I have just bought the Xfrog prehistoric plants DVD. They are great plants, and are in .vob format among others. The problem I'm having is that some of the plants use transmapped leaves with premultiplied alphas (i.e. the .tif file is on a transparent background rather than having a separate alpha channel). Vue doesn't seem to like these at all, rendering the leaves with black edges where the object should be transparent.

So, am I missing something obvious to prevent this? A solution I found is to set global transparency to 100% then use the leaf texture as a transmap, but this requires some manipulation in the function editor. Is there an easier way?

Steve

Which version of Vue are you using, Spedler? I can load premultiplied alpha TIFs inside Vue 5 (both Infinite and Esprit) without problems. Detail me with your Vue version and your procedure, I will assist you. Orio (modeler of Prehistoric - thanks for the nice words!)

I just bought the Mediterranean and Japanese collections. About 30% of the .vob files on the disk wouldn't load into Vue. (The thumbnails were black). They hung the program. The files were dated '04 so that might have been the problem. So I loaded the .3ds versions. I had to open the materials editor and reload the leaf .tif files for each one. I got the msg box saying there was an alpha map (or whatever) and did I want to use it. Selected Yes and the alphas loaded just fine. I'm using Vue5Infinite.

www.lingriffin.com

Hi Orio,

Thanks for the reply! I'm using V5 Infinite 5.08 build 278365. Loading up Pr18m.vob (Tempskya medium) gets what you see in the attached image. This was rendered in Final.

It seems as if the alpha is causing the problem, and as I say this can be fixed with some tinkering in the function editor.

Steve

Lingrif, Thanks for this. Yes, same thing happens here with the thumbnails - just black, no image. I tried the .3ds model but same result :-(

Steve

Aha! Sorted it. Lingrif's trick of reloading the leaf texture does indeed ask if I want to use the transparency info. Only one question... should this really be necessary? Feels like a V5i import bug rather than a plant problem.

Steve

If it's a bug, it's been around a long time - I had to do this with Xfrog plants back in Vue4 days. I'm just glad the workaround worked for you. But as to why the .vobs didn't load - I'm going to look into that.

Lin

Message edited on: 01/18/2006 18:02

www.lingriffin.com

Funny, I just bought the tropical and Usa southwest libraries, and they load ok in my Vue5I.

Spedler, sorry to reply just now. For some reason I must have missed the notification email for this thread. I have made the Prehistoric models but I have not made their conversions to the VOB format, someone else did. I will look into that. Orio

Attached Link: http://www.xfrog.com

Hi Lingrif could you detail which models in Japan and Medi, hang Vue. can you copy them to harddrive ok, or is the cdrom acting strange. and which exact build of Vue are you using. all VOB are made with Vue 4,and so far we have decided to support all Vue customers by staying with building VOB in Vue 4. we cannot guarantee the thumbs will appear correct in Vue 5 Infinite but they certainly should not hang Vue, so please tell me which models. about the transparency info missing, i suspect a bug in Vue 5 Infinite import but we are going to check all of this on Monday. i guess the current workaround is to reload the texture and tell Vue it is transparent. sorry for the trouble. we will sort this out. please give us as much info as you can. between our internal dev and Orio, we will hopefully find a solution. stewart mcsherry product manager greenworks organic software www.greenworks.de www.xfrog.com

hi i think we will issue a patch for prehistoric owners. if you have prehistoric could you please email me at mcsherry@xfrog.com