Misc. WoW Model Viewer/ImageReady Questions

[Wark]

1. Where do I go in WMV to see the Ghostcrawler skin? I can't seem to find it anywhere, and don't know whether I'm blind or if it's yet another case of the magically unavailable model/skin.
2. Is there a way to save screenshots in WMV with a transparent background? I like to assume there is, but the WMV interface is the perfect intersection of "technically precise" and "oddly laid out" for maximum confusion when I poke around.
2a. If there's no way to do it, how do I designate whatever background color I pick as my "render this as transparent" color when working with GIFs/JPGs/PNGs? Whichever lets me do it, I am admittedly bad at remembering the pros, cons and abilities of each file type.

Never expected I'd have an easier time making an animated sig than a still one, oy. All help appreciated!

[Moonlost]

Urgh, I feel your pain.

1) Yes, Ghostcrawler is in there. He's under "Creature > Deepseacrab> deepseacrab_ghost.m2"
2) Hmm. I'm a little unsure on these questions. Same as you, I'd like to think so, but I can't really find a way to do it either. I did manage to cheat by makign an animated gif with only 1 frame and make the background transparent that way, but that's not really a perfect solution. I'll fiddle around with it a bit more, see what I can do.
PNGs work best with a transparent background I find, although Gifs work well too. To pick a background colour, go to "View > Background colour..."

[Wark]

1. Aha. Under Creature > Deepseacrab I only have a "deepseacrab.m2" option. No "deepseacrab_ghost.m2". Well, shoot. Anyone know how to get WMV to list it?

2. Might export 1-frame animations just so that I actually have 'em. Fingers crossed someone else might know a less silly way of doing it & reply, but in the meantime that may be a viable workaround. Thanks!

[Moonlost]

No worries, happy to help.
Have you gotten the latest version of WMV? Sometimes, creatures don't show up unless you have the latest version.

[Wark]

Assuming this is the place to get it from, still: http://code.google.com/p/wowmodelviewer/downloads/list

Win32 Installer, last updated Nov 18. Reinstalled, still no dice on the Ghostcrawler front.

[Vephriel]

The Devwork file is the latest one I believe, it's the version I'm running at the moment.

[Wark]

Glory! Thank you Veph, had you not said that I would not in a million years have guessed that "DEVWORK build r517, 32bit" was, in fact, a full WMV, rather than just a random pile of files. And, hey, now I can see deepseacrab_ghost.m2.

Next up: beating my head against export options. Exciting! (Now placing bets on how much longer until I throw my hands in the air, shriek "forget THIS!" and trace what I want in Illustrator. Hah.)

[Wark]

Saving an animation as a PNG series is definitely inelegant-- I have a whole folder of trash screencaps now, woohoo-- but it does a decent job if you don't mind the loss in precision picking out what frame of an animation you want. (Well, I guess if you're super-picky you could do a series as long as the animation itself, but good luck not running out of hard drive space after a couple of those, if you don't clean up between rounds! )

Still not exactly what I want, but that's more a function of indecision at this point. At least now my sig features the right character and pets!