If you see the example I posted, the glass is still somewhat opaque. The trick is to make the selection of the glass, as if you’re going to delete it, only don’t. Do a Cut, and paste it in place into another layer. Set that other layer’s transparency to something nice, say 60-80 percent. Then save the whole document as a PNG with transparency.
Also, don’t just use magic wand. Use lasso to subtract any parts that shouldn’t be deleted.
If you posted the URL to the original image I could do those steps for you.
Colin - thank you. Hope you didn’t spend much time searching for this sconce. I only read your post last night and now just answering. I will play around in PS - another self-taught program and I only know a little bit. I’m going to have to learn this process for future drawings so I have to plow through. This is what I’ve done so far…
I have a hard time with Warehouse, too. Sometimes when I download into model, the image lands so far out. I select and grab and endpoint to bring closer to the model but it’s a process that takes me a lot longer than it should. I just have to keep practicing!
Google has an image search feature, where you give it the URL of an image, and it finds other images that look the same. It quickly came back with the one I used.
The fixture sits high on the wall. What light source would cast shadows a) from above; b) at all? (It’s always an illusion breaker in movies where the ostensible light source for a scene casts a shadow).
Yes. Even if it isn’t casting shadows, it could receive them and at least there’d be highlights on the surface that would be more like what you’d see in the room.
How did you know there was a skylight casting shadows below - ha! Not really.
I thank everyone for all your suggestions. Will print them out and give it a go - and hope I don’t get stuck at “#1. Select”. I may be back in touch! Thanks again
for example, IrfanView’s paint dialog allows dumping a specific color onto an existing color section. Attached is a gif copy of one of the lamp images that took only a few seconds to replace the shadow areas with white.
For the brown shadow, the “eyedropper” was used to select the light brown then the paint dump used to drop that into the dark brown shadow areas.
I then selected the white background area as transparent when saving.
Note… I did not take the time to assure that the entire background is the single transparent color.
Hope that this information is helpful.
Beverly Howard
Sorry… I missed her original image. Her original only took a single click in Irfanview to replace the background with white, then select white as the transparent color when saving.
There are a couple of spots (the ball shadows) that need manual refilling. That means that there is a “gap” somewhere in the ball outline that allowed the fill color to seep through, but that can be found by zooming in, manually filling in the gap, then dumping the brown (actually black) color inside the outline.
Hi Dan, I started using Paint.net to remove image backgrounds which is really handy for making plants in SU using images. However, I noticed your familiar with Paint.net and was just wondering if you know if in Paint.net you can add a “transparency mask”, or something like that, to make the image truly transparent in SU so you don’t have to cut out around the image (e.g. tree) or use rendering to make it throw an accurate shadow in model?
Been looking for Paint.net videos/docs/support but haven’t had much luck yet.
Thought I’d hassle you to see if you know anything about it.
Click in the area outside what you want to keep. It will show dotted cut lines and shading for a selection.
Adjust the Tolerance bar in the overhead toolbar until only what you want to erase is selected, and the dotted line follows the outline of a plant for example. Then press the delete key.
You’ll see the checkerboard background which means transparent. You may have to manually Cleanup some other objects that didn’t get removed. (Use the Lasso, Ellipse or Rectangular selection tools, or the Eraser tool.)
Most importantly, use MUST save in a format that supports transparency. PNG does. JPG does not.
Yeah I can do that ok. I was wondering if Paint.net has an “adjustment” process that makes it so that SU will recognise the transparent layer to save you having to either cut-out the shadow from the image face or use rendering to get accurate shadows. I have a Paint.net plugin (paint.net\Effects\Transparency,dll) which I know nothing about but (& I could be wrong) can apparently add a “transparency mask” effect or something like that, that means it will be transparent in SU models.
Just wondering if you knew anything about that? I gonna see what I can find out. Be nice if it could.
Keep you posted if I learn anything useful.
Just had a play with the paint.net plugin. It just ‘adjusts’ the transparency with a slider bar that works bit like in SU. But doesn’t work on the transparent background because it is already transparent I suppose. I actually want to make the background transparent so that it doesn’t produce a shadow in SU when imported. Not sure if this is actually possible. Might take photo processing capabilities which render applications have built in but SU doesn’t.
So could be wasting your time.
Anyway, if not, let me know. Would make making plant models with accurate shadows a lot more streamlined.
Once you have created the transparent background and saved as a .png, you can use a plugin by Tig called Image Trimmer to remove the transparent parts of the image so shadows caste correctly.
Image trimmer can be found over at Sketchucation.
