Alpha Transparency in the Development Releases

[marty4286]

Last month, a windows update (the only culprit that made sense) caused 1.5.4 to be unbearable to use by screwing up antialiasing -- it began applying it to the menu text (making it extremely blurred) and stopped applying it to the 3D geometry. The only thing that fixed this issue was uninstalling 1.5.4 and installing 2.05. Perfect! The new UI looked gorgeous and it even ran faster for me.

The only downside is that alpha transparency in textures is now rendered as solid black by the geometry and show image windows. Is there anything I can do to restore transparency? I reinstalled 1.5.4 briefly and it still shows up transparent there (the antialiasing problem is still present as well, so reverting is a no-go)

[micheus]

It's all OK here.
Using a png file with alpha channel:


Did you tried to find a graphic card update?

[marty4286]

Yeah, all my drivers are up to date. I'm running Windows 10, GeForce 960M, Intel i5 6300HQ, 8GB of RAM

Just to be exact, this is what's happening to me:

2.05 (what I've been using for a month)



1.54 (what I can no longer stand to use because of the antialiasing issues that cropped up out of nowhere):



And for reference, the new test release from a couple of days ago:

[micheus]

can you share that image?

[marty4286]

Here it is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B29QA_i...sp=sharing

[dgud]

Hmm, the png loader have changed between the releases, in 2.* we use the image loader
supplied by wxWidgets which uses the standard libpng libray i.e. from the offical standard release.

In 1.5.4. and earlier we used a png-loader I had written in erlang, so if anything the one
in old wings should be wrong and the new one better
So that is strange I will take a look at the png and how we handle it in new wings code.

[marty4286]

I created that png in Photoshop CS2 and I am beginning to suspect that:

1) That old version of PS saved it wrong

2) I formatted it wrong in the first place (and that PS is capable of creating a png that Wings 2.* likes if only I could figure out the correct settings)

I will try out different image editors tomorrow when I wake up.

Edit: I saved it as a .tif real quick and tried it out. It works. That means it's a problem with PS CS2 and pngs (or my settings), and not a problem with Wings.

[micheus]

Yes. It can be.
I just create a new one using Gimp it doesn't have the problem.

Interesting that comparing the image property of your image and the other I posted they don't have any difference (except by the dimension )

[marty4286]

I don't want to buy the new Photoshop CC because that kind of licensing turns me off. I guess it's time for me to migrate to Gimp

[dgud]

Thanks for the image, the image only have 2bits alpha channel, on/off, also used as a mask.
wxWidgets thus handled it as a mask and not an alpha channel, and wings didn't handle masks
at all.

tl;dr will be fixed in next release.