EQInterface Forums - a bit of a graphics ordeal

04-27-2003, 05:29 PM	#1
Veirna An Icepaw Kobold Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 86	a bit of a graphics ordeal i cannot figure out why it graphics display in game as having those little lines of dots on it... what could this be from? i save in photoshop - 32bit format not compressed (RLE) __________________

04-27-2003, 06:15 PM	#2
*Dolby* Lord Dolby of Veeshan Join Date: Jul 2002 Server: Veeshan Posts: 2,397	Moved to the correct forum for ya Last edited by Dolby : 04-27-2003 at 07:19 PM.

04-27-2003, 07:13 PM

Xymarra

Manaetic Prototype IX

Join Date: Sep 2002

Server: E'Ci

Posts: 501

I have noticed similar artifacts in my own UI wherever I am using transparency. I don't know which of EQ or my video card is the culprit, but it appears the game is using a very coarse alpha channel, maybe only 4 bits of alpha. I am running with 32bit color, so it really should be doing better than that.

Attached is an example with art from the paint program on top and from the game on bottom. In particular, you can see an odd dash pattern on the bottom of the thin yellow bar from the game example. The inventory icons also look flat in the game example and don't show the underlying texture as well as they ought.

Attached Images

alphaexample.jpg (130.2 KB, 83 views)

04-28-2003, 06:49 PM	#4
Veirna An Icepaw Kobold Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 86	was that a screenshot of in-game and then cut up and put into a collection? i just took a peek at my .tga file, and it doesn't have the dashes/dotted lines on it as shown in the above screenshot. so i am not sure why its happening. its obviously an EQ - rendering issue, but cannot find a way to overcome it.. it sucks though, my graphics look like poo !

04-30-2003, 10:06 PM

Xymarra

Manaetic Prototype IX

Join Date: Sep 2002

Server: E'Ci

Posts: 501

Quote:

was that a screenshot of in-game and then cut up and put into a collection?

Yes, the bottom half of that image was a collection of the transparent elements taken from the game. A whole screenshot would have been too annoying.

The top half of the image was built from the original source images, showing that the dashes and other artifacts are coming from EQ's rendering engine, not from the images.

The only way you are going to get rid of those artifacts is to mess around with the alpha values in your images. I think the artifacts appear because EQ is trying to dither alpha to match the exact values in your images. If you were to make the mask binary, as in alpha=0% or 100% and never anything in between, I think you would not see any more artifacts.

I just live with the artifacts, myself.

04-30-2003, 10:43 PM	#6
Haliken Quintessence of EQUI XML Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 773	I either tweak the graphics file, adding a second line of pixels next to the ones that are being distorted (this sometimes helps without screwing with the alpha values), or I use a bitmap if I'm dealing with all-or-nothing alpha values (0% or 100%, no in-betweens). For some reason I have had luck with bitmaps not getting the visual bugs, but am limited when it comes to transparency. Enok

05-02-2003, 01:16 AM	#7
Veirna An Icepaw Kobold Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 86	ok, that helps.. this is just a square so no transparency should be needed, so a bmp would work im guessing. thank you for the help guys

05-02-2003, 03:35 AM	#8
Haliken Quintessence of EQUI XML Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 773	It's important to note that you CAN have transparency with a bitmap, it's just limited to all or nothing. That terrible bright pinkish color, RGB 255,0,255 is transparent. I think it always is, I don't think it's determined by the bitmap's palette. Enok