01 Ok, this is the first installment of the alpha plane tutorial called the free and easy way. We are going to learn to create a scene with a white background, bring it into an image editor, create and alpha mask, and then bring image and alpha mask into Vue to create an alpha plane. Some of you might look at the picture above and say "Paul, that's a cherry tree in Vue, why do I want to make an alpha plane of that if Vue generates those trees easily??". Well, a quick answer to that question is, look at the polygon count. You'll notice that it's almost 350,000 polygons. 3 of those trees in your scene and you got yourself over a million polygons wihtout even trying. Most woodland scenes require more than 3 trees, so alpha planes is the way to populate your scene with over a 100 trees and your computer won't even know it. :) So, let's go to the next step....

02 Ok, the first thing you want to do is select your sun, right click on the orange box on the bottom and select "no cast shadows"

03 Next you want to right click on the orange box above and select "no lens flare"

04 Now click on the atmosphere menu and select atmosphere editor. We want to create an artificial situation here where there is light all around this tree. Set the light settings with the same numbers I have here.

05 Next click on the ambient light color and set it all the way to white on top.

06 Select your ground. Assign it the "flat white" color. Double click on the color sphere to get the Material editor to come up and right click on the white color box. When the menu comes up click on edit color map.

07 When this menu comes up, right click on current color. When the small scree comes up, click on edit color.

08 You'll get this screen and go to your hue and sat box and type in 255.

09 Go back to your main screen and render the picture to final. You'll get something that looks like this. Notice the color of the bark. That's the real color of the bark, not being tainted by shadows or light colors. Also, the leaves are that color. Save the picture, exported as a jpg.

10 Open up your tree in favorite or available image editor. The first thing you want to do is shapen the picture 1 pixel. It will work wonders for clarity's sake. See how nice this one looks and you can see the texture on the bark and eveythign??? :)

11 Then were going to use a color mask. Now different image editors will handle this differently, so your screen will not match mine.. But the idea is, you want to sample the white background, so that then a mask will be generated highlighting everythign that is white in that picture. I'm using photopaint for this purpose.

12. Once the mask is generated, you're going to get the marching ants all around anything that is white in the picture, as you see here.

13. Next you want to save the mask, and this will become your alpha mask. ONce again, things will differ from editor to editor, but the thing to observe here is what this looks like. The object is black and the background is white. This is the way it has to be done for Vue d'Esprit. In other programs, it's the reverse.

14. So, after you save it, you're now the proud owner of an alpha mask that you can use to generate an alpha plane. (at this point, don't be afraid to pat yourself in the back, it's allowed... :) )

15. Go back into Vue, select the primitives icon and choose alpha plane and you get the window you see here. Now load your picture of the tree in the color picture and your alpha mask in the alpha picture box and click ok...

16. Resize and position the alpha plane, your camera, till you get something that looks nice. And there you have it!! A perfect alpha plane in Vue. Now look at the lower right hand corner. Notice that it says 4 polygons. Now if I didn't tell you, and you didn't see this tutorial, you wouldn't know that was an alpha plane. Now to make things realistic, if you're going to make a large woodland scene, render various trees in various shapes, distort them, etc, so that you wind up with 6 or 7 alpha planes of completely diferent "looking" trees, even if they're the same kind of trees. That way, when you have 200 of them in your scene, it will really look like a forest. Remember 200 trees is only 800 polygons. :) Stay tuned for the next series of these tutorials called: Alpha Planes Part 2: Things get Ugly, where you will learn how to extract an image that's inside of another picture, and create an alpha plane, from that. In Alpha Planes Part 3: Things get less ugly, but ugly still, how to create an alpha plane for objects that have a lot details on their edges.

Man,great! Very clear. Now I know what I did wrong with the river Hudson thing using colour pictures in both options. Gonna make a new try ;) Thanks a lot. Myske

Wonderfully detailed, Paul! Nice work and you've earned yourself another place in our Archive Tips Collection. Looking forward to seeing parts 2 and 3. :)

Only somehow, i don't get it to a Mask. Using PSP7 wich is different ;( Keep on trying.... Myske

Thanks Varian, I hope that it will be of help to people in the future.. Myske, I'm glad you liked it, Varian might be able to illuminate the mystery of color masks in paint shop pro?? How about it?? :)

Tried a bit and think I'm on the right track, only a bit transparity is left. Maybe change a bit in some options. Myske

Beautifully detailed and informative Paul! Thank you :))

Thanks for this tute, Now I can try to do it properly!

