Hi y'all, I'm pretty much a noob with Bryce, so I'm not even sure this is possible, but I need to retain an alpha channel in my Bryce renders. Is there a way to do that? What I'm wanting to do is render a variety of pine trees on a plain background, then open the render in Photoshop or PSP, and extract out the trees to use as background scenery on a book cover. I've tried rendering against plain gray, but there's no alpha channel, so I get huge gray halo around all the little pine needles when I mask out the gray. So I could really use an alpha channel. The working cover image so far is an assembly of Poser renders and will be heavily postworked. Any help would be greatly appreciated :-) Thanks!

There's your problem, you're starting with poser renders. I'd love to help, but i don't know how to do it. I'm inclined to say it can't be done, but i'm not sure. Try it against plain black, maybe. You're probably gonna have to get in there and fine-tune the wand selection, whether you like it or not.

I think this is what you want, but not sure.

Thanks much gregsin! I'll play with it and see what I get. REALLY appreciate your help :-) I didn't even know where to start. There's your problem, you're starting with poser renders. Thanks so much for your kind words, Slak. Sure is nice to venture into a new forum to such a warm reception.

Because of aliasing you will always get a little section where part of the green of the tree and the gray of the background overlap on a pixel. because this is a gray green mix the crop tool will not select it if you select on the gray background. The cure is to render at least twice or maybe three times the size of your final image. Apply the trees at double the final size in your photo application. Do a gaussian blur of 1 which blends each neighboring pixel 50%. Reduce the image size by 50% bilinear sample which also resharpens the image. You just weighted averaged your foreground and background images into the gray border and wiped it out.

Thanks electroglyph ;-) I'll try that, too :-)

I think the tipoff was the 'stupid' part..;) gildedgecko..we don't consider any questions as 'stupid' at all..that seems to be a Poser forum tradition I've never understood. We just take a lot of flak from Poser users sometimes (though many of us straddle the fence..;), don't let it rattle you, ask as many questions as you want, and we'll help out..even me..;)

To get a proper render mask make sure the trees aren't grouped, otherwise you'll get a complete black screen. If they are grouped do not select the group, select the trees individually. Easiest way to do that is the shape icons at the bottom, click the tree icon and all the trees will be selected. Same applies to getting render masks for metaballs.

If your doing a mask render, then using it to create your mask in Photoshop. There are many options that will let you adjust your mask area, after it is selected. ( I still use PS 5.5 ) Check all the options under the Select menu. Modify will let you expand, contract, smooth the mask area by a set amount of pixels. There's also options for feathering and select by color range.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=751365

Thanks y'all! I played with it for a good ten hours yesterday, and decided that PINE trees were not the best sort of tree to try it with, the bazillion needles each needing a mask adjustment and all. So I eneded up just painting the suckers. I AM going to try it on a nice maple tree or something, though, just so I can do it. Again, thanks for all your help! I learned a lot just following your suggestions! The finished cover is at the link attached (1/3 actual size).

Very nice. Don't seem to be any shadows, is that on purpose?