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Jun 1, 2006, 7:38pm

I'm not sure, but I think I might have found a bug. I've been playing with
transparent gifs, and when I use them in AW they have a dark outline
(http://www.scentednectar.com/aw/temp-01.jpg). When I look at them close
up, I can see that the outline is actually AW background texture showing
through where it shouldn't (http://www.scentednectar.com/aw/temp-02.jpg).
Has anyone else found this?

--
Scented Nectar
http://www.scentednectar.com/aw/

Jun 1, 2006, 8:40pm

Yes I had the same problem with my reed grass. It does the masking bug as I
expected except this time is cuts holes through ALL objects, not just masked
objects like it does normally. It sorta makes gif/png mask support useless
:\


[View Quote]

Jun 1, 2006, 8:46pm

[View Quote] > I'm not sure, but I think I might have found a bug. I've been playing with
> transparent gifs, and when I use them in AW they have a dark outline
> (http://www.scentednectar.com/aw/temp-01.jpg). When I look at them close
> up, I can see that the outline is actually AW background texture showing
> through where it shouldn't (http://www.scentednectar.com/aw/temp-02.jpg).
> Has anyone else found this?
>

That is a well known limitation of AW and it exists in 3.6 too. I don't remember to the explanation but something has to be done with the rendering speed versus quality.
Took me about a week of work to find that the (then) newly added tbtree models (by tunablues and dreamer2) are OK, just the rendering can not be done properly.
You can check it out: tbtree001.rwx and it uses jpg and bmp for mask.

--
Andras
"It's MY computer" (tm Steve Gibson)

Jun 1, 2006, 9:34pm

It doesn't exactly exist in 3.6. In 3.6 it would only cause that glitch to
objects that had a mask of some sort, which isn't really a big deal most of
the time. But here, it does it for *all* objects. I made an example at AW
2309.91S 4008.44E 0.22a 315. It's quite bad :\

- Com

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Jun 1, 2006, 9:51pm

I was so hoping this problem would have been fixed with the new browser. I
have never seen this problem in any other 3d world(sl, there, or any game)
so I know it can be solved.

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Jun 1, 2006, 10:05pm

SL has it too, exept its fixed by default. But it can be enabled if you
want it.

It's quite a useful "bug" and exploited commonly in public build worlds.
It's great for cutting holes in walls for windows and such. I hope AWI knows
what they're doing if they decide to fix it completely ;P

Though modern graphic engines don't suffer from it really, a good deal of
games from around 2003 and earlier had it. Read about it on some article at
tomshardwareguide.

- Com

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Jun 1, 2006, 10:36pm

It's a drag, but I'm still thrilled to be able to use 'create picture' on
transparent gifs. I guess I'll just have to build so as they are seen from
a bit of a distance.

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Jun 1, 2006, 10:36pm

[View Quote] If the mask bug gets fixed, things will look much more realistic. I like
those new tbtrees but I never noticed a masking problem on them before. Now
going close up to them, I can see some problems too. What's weird now is
that my transparent gif is now looking better. The cut-through is gone and
there's just a fuzzy halo around it instead of the sky like I saw earlier.



--
Scented Nectar
http://www.scentednectar.com/aw/

Jun 4, 2006, 1:29am

Selanit discovered a temporary workaround for the gif/png mask problem.

All you do is apply a rotation to any troublesome objects that are being cut
through by the masking. You can just make it a micro-rotation, one that's
too small to see. Or you can also just make an AAA refreshing command which
applys a short micro-rotation burst to all named objects in the scene every
10 seconds or so. It doesn't have to continue rotating. Just needs the
rotation applied anytime after the scene has loaded.

Though I wouldn't recommend using that workaround because it sounds like a
draw order conflict, not the common mask bug. Which means it could be fixed
sooner or later with a patch.

- Com


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Jun 4, 2006, 2:25pm

[View Quote] This bug has been known for quite some time, and was never fixed because
of performance issues. (AW really needs a better transparency algorithm!).

I have found that objects behind the images that are newer than the
objects with the images, don't get cut through. You can try this both
with GIFs and PNGs.

The best example I have of how this works is to place:
http://www.theenginerd.com/images/watpix.png on a picture object (this
is a 1 pixel x 1 pixel semi-transparent PNG file.) You will notice that
everything behind it has dissapeared. Now if you move the objects
behind it and move them back and exit the object dialog, they will
reappear for everyone. :)

Jun 4, 2006, 4:47pm

If it's converted to the standard RAS format in the active cache, then why
would it be any laggier than current masks? The regular ol' jpg/bmp based
masking isn't too bad. Makes polygons about twice as laggy if you mask them,
but I think that's reasonable enough.


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Jun 4, 2006, 5:23pm

> I have found that objects behind the images that are newer than the
> objects with the images, don't get cut through. You can try this both
> with GIFs and PNGs.

That sounds like a good workaround. When I'm finished gardening with my gif
flowers, I'll just move and move back the background walls etc. That will
make them newer. Thanks. :)


--
Scented Nectar
http://www.scentednectar.com/aw/

Jun 6, 2006, 8:13pm

I finally got around to testing this out today and couldn't recreate that. I
rebuilt the objects to make them newer, but they still got cut through. The
only 100% functional solution I found was to apply a rotation to them, as
noted in my above reply with coords to the demo area.

Do you have a demo area I could check out though?

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