Shadows go bye-bye

Post by **dorpond** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:23 pm

This may be a user error.

I made a really nice frame with Photoshop to use in Token Tool. The frame I made has transparent shadows inside and outside the frame.

If I take that saved PNG frame (empty) and put it directly into Maptools, it displays the shadows nicely.

It is when I take that empty frame and use it in Token Tool where I experience problems. I fill the frame with a nice picture and save it. Now when I take the saved PNg frame filled with picture and use it in Maptools, the shadows are grey and no longer transparent.

Is Token Tool unable to figure out the transparency portion of my PNG?

Let me know if I am doing something wrong.

brisingre · Post by **brisingre** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 3:33 pm

hmm... it must have brokent recently. I have done this with the old one , ti was fine.

Post by **trevor** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 4:17 pm

Yeah, it should be handling that fine. In the most recent version, I put in a couple changes to the renderer and something might have broken.

Could you send your overlay to [email protected] and I'll take a look.

Post by **dorpond** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:40 am

Did you find anything friend?

Just wanted to make sure it wasn't me that was the broken wheel.

Post by **trevor** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:35 am

When I use the overlay on an image, it looks like it is doing the right thing. That is, the alpha shadows show up over the image.

It looks like you had a small image that you placed under the overlay that did not extend past the border. The overlay doesn't have a color that indicates transparent (255, 0, 255) so it is using white as the default background, which is what you are seeing around the edges of the token.

Vry recently indicated that it would be useful to have alpha outside of the core token, which is exactly what you are trying to do. When I get a chance I'll play around a bit and see if I can come up with a simple way to designate that.

Post by **dorpond** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:15 pm

Still confused what you are saying.

I am going to send you another frame. With that frame, I added a marine in photoshop. The background behind the marine is transparent. That is what I wanted:

http://gallery.rptools.net/main.php?g2_itemId=2081

Also in photoshop, I created another but with a semi-transparent background:

http://gallery.rptools.net/main.php?g2_itemId=2083

Again that looks great in MapTools.

Now when I take the same empty frame that I used for the above images and use that frame in Token Tool, it takes the transparent background and makes it white.

http://gallery.rptools.net/main.php?g2_itemId=2091

Notice how jaggy it looks to the ones I did in Photoshop too.

Is there something I am missing? To be honest with you, I am totally confused when you tell me things like 255,0,255. What am I supposed to look for in Photoshop when you tell me this?

Thanks for listening, help and understanding

Post by **trevor** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:31 pm

Ahh, ok, gotcha. For clarification, read the Creating New Overlays section at http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=tokentool:documentation, that will explain about the 255, 0, 255.

The problem is that the tokens were intended to have a solid background bounded by some overlay. The first step in the token composition is to make the background image solid, so that if you happened to have the overlay go off the edge of the image it would have a background.

I could make a toggle on the control panel whether to have a solid background or not. I'll add a tracker.

As for the jaggy-ness, Vry and I worked out a more accurate solution that has been coded but not released yet. I'll put in the solid background toggle feature then make a new release.