Does anybody else have this problem? My alpha channel to PNG export is plugged in and yet when I open up in Photoshop cs6, alpha is not there. Yet it is there in the bitmap export. Png export it is not there. Both are 8 bits/chan.
Thanks,
monks
This is a strange one. Here’s the problem: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1095996
Made strange by the fact that Photoshop displays alphas in all other formats from World Machine just fine. Photoshop somehow merges the alpha in pngs into the rgb channels- not sure quite how they do it but it makes the whole process of working with png alphas opaque- no pun intended.
So, that suggests to me that the pngs could be ok to use in other programs. I’ll have to try one in the app I’m using tomorrow.
monks
I solved my problem. My problem had its root with the layout generator and my roads. I had to change the world extents after creating the roads in layout. When you do this all of the shapes go out of kilter with the terrain. There is no accurate way to rescale them at the moment. So to get around this I had to create another tmd which resampled the terrain and textrures to get to the new world extents. But when you do that with the textures, you lose the alpha channel that was output from the first tmd. Don’t know why that is. So I had to output the alpha as a 8 bit bmp herightmap from the first tmd (from the splat converter output) and plug that into the bitmap alpha in the 2nd tmd. The alpha is then rewritten into the final texture bitmap output.
A resize to world extents button for layouts would be very useful. I could have avoided the need for 2 tmds. Photoshop not handling pngs correctly is another issue! Sorry to triple post here but it might be useful for any one else that has similar problems.
monks