ALPHA BLUR question
Sue, I had a question about something you said in the "how to feather ends of roads" thread (starting a new thread so I don't hijack that one if this ends up being involved):
I use the Blur, Alpha to prevent Transparency Acne, which is an undesirable side effect when using the same fill on top of itself with an EFI.
Is this something that can be used when you have a beveled polygon above an identically- or similarly-filled polygon? Like, for example, a WALL sheet above a SILLS sheet (I'm working on castles, with sills in my arrow slits and windows, like the Beaumaris Castle annual). Right now, I am creating WALL MASK layers below each of the beveled sheets. (For example, my sheets in order would be something like SILL MASK, SILL, WALL MASK, WALL). Would something like Blur, Alpha eliminate the need for those mask sheets?
Related: I am using the COLOR KEY sheet effect to cut through walls for doorways, windows, etc. Sometimes I need it to cut through two sheets (either WALL and WALL MASK, or SILL and SILL MASK). Sometimes I need it to cut through four (WALL, WALL MASK, SILL, and SILL MASK). I haven't tried to do it yet, but I know I could create a drawing tool that puts the same magenta polygon on two specified sheets. Can I also create another tool that puts it on four specified sheets, or is two the limit?
Comments
I'm not sure. In the case I used it the fact that Blur, Alpha will give your poly a fuzzy edge without the EFI didn't matter, because it was immediately followed by an EFI.
The only way to find out is to try it.
Another way to use the same fill over the top of itself is by not using the fill at all, but adding it to a plain coloured poly using a Texture Overblend. I think that works. I can't remember the results off the top of my head. I think I noticed that as a side effect of something else I did.
Remember, though, that every fancy sheet effect you use requires processing time, so there are circumstances where a backing sheet might be better than adding Blur, Alpha, or Texture Overblend.
Forgot about Texture Overblend as an option. Okay, I will experiment. Thank you!
You're welcome :)
Experimentation is a great way to find out what you can do with the sheet effects.
A note about the scale of a Texture Overblend.
The scale of this effect is tricky to get right. In the map the red tundra fill has a scale of 125 miles. I had to find out by trial and error that the correct Texture Overblend scale to set was 0.065. It's usually way smaller than the default 1, which will give you just a pixelated mess.
The texture overblend is shown in the rectangle to the left of the dialog.
About the second question.
2 is the limit for drawing tools. Other than that you will have to manually copy them to other sheets.
I've used a similar method in my DD4 example map (sorry - can't show you that yet) - not Color Key, but a sill sheet. I have sills that match the walls. The windows and doors only cut the walls. When the sill appears in a doorway it looks like a threshold. The trick is to not put anything more than a slight glow on the sills so the eye interprets it either as a windowsill, or as a threshold, depending on context.
Makes sense. It occurs to me that I would probably want to keep them as separate cutout tools anyway. Sometimes I would want to cut through the wall to the sill, and sometimes wall to floor, and sometimes sill to floor, so that would be a lot of tools to create. Simpler to have one wall-to-sill tool and another sill-to-floor tool (unless I figure out effects that prevent the transparency acne without needing a mask, so I then I can just have wall-to-sill and wall+sill-to-floor tools).