confused about alpha masks! :-(

OK, I'm still confused about alpha masks, PNGs and Max, so please bear with me and help a little if possible :-)

If I use Corel Draw to make an image, say a circle on a background, the circle will have jagged edges. When I save the PNG I can specify transparency as the background colour. When I load into Max with LoadImage("test.png",MASKEDIMAGE|FILTEREDIMAGE) then draw it, without any effects, it draws the circle only. Fine BUT of course the circle still has jagged edges.

How can I get the circle to draw in Max with anti-aliased edges on top of any background colour/texture?

Is there an easy way or Do I have to prepare a special Mask/AlphaChannel and save it as part of the PNG somehow. I don't have PSP (unless you can point me to an older free version) or Photoshop (I'm not rich and don't go for Warez). Should I use Gimp for Alpha or just shell out on PSP or ProMotion?

thanks

Call SetBlend ALPHABLEND before drawing the circle.

I already did that before posting. If it's SOLIDBLEND, the circle AND the background are both drawn.

I tried drawing the circle anti-aliased to the background colour (grey) in Corel and saving with the background as transparent, but all this does in Max is show a circle with grey pixels round the edge, yuk.

Grey you have to use photoshop (or whatever program your using) and use the blur tool to soften the edges - then save.

In photoshop a transparent (checkboard) background indicates true transparency - no coloured background must be used or the sprite will blend to that colour.

Send me the PNG, I want to get a look at it. E-mail's in my profile. If the circle is for some reason a precious asset, come up with another image that produces the same effect.

Steve: Yeah I used the blur tool on the circle but it didn't work. this must be because the background isn't truely transparent, I'm jsut selecting a transparent colour on save. I'll look into this more.

Noel, sent it, don't know if it will help.

After looking at it, looks like Corel doesn't handle alpha in PNGs very well (if at all). Could just be your settings, I'm not sure since I haven't used Corel since I got a trial with my Graphire 1.

Only thing I can advise is that you look up some documents on how Corel handles alpha, because I'm not getting