AlphaClip is my first LightWave plugin. At BlueSky, I'm in charge of preparing many of the sprites for upcoming games. To get the best looking sprites, we need to
antialias them internally. But, we can't have them antialiased against the background, or else they'll get a bunch of fuzzy green pixels around the edges. So, in an
effort to save some effort (how about that!), I came up with AlphaClip.
Included in the ZIP file is the plugin itself (alphclip.p), and the source code. (The SGI version also includes the makefile.) Note that the SGI version's name should
be alphclip.tar.gz, but because Geocities is absolutely worthless, I had to rename it for them to accept it. Just rename it once you've downloaded the file. The
plugin is an image filter, and an "options" panel is available for it. On the options panel are three items: fill color, threshold, and clip mode.
The fill color is whatever color will be substituted when the plugin clips out pixels. Because this plugin looks at the Alpha channel of the image (hence the name
AlphaClip), the Threshold value determines the "breaking point" of the clip. By default, anything that is MORE transparent than that threshold (i.e. - antialiased
pixels) will be replaced with the fill color. By changing the clip mode, you can clip anything that is LESS transparent if you wish, although I have no idea why
anybody would want to do that.
Note that on the Threshold scale, 255 is opaque, and 0 is transparent.
This plugin will also save its configuration in the LightWave scene file. The first three numbers it saves are the RGB fill color, the fourth number is the threshold, and
the fifth is a flag for the clip type. If it is 1, anything LESS transparent will be clipped. If it is anything else, pixels that are MORE transparent will be clipped.
As a side note, if anyone would like to recompile this for another platform, just make sure to send me a copy, OK? (Note to the NewTek programmers: FIX
