Holes appearing in CC3+ overland textures when used in DD3 with sheet effects on

Talsar

I'm currently playing around with using the tundra and ice overland textures from the Mike Schley CC3 overland style in dungeon designer 3, with the aim of creating a snowy / tundra style battlemap for my players without resorting to importing symbols from elsewhere just yet. I've imported the textures via the 'import bitmap fill styles' menu. However as soon as I apply sheet effects (e.g. edge fade inner) holes are appearing in my textures seemingly at random, and their location seems to change with zoom level. I've tried some other overland textures such as the mountain one and have noticed that the visible size of the texture also seems to change with zoom level (less mountains visible when zoomed out). I've also tried re-importing the textures on a new image and setting them to 'opaque' in case alpha transparency was causing the problem, but no luck.

Can anyone give me any advice on getting these overland textures working 'normally' in DD3 without weird zooming and holes appearing all over the place?

Thanks!

Monsen

What you see there is what is commonly referred to as transparency acne. It happens because the way the effects processing engine looks for edges to apply edge fading on is to look for changes from the previous sheet. But if two overlapping pixels are the same color, that causes the effects engine to see it as no change, and therefore a spot to apply edge fade to.

The common way to work around this is to create a new sheet just below it in the sheet order with the same effects on it, then make a copy of the entity on that sheet, but change the fill to a solid color guaranteed not to appear in the textures, such as pink. You might want to make the sandwitch entity a little smaller than the actual one, to make sure you don't get a pink glow at the fading edges. You could also use a colour that is more similar, but you must be certain it's not found in either the sheet above or below.

Monsen

What you see there is what is commonly referred to as transparency acne. It happens because the way the effects processing engine looks for edges to apply edge fading on is to look for changes from the previous sheet. But if two overlapping pixels are the same color, that causes the effects engine to see it as no change, and therefore a spot to apply edge fade to.

The common way to work around this is to create a new sheet just below it in the sheet order with the same effects on it, then make a copy of the entity on that sheet, but change the fill to a solid color guaranteed not to appear in the textures, such as pink. You might want to make the sandwitch entity a little smaller than the actual one, to make sure you don't get a pink glow at the fading edges. You could also use a colour that is more similar, but you must be certain it's not found in either the sheet above or below.

Talsar

Thanks Monsen, that's brilliant! Might explain some of the weird problems I've noticed with wall bevel effects in the past as well. Have just tried a pink texture and it solves the problem, will play around with size as you advise to avoid any visible overlap. Not sure how I've gone this long without encountering the problem but it makes sense that it would show up when overlaying similar looking ice and tundra textures.