<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On 15/11/2007, at 7:21 PM, Carsten Wartmann wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">But is there a situation where you use alpha images and want to switch<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">of alpha? So why not just let TexFace use alpha if there is alpha in the<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">image?</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV>Yes, that's how I originally had it for my own work, but I was thinking that there's the possibility that people have used images with alpha in the past, expecting the alpha not to come through, and that changing the behaviour would break old renders.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I'm not sure really how big a deal this is in practice though - personally I'd much rather not be adding yet more options for things that should 'just work', but it seems that in the past, a lot of care has been taken to keep old files rendering similarly, so I stuck with that. Personally I think a too-strict adherence to backwards compatibilty here can be to Blender's detriment - I'd like to think that every now and then we should be able to break compatibility to freshen things up in both the render output and usability...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Perhaps at least a good compromise would be to have the Alpha option always on by default on new materials, and set it to off by default when loading old files.</DIV><DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Or even better, use the texture face panel option "Alpha" to control on<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">which faces you want to use alpha?</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>It's an interesting thought, but I don't think it's a good idea. The software renderer and the game engine OpenGL renderers are entirely different beasts, with the exception of texface, which although useful, is still pretty dodgy. I think it should be kept that way- having to worry about setting the odd game engine face properties as well as your materials, in a completely different part of blender, would complicate the issue much more. Most people that don't use the game engine wouldn't even know that those texture face settings even exist. On the technical side, it's also not easy since the software renderer doesn't really have any knowledge of the texture face settings - it just knows 'renderfaces'.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>cheers</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Matt</DIV><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lucida Grande; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lucida Grande; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lucida Grande; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>------------------------------------------</DIV><DIV>Matt Ebb . matt@mke3.net . <A href="http://mke3.net">http://mke3.net</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>