Newbie Character Artist 3 - Transparency

iceyp · December 2017

Hi All and Seasons Greetings.

Probably a stupid question but does anybody know how to save a CA3 character as a PNG with a transparent background (so it can be displayed on top of a background scene for instance). I have tried changing the background fill style, removing it etc. but the output PNG always has a white background by default.

Cheers.

Tonnichiwa · December 2017

Hi iceyp,

Unfortunately, CC3+ can't change the background to a transparent background. You will have to export it to a different program to do that.

Dogtag · December 2017

To add a little to what Tonnichiwa said, you can make easier to hide the background in another program if you hide the BACKGROUND, TEXT, and BORDER sheets in CA3 first. That will give you a plain white background when you export the PNG. Most image editing programs have tools to select a color to be transparent or a way to select a contiguous (all-connected) area of a particular color. You can typically save the selected area as a mask, though you may need to invert the selection first, which makes all the non-white area selected. Alternatively, in some programs, after you invert the selection you can cut or copy the selection, which would be your character, and then paste it into a new image as a new [image] layer. That should make it easier to make the mask too.

I hope that helps.

Cheers,
~Dogtag

iceyp · December 2017

Thanks for the replies, folks. I'd already come to the conclusion that I'd have to edit the character with an editing program. It's a real pain in the derriere (especially having to remove all the white bits in small fill areas) but achievable. Seems a major flaw in any program to be able to export to PNG but not with transparent background! But at least this is a workaround.

Thanks again for your help.

Wyvern · December 2017

Probably just showing my ignorance here, as I haven't worked much with CA3, but would it not be possible to import the preferred background image for the character portrait into CA3 using the Draw > Insert File drop-down menu command, instead of working with a separate PNG character image exported elsewhere? So long as the background image is of a suitable file-type to be imported - like a PNG, BMP or JPG - and resolution quality, I'm not sure there should be a problem, given this is how I import scanned hand-drawn maps I want to copy into CC3, for instance.

taustinoc · December 2017

Sometimes, you want a transparent background. I haven't played around with CA3 so far, but from the images I've seen, it isn't hard to imaging using it to create isometric tokens for a virtual tabletop, which would look horrible with any kind of background other than transparent. I'm sure there are other uses that would need it, too.

[Deleted User] · December 2017

It's really easy to do in Photoshop

taustinoc · December 2017

And equally easy to do in Ifranview. Maybe even easier. (And Infranview is free.)

Loopysue · December 2017

GIMP makes a 30 second job of this. That's free as well

CharlesWayneRobinson · December 2017

I used GIMP. Here is how it looks.

http://atlas.monsen.cc/Maps/Rarohenga - The Underworld

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Newbie Character Artist 3 - Transparency

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