translucent image plane?

[swishy]

Hi, Spaztec. You're correct, Wings only supports 1-bit alphas in this instance but there are workarounds.

Option 1

Create a suitable alpha in a graphics program prior to using in Wings. (I favour TIFs because the TGAs my graphics programs produce don't carry an alpha or it's ignored by Wings.)

A black and white line drawing is easiest to produce such an alpha from. Your alpha would be the inverse of your original image in this case. Refer to your graphics program's documentation on how to achieve this.

Even with a working alpha you may find the image difficult to see in Wings. Doing a bucket fill on the image in a bright colour, NOT in the alpha, should help out.

A photo would need preparation - over-drawing or use of Bezier curves etc - to create a usable alpha.

Option 2

You can also use a reference image without an alpha as an Image Plane and extrude one face to make a cuboid. Select this object and apply hard edges. This will prevent the object smoothing and distorting the reference image at a later stage.

In the Outliner window adjust the opacity of the material used by the image plane, should be called "image", to 50%. Use Quick Smooth Preview (Shift+Tab) and the material becomes transparent.

Not ideal as the model will be smoothed and selection made more difficult. You could apply hard edges to the model to prevent this but that might be more trouble than it's worth.

Option 3

File | Import Image

Tools | Snap Image | Choose Image to snap | OK

This places a transparent, tiled overlay of the reference image over the work area which will probably need scaling and moving to suit your needs.

Right-click | Scale Snap Image | Uniform

Note the X and Y scaling figures for later use before left-clicking to accept.

Right-click | Move Snap Image | Free

Note the x and y movement figures for later use before left-clicking to accept.

View | Saved Views | Save

The last step is so the view can be restored if the view is changed during working.

Note that Snap Image would normally be used to quickly texture selected faces or objects.

The downsides are that you have to stay in Snap mode to preserve the overlay image and this makes Wings slower to respond. The Snap Image doesn't scale or move when you adjust the camera so you can't zoom in to work on details. Also the Snap Image overlay isn't retained when the file is closed so you'll need to repeat the Snap Image process using the noted figures and numeric input (refer to the information line at the bottom of the Wings window).

As Wings has the ability to use transparent images during Quick Smooth Preview and Snap Image it might be possible to incorporate this functionality into Image Planes. Although it's probably difficult to implement or it would already have been done. I think I added this to the Wings Wants/Feature Requests at the ODF but feel free to add it if you can't spot something like that. Here's hoping.

Good luck with your project.

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