I'm working on a game, and rendering the 2D images in Poser. Unfortunately, I get a halo of dots, in whatever background color I use. When I try converting the background to a transparent color, I still have a halo of dots around the character, model, shadow, etc. And even if I use the same background color as the transparent color, I still get a halo that's almost the same color as the transparent color. The image is from an in-game screenshot, note the dark blue halo arounf the character. I didn't even try cleaning up the shadow.

Couple of things to try. 1.)Crank up the shadow map dial for the camera you're using to render the images. The default number is usually too low to render good shadows. 2.)Check your "Preview" colors for the figure and the camera. If one of them is the same color blue as that shadow. Try changing it to a neutral color like white. ScottA

warzog,

I am not sure that you can completely get rid of the "dots."

This is called the "edge effect" and is generated at the pixel level. (see pic above)

A dark background will reduce the effect but not completely eliminate it.

Even using anti-alias will not totally eliminate this effect. (see center pic on lower half above)

Anti-alias is not used in animated games because more pixels are required to produce the color gradation.

The only way I know to reduce the "halo effect" is to increase the overall number of pixels used to produce the pic. This may not be possible in your game because it would cause the game to run more slowly.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

The halo comes from anti-aliasing. These are the graduated semi-transparent pixels that are interpreted as solid by applications/engines/formats that do not support alpha. Try rendering without anti-aliasing. For a more refined interior... render twice, once with anti-aliasing, one without. use the non-anti-alias as the edge pixels and the anti-aliased as the interior. Lots `o' composite work in Photoshop to be sure. C'est la vie.

Thanx all... I've cranked the shadow map, and it doesn't help. I've used just about everycolor background I can think of. I've placed "fill" lights all around the characters. I've tried turning anti-aliasing off/on. I was hoping I'd missed something, but it seems I didn't. The only thing that seems to work, and it's time consuming as all hell, is to custom make masks. I render the character completely white, with the background black. Assemble the animation into a filmstrip, change the black to red, and the white to dark red, and then edit the pallet to get rid of every color, then return the image to black and white, and paste over the color image. Oh, well. Thanx anywho.

Hello, are you rendering to an avi file, or to sequential images? If you are rendering to an avi, set the background color of your Poser scene to black, then render the avi. Then set the foreground color to white, and change the document display setting to "sillouette" and re-render to a new avi, with the render settings to current display. Check the anti-alias box. This will give you a new black and white mask as an .avi. If you are compositing in premiere, you can just set the transparency of the original avi to alpha channel, since Poser saves the alpha with the avi. Or you could use the mask avi as a track matte. This should kill your crispy mask edges. If you are rendering to separate frames, you can use tif files as numbered stills since the tif format retains the alpha info as well. Hope this helps. I have done this countless times. If you have any specific questions, feel free to email me. Co(V)(V)union communion@rocketmail.com

Communion: I discussed this over on the Jasc PaintShop Pro forum. They suggested the Tiff format too, but it didn't help. Thanx anyway.

Adobe Photoshop has "Remove White Matte," "Remove Black Matte" and "Defringing" functions to remove the fringe line. I don't know about PSP because I use Photoshop on a Mac. But you need a program that does proper matting and compositing.

We Have a winner!!!! Paintshop Pro 7 Does have those commands! And they do exactly what you said! Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!!Thank You!! BTW-Thank You!!

Cool! Glad to be of help!