Tutorial with WMV focusing on transparency effects

[Methuselah]

A lot of people have asked me how to keep effects like flames, etc on a toon or NPC when creating a wallpaper, avatar, or signature.

Here's a little, quick tutorial on the subject.

First, we choose our model, I've chosen our Red Fire Spider.


I then close the animation pane and make the background black. (0,0,0)
View > Background Color


I then Save a screenshot making sure to select .png as the format


I save this image to the desktop so I can find it easily.

I then will click View > Show model control and uncheck the Particles box.
Sometimes a glow or semi transparent piece will actually show up in the Geosets, so I make sure to check them for any I should uncheck.


I will then change the background color to magenta (255,0,255)


I will then save another screenshot, but this time a .bmp


I will open both of these images in Photoshop


Unlocking the first layer of my bitmap, I will choose the magic wand tool with the following settings:

Tolerance: 32
Anti-Aliasing: On
Contiguous: Off

I will select the magenta and press delete


I will then copy & paste the .png image and move it so that it is on top of my .bmp


Making sure to line it up correctly, I will then save this as a .png



And, voila! It's that easy.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, hit me up.

[Vephriel]

Great tutorial! I'm sure it'll be extremely helpful for those that use Photoshop. I did give it a try in PSP, but it doesn't seem to work, hehe. That's alright though. I know it's an outdated program, but since I'm familiar with Paint Shop Pro 7 I can do more with it than I can with Photoshop, which I honestly have no experience with. x)

[Methuselah]

Yeah, I used to use PSP for 2D sprites... but I love me some Photoshop.

You can do some great stuff, like this with my tutorial.

[Chimera]

I dont have photoshop so it took me a while to play around and figure some stuff out... this is an eeepic tutorial even for people who dont have PS, i use a program called Paint.Net, i could follow all your steps, a few were odd tho, i dont have that 'Anti-Aliasing' option (not sure what it is either), and i had to create a new layer for my .png to go on since the picture was faded. I was able to successfully create this guy in only about half an hour! (now that i know what to do it will only tame like 2min now lol xD)

[Methuselah]

Right on! It looks good... Anti-Aliasing gets rid of the jagged edges.
Here's a plugin for Paint.NET that should help: Anti-alias Plugin [v1.5.8.0 Minor fixes, August 25th]

[Chimera]

I wish i could get mine to look as epic as yours lol



When i play around with the amount though, it gets really weird.... i get lines/shadows that arent emanating from the figure but rather seem to be outlining and i dont know what exactly thats all about

.. also, the soft and swirly feel your art has, is that a photoshop technique? I loooooove the style and im wondering if Paint.Net has the ability to do that too

[Methuselah]

Strange. I personally have never used Paint.NET, but according to the post about the plug-in, it was supposed to be like Photoshop's AA. Sorry.

I will use an addon called Topaz Clean on my art to give it the "soft and swirly" feel, it's the crowning touch after I mess with brightness/contrast, hue & saturation, color balance, etc.

BEFORE:


AFTER:

[Chimera]

Ahhhha~ doesnt seem like Paint.Net has a similar equivalent unfortunately But the stuff ive learned from this thread has been really helpful for sure! I kept having a heck of a time trying to get some of the models that are practically made up of glows and swirls so id always have to omit them, but this threads laid it out nice n simple and easy to follow even though its described for people using Photoshop thank you so much for this tutorial and helping me with Paint.Net!!!!

Edit: I couldnt get the black Valkyr model so i had to make do with white (though cause shes so white shes blending in with my photobuckets plain background lol)


Im gonna try some of my regular editing techniques but thats what ive been able to do now, valkyrs were one of the models i always had to omit from my list cause of the glowy (i didnt figure out till now how i could remove that stull LOL got rid of her hair, it looked terrible xD)

[Methuselah]

Glad I could help!

[Chimera]

Yay finished model is done <3 I still wish there was a Paint.Net plugin for that Topaz Clean lol xD

(Normally i put them in backgrounds too but i havent looked any up for this gal, so the jagged edges she still has are pretty obvious lol)

[Methuselah]

The wings also have some transparency, check the geosets to disable them before you do the .bmp


Settings for the .bmp


Here's the two images:
.bmp


.png


Then you can place her on a background

[Chimera]

OOOOOHHHHH @_@ so pretty omg im gonna try that after the bg im in

[Methuselah]

In order to do the Dark Val'kyr Battle-maiden (because her wings don't show up in .png), I used the wings from the light one and darkened them a bit.



It works especially well with Spectral mounts and pets.

.bmp


.png


COMBINED (with Topaz Clean, B&C, etc)


You could, for instance, change the background color of the .png from black (0,0,0) to something like cyan (0,255,255), then making the .png portion semi transparent (50% or so) and it may be more true to the color of the spectral blue... just a suggestion.

[Chimera]

Yea i found the black background wasnt always good for some of the models, i decided to try out a different model as well, a dark phoenix and i took a background i found on google and tadaaa! XD Im so happy lol i love playing with the model viewer

[Methuselah]

Epic. Very good.

My only suggestion would be to use a hue & saturation on the background to more match the color of the Dark Phoenix.