Save visible layers with transparent/alpha background

Oktopal

Hi,

I set my background-layers to hidden and tryed to save my city with a transparent background, so that I can put it over a background I made with photoshop. So, that's not working .
How can I get such an image with CC3? Didn't found anything in the help, save-as-options or manual. Always a white background.

Thanks a lot!

JimP

CC3 doesn't do transparent colors that I know of.

Oktopal

I think you missunderstood me... I hope . CC3 uses a lot of layers to display for example buildings above the grass background. So... there is a layer with just the buildings and each pixel not containing a building is transparent - eather you wouldn't see the grass. I try to save just the buildings layer to put it above an own layer.

And I can't imagine that this isn't possible (it's not even hard to code; there would be no reason to disable this). I saw a lot of maps in the internet which were made with the help of photoshop. how did they do this? I mean,... you can't draw a beautiful background with just CC3. Eather the software would be useless for me. It's nice to have money-back guarantee, but I would like to work with this software. It's such a trivial feature... everything else is fine... how do you polish your maps?

Thank you!

Ralf

No, sorry, CC3 cannot export transparent PNGs. What you can do, is to set the background to a special and obvious color, export the layer, and then select and remove the background color in Photoshop.

But perhaps more efficiently, you could save your Photoshop background as a png and import it into CC3 on the BACKGROUND sheet.

Oktopal

Thanks for the tipps. The first way wouldn't work if you have a global sun with shading. Then the background gets the shading and you can't remove it anymore.

I thought of the second way, too. It should work in the most cases but it will be very annoying to work with. Best solution will be both I think (for those facing the same problems):

1. save the layers without shading and other effects.
2. create a background layer in phtoshop and add the CD3-layer
3. remove the white background
4. design the background fitting to the buildings
5. save the layer and open it in CD3
6. save the map with CD3 (and all effects) and open it with photoshop
7. do the foreground rework

But please... add such a feature ... As long as you can't paint/use brushes and so on in CC3.

JimP

Well, CC3 uses the FastCAD engine. It isn't like a paint program. I think I understood your question/request.

Oktopal

Sorry, I didn't want to flame - just hoped, you understood me wrong, so that I could get a more satisfying response .

But even with FastCAD - definitively using overlays - finaly a png can be rendered. So, it doesn't have to be a paint program. It's just a script deciding to place a white or a transparent pixel for the background (not used space) when creating the file. But okay, I got it... it's not possible here.

Ralf

It is certainly on our feature wishlist! I'd love the possibility too.