This is a very interesting discussion as I am contemplating purchasing Onyx trees which my research leads me to believe are of excellent quality. Unfortunately I do not thoroughly understand some of the descriptions of techniques that I am reading in this post.
Solo, you mention that you create bitmaps from your trees and you extract the alpha to make a billboard.I have been trying to do the same thing in Photoshop for export to SU for a while and I just cannot get it to work the way it should.I seem to be missing some important piece of information.If you could describe the procedure in a bit more detail I would very much appreciate it.For example, how exactly do you "extract the alpha"...? Is this done after you have imported the tree into SU and what type of file is used to make this procedure possible?
Also, Richard mentions that he "can do a good job job straight out of Onyx...where the image map is exported with alpha and dxf panel sized correctly as well"...
Please excuse my ignorance but does this mean that I once I purchase Onyx trees I will not have to bother with Photoshop to produce these types of trees...I get confused by the terminology too.Could someone please explain the difference between "image map", "clipmaps",and "clipping paths" (as in Photoshop).It would seem that they could all be the same thing but I don't want to assume that, I'd like to know for sure.There may be clear or subtle distinctions between them for all I know.
I am new to these types of techniques but as always my enjoyment is derived from learning and developing my skills to produce better quality renditions.
Thanks to everyone participating in this type of discussion, you make this process even more entertaining and I am intrigued by the wealth of in-depth information that is so generously shared between strangers on a site such as this....
Limey