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To add to the mountain of issues I'm having with Maya (glad I was rejected for beta testing so I could pay to do it now), alphas are not rendering. Is anyone able to get an embedded alpha channel in a 32-bit TIFF?

man - it doesn't even work in 16-bit images. What a mess.

works in 8bit correctly!

munch

I don't work in 8-bit. I do all my post processing and tone mapping in other apps.

I've just detected a minor issue here. Please use "tif" as format instead of "tiff", I've checked that one of the graphic modules will not embed the flag if this is "tiff" instead "tif". Also please check you have the right depth in the menu/preferences/channel option. Switch the alpha channel to 32 bits, and set the render output to tif32. I've just checked it works, and it also works with 16 bits depth.

Thanks,

Juan

(PS: That little tiff/tif issue will be fixed in the next patch.)

sorry - where do I specify tif instead of tiff? In Maya, all I have as options are TIFF (what I was using) and TIFF16, which renders PNGs. I changed the depth setting in Maxwell.app

Until a fix is available, try specifying a full path, including the "tif" extension in the image file name control. Maya should then use what you typed in there instead of appending "tiff".

I tried that and it's weird - in Maxwell.app, the alpha can be toggled but it's not embedded in the resulting /output.tif file. If I save it as an EXR separately, it's not there either.

cgbeige wrote:I tried that and it's weird - in Maxwell.app, the alpha can be toggled but it's not embedded in the resulting /output.tif file. If I save it as an EXR separately, it's not there either.

Please double check your preferences in Maxwell.app. I've repeated the process in several computers and it worked in all cases. If the render output is tif, the depth is 32, and the preference for the alpha channel is set to 32 bits (check screenshot below), it must work. If it does not, maybe this is an specific OSX issue that we need to check separately, please let us know if the problem is solved now. (in the next update you won't have to care about the depth preference when the alpha is embeded since it will be corrected automatically to match the render output depth)


Kind regards,

Juan

I did all that again and it doesn't work (everything is set as 32-bit TIFF in the Maxwell preferences and I specified a full path with a tif extension). I also tried sending the render from both Maya and Studio and neither embedded the alpha. here are the results:

http://www.3eige.com/cgtalk/maxwellsettings.jpg
http://www.3eige.com/cgtalk/maxwellalphasettings.jpg
http://www.3eige.com/cgtalk/maxwell-noalpha.jpg

This seems to be a problem with OS X then

cgb: Try to acctually UNCHECK embed
(with EMBEDDED checked It wont save a transparent tiff for me)

well im having weirdness too.. im on winXP64 os..
When I switch to the alpha channel view in maxwel render view window it wont save a image of the black/whit alpha..
and the only way it embeds into a tif or exr image the alpha is if i have embedded UNCHECKED in the renderengine window...

How can i get it to write out a alpha as a seperate png or jpg file? becuase right now i cant figure that out..
ALSO any glows and flares/blooms from simulens DONT affect the alpha channel.. shouldn't they? cuz right now the glows/blooms get clippedby the alpha not containg any effects from simulens..
-L

well I get an alpha if I don't embed it but it's pretty annoying to use that way. I don't know about the glows but it would seem like that should affect the alpha.