Author Topic: [FF7PC] How does FF7 handle transparency for magic textures?  (Read 2130 times)

CaptRobau

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I'm upscaling FF7 magic textures for my mod. However I noticed that some magic textures can be converted to flat images with a black background instead of transparency (alpha channel). This helps the upscaler as it can't handle transparency well.

So these images will have the magic effect and then a black background when you look at the raw images on your PC. But in-game they'll look normal and transparent where the black background is. However this trick doesn't work for all the magic textures. So those will render as non-transparent sprites in the game.

Does anyone know what the rules behind transparency for magic textures are? When will they accept the black background trick and when do they need have an alpha channel?

Hope someone can help me. Thanks in advance.

orichalcon

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I'm upscaling FF7 magic textures for my mod. However I noticed that some magic textures can be converted to flat images with a black background instead of transparency (alpha channel). This helps the upscaler as it can't handle transparency well.

So these images will have the magic effect and then a black background when you look at the raw images on your PC. But in-game they'll look normal and transparent where the black background is. However this trick doesn't work for all the magic textures. So those will render as non-transparent sprites in the game.

Does anyone know what the rules behind transparency for magic textures are? When will they accept the black background trick and when do they need have an alpha channel?

Hope someone can help me. Thanks in advance.

i'll start off by saying i dont know the rules of it, so not sure if i can really help you, but i'm going to tell you what i know just in case

the world map/world map animations do this as well, and for the wm animations, some effects will register the color 000000 as completely transparent and ignore actual transparency, while others will read transparency and black just fine... despite all being on the same sprite sheet

that being said, the reason i'm even posting is because afaik 95% or better of the magic textures (maybe even more like 99%) will read 000000 as completely transparent

so if *I* were doing this, i'd flatten em all and upscale em all, release a beta to trusted people and fix the few messed up ones

i understand that the whole point of this topic is probably so you wouldnt have to do any textures twice, but at least this way you won't waste time trying to figure out rules that dont make much sense

satsuki

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The only proper way to do this is
1-flatten with black background
2-uspcale
3-do a cutting mask from source (upscalled and smoothed)
4-cut the upscaled file with the upscaled mask
>>you get a proper upscaled file

Magic and fx are full of specific cases, the only way to be sure is to check manualy several time each magic and effect (different looking angles can show differents stuff)

CaptRobau

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Thanks for the responses, both of you. Convert to black and then find out by trial and error it is, combined with testing and looking at previously done magic mods.