Paul, This is an excellent tutorial! Thank you! Until now I've been "wingin' it" in Photoshop. Now I know the correct way. And the Polygon count....wow, I never even thought of that! I guess similar steps can be used for images I want to use in VUE, from another source, ie: photos that I'd like to make part of my image? Thanks, John

Hi there Myske, I'll look at Psp and see if I can figure out how to do color masks in there... Beck, thanks, I'm glad you like it and hope it helps Jilly, glad to be of help John, absolutely, the whole idea of alpha planes really is so that you can bring in different images either that you find in image libraries, or as the next tutorial will show, that you extract from an already existing image... And because they're not models, they take up virtually no space.. That's why I got this program to create trees in Painter.. I can create very beutiful, unique, realistic trees, and bring them in and it's always 4 polygons...

Ok Myske, go to the site below, page 2 of that tutorial will show you how to create the mask, just do the reverse, the image black, the background white... http://mardiweb.com/web/masks5/masks501.htm

Hey Paul, this is really concise and detailed, great job. And thanks! :)

Oh by the way, I put a link to this in the Tutorials section here. I hope you don't mind. it has my name on it, because Iw as the one who uploaded it, but you are credited in the description which is right there too. If you'd like to upload the URL yourself, so your name is in the "uploaded by" part I can delete mine easily enough. I just thought that this ought to be there right away. :)

That's ok Mike, as long as it winds up in the tutorial section, it doesn't matter, which ever way is easier... :)Thanks for putting it up so quickly...

Actually the only thing I would add, which I learned from Guitta earlier is, delete the ground plane and you don't have to worry about making the ground white... So basically, skip steps 6 through 8 and delete the ground plane..

No problem Paul, it's a great tutorial, and I'm really looking forward to "getting ugly". ;) But, the tutorial went to the very end of the tutorials list, on the last page! Generally around here, everything new goes to the front of the list, but evidently nt in the Tutorials section. I don't like that at all, and I made a post to the admins about it. Now I wonder how much other grerat tutorials I've missed, by not paying attention to the upload dates.... Hey, looking forward to part 2! :)

It's alright, it got there, so eventually someone will look at it.. :) Yeah, part two is how to get alpha planes not related to Vue.. :)

Hi Paul, This has been a great help man! I do have another issue maybe you can help me with. Once I bring the alpha plane back into VUE... do you have any tips on positioning it? It always takes me forever to get the correct side of it facing the camera. I keep turning it and twisting it, and usually end up with the "black" side to the cam, or it just disappears altogether. Any advice? Thanks for your help, John

Well, usually, if you use the alpha plane icon form the primitives menu, it should bring it in right side up.... In other words, if you see it right side up and facing you when you're bringing in the picture and the mask, then it should be right side up and facing the camera... Problem is that camera always comes in at a 45 degree angle... So, I straighten it and then straighten the alpha plane... Let me know if this helps, or if I misunderstood the question... I know that in Vue 2 it was really a pain, but in Vue 4, it has gotten considerably easier... Let me know...

I tried to print the directions for alpha planes ...didn't work..can you send me a pdf file? It't hard to remember all the steps while working in vue. dpoosch@ameritech.net

Thanx for the alpha plane tute - didn't realise they were so useful :) I use PSP7, and as far as I'm aware, you use the selection tool to select, then choose "save as alpha channel"? I might be wrong, I haven't used that much...since I never knew how lol Are alpha channels the same? JoeBlack

I'm not that familiar with PSP... Chances are that it might work, the important thing is that you have a white background and that the image is blackened out... That's thekey for Vue d'Esprit...

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JoeBlack, you don't need to do it as compliacte with imports and exports. Just do it only inside Vue, very easy, very fast. See the thread above:-) Guitta