Hair alpha turned to alpha mask?

Marine Kelley repo owner

I didn’t do anything with alpha masks, but it looks to me like on the first picture the user is wearing a blindfold with vision restriction spheres. I need info about the technique used, either camdraw or setsphere. Normally neither modifies the alpha mode of any surface but setsphere does have a problem with alpha textures, be they on unrigged surfaces, rigged surfaces or even particles. Camdraw doesn’t have this problem, this is a feature that took me a long time to tune up since the camdraw spheres are also apha-blended, but it works well.

I also spend my time with a blindfold set with setsphere (two, in fact) and my hair looks normal, except its alpha blended parts do not show against the black background, but at least the whole hair does not switch to alpha masked.

Another possible culprit could be the distance. Beyond a certain distance, normally the range of the vision spheres, alpha-blended surfaces are simply not rendered anymore, because if they were they would be rendered over the spheres, defeating the purpose. They are not switched to alpha-masked, they are simply no longer rendered. Maybe that could be what makes the girl’s hair look like this when blindfolded, if her hair is made of two layers like a lot of hairs out there : an alpha-masked under-layer and an alpha-blended over-layer, roughly of the same shape, but giving more volume and variety. Just thinking out loud here.

Bottom line, there is nothing in my code that switches an alpha-blended surface to an alpha-masked one, it either renders it alpha-blended or not at all, in the circumstances explained above.

2022-08-14T19:59:41+00:00

Comments (2)

Marine Kelley repo owner
I didn’t do anything with alpha masks, but it looks to me like on the first picture the user is wearing a blindfold with vision restriction spheres. I need info about the technique used, either camdraw or setsphere. Normally neither modifies the alpha mode of any surface but setsphere does have a problem with alpha textures, be they on unrigged surfaces, rigged surfaces or even particles. Camdraw doesn’t have this problem, this is a feature that took me a long time to tune up since the camdraw spheres are also apha-blended, but it works well.

I also spend my time with a blindfold set with setsphere (two, in fact) and my hair looks normal, except its alpha blended parts do not show against the black background, but at least the whole hair does not switch to alpha masked.

Another possible culprit could be the distance. Beyond a certain distance, normally the range of the vision spheres, alpha-blended surfaces are simply not rendered anymore, because if they were they would be rendered over the spheres, defeating the purpose. They are not switched to alpha-masked, they are simply no longer rendered. Maybe that could be what makes the girl’s hair look like this when blindfolded, if her hair is made of two layers like a lot of hairs out there : an alpha-masked under-layer and an alpha-blended over-layer, roughly of the same shape, but giving more volume and variety. Just thinking out loud here.

Bottom line, there is nothing in my code that switches an alpha-blended surface to an alpha-masked one, it either renders it alpha-blended or not at all, in the circumstances explained above.
- 2022-08-14T19:59:41+00:00
Chorazin Allen reporter
Thanks for the analysis, I’ll pass this along to get more info!
- 2022-08-15T07:28:02+00:00
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