Digital Art Zone

ok… i’m pretty used to DS renders not especially looking like what’s onscreen… but his is rediculous!

I’m still playing with billboards and being moderatley successful, but this one has me stumped.

Image #1 is the scene with a billboard as it appears on screen.  As you see, the mask fits, etc. etc.

Image #2 is how it renders!  And I have no idea where that masking is coming from!

I’ve tried setting the opacity mask to “none” and browsing back to the image on my drive, i’ve tried “reload images” till i wore the button out…. and i have no clue *where* that mask is coming from—while i have some other masks in the scene, none are shaped like that!

DS 4.0

Any input would be appreciated.

TIA

What type of image are you using ie PNG, TIFF, TGA , as it looks like it has an alpha channel that DS can see in the viewport, but that 3Delight can’t use.

i’m using jpg’s…. i’ve already discovered that DS does not play well with png’s

:8

Is their any opacity map listed when you load the item? From what I’m seeing the mask is not made properly. Maybe even inverted.

yes… it shows one loaded, and it looks like the sorta ‘star shaped’ one that is correct….  as i said, i have no idea where the rendered version is coming from—it’s not the same map….

if the map were not made properly, or inverted, wouldn’t it appear incorrect in the screen version???

:8

If you right click the Opacity map you should get an option to Browse to: then Select the file listed as the mask. That should take you to the folder that holds the file. You can then load it into your 2D art program and see if things are not right.

well.. as sometimes happens, i accidentally stumbled across a solution .....

i decided to look at it unobstructed by the soldier and the gun… but being too lazy to move them, i went to a different camera slightly to the side….

this time when i rendered it, it was correct….

thinking that the different angle of view between the two cameras was the key, i went back to the original camera and ‘wiggled’ the plan slightly on it’s y-axis and rendered it… and it was correct.

so while i found the solution in this case, i still wonder *what* was going on… i’ve used billboards before and rotated them untill the image was nearly flat, but it still rendered, just mishaped…. and in this case, i moved it probably less than 10 degrees to make it function correctly.

also, in past experience, moving a billboard untill it was distorted still did not affect the shape of the mask, where in this case it obviously did….

anyway…..