis97]

Hi BB,
I'm having a go at your skin comp.  Is there any way in the Skintool currently to make some of the skin background images (and their boarders) transparent, eg, make menu.bmp and BLANK.BMP invisible?

[Woody]

Chablis

    I don't think anything like that is available for backgrounds, The buttons have a transparency that the program reads as the first pixel (upper left ), any pixels that color match that one become transparent.

Woody     

[Barcrest]

Woody is correct, if you don't want a back image for the menu or it appear to hve a back image then you need to make an image for it that matches the back drop? Does that make any sense?

[d78]

Chablis

    I don't think anything like that is available for backgrounds, The buttons have a transparency that the program reads as the first pixel (upper left ), any pixels that color match that one become transparent.

Woody     

That would explain those weird little pinholes I'm getting in my button images. HA HA!

Thanks!

[eist1]

The trick to get rid of the pinholes, is to make the background color the same as the edge of the image or the color the image is over, because the pinhole color you are seeing is the background color.

[chablis97]

Woody is correct, if you don't want a back image for the menu or it appear to hve a back image then you need to make an image for it that matches the back drop? Does that make any sense?

Yes that makes sense.  I thought this was probably the case.  Unfortunately this makes it very difficult to use textured background images on a skin.  You have to try and match up the menu back image (for example) with the background skin image exactly pixel for pixel.  Anyone got any solutions to this? (apart from using plain backgrounds )

[d78]

Woody is correct, if you don't want a back image for the menu or it appear to hve a back image then you need to make an image for it that matches the back drop? Does that make any sense?

Yes that makes sense.  I thought this was probably the case.  Unfortunately this makes it very difficult to use textured background images on a skin.  You have to try and match up the menu back image (for example) with the background skin image exactly pixel for pixel.  Anyone got any solutions to this? (apart from using plain backgrounds )

What i just did is change the top left pixel to a wild color that is nowhere else in your background image. I'm using an limage that has lots of reds, so i put a bright blue-green pixel in the upper left corner. worked great.

[chablis97]

Then you use this different colour pixel to line the two images up?

[Woody]

Chablis

What d78m is trying to say is that the tranparent portion of the jpg will be all those pixels that match the first pixel, any pixel with the same color assignment anywhere on the jpg will become transparent.
So to avoid the pinholes set the first pixel to a color that is not in use anywhere else (not in the current pallet) and matches to that pixel will be impossible except where wanted.

Woaaa .... That is the long way of saying it.

Woody

[Barcrest]

What chablis is refering to is the back images on the menu bar and player.... Chablis there is a button to grab these for you.

Look at the bottom of the texture panel window. Grab MENU and PLAYER Image. When you have the menu and player lined up where you want them click that and it will cookie cut the images for you.

[chablis97]

Cool, I'll give it a go.

Cheers

[chablis97]

Barry,
Do transparent backgrounds work on Slider_Button.bmp?  I cant seem to get transparency to work with my slider button.

[Barcrest]

Transparancy is not support in any part of the application with the exception of the buttons. These work as described above.