in Bryce.
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| Since Bryce uses the color black to represent full transparency, start with a black background. Then add your image - in this case a RapArtz tree nozzel from the Painter 5 CD. Make sure you leave some room around the edges for later steps. I saved this out of Painter as .tiff, then loaded it into PhotoShop5. |
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In PhotoShop, do a Select All, then Copy. Open up the Channels
Window and create a new channel. Now Paste the image into the
new channel. This image shows the alpha channel. Way too dark
and not the "cut-out" we need. |
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| With the Alpha Channel (only!) selected, go to Image>Adjust>Curves. In the dialog, click the little white box at the top right of the graph and drag it left along the top until the Input box shows between 9 and 15. This can vary quite a bit, depending upon the source image. |
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| Here's the result. Many times this is all that's needed, so it's a good idea to save this file and jump to the Bryce load section (below) and see how it looks. But there is often a problem - the cutout may show some of the black background along the edges. Since we don't need the black in the RGB Channels any more the next step is to do a little color bluring.... |
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First make the Alpha Channel a selection by click and dragging the channel onto the dashed circle icon (  ) at the bottom of the window. Now contract the selection by 1 pixel (Selection>Modify> Contract) and invert it (Selection>Invert). Now do a Gaussian Blur of about 10 pixels (zoomed effect shown). |
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Now lighten the background by using Image>Adjust> Brighten/Contrast,
with the brightness set to around + 20 (zoomed effect shown).
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Save the Result as .tiff (or .psd) to perserve the Alpha channel
- this way Bryce will load it automatically. |
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Load Bryce and select the 2D Pict Object icon (  ) from the Create Menu. This loads the 2D Pict Editor. Click the first empty box and select the file you created above. The 3 big boxes at top should now show the color, alpha and the resultant "cut-out" correctly. Exit the Editor, rotate th object towards the camera and move the sun to light the front of the object.
This is a simple rendered result.
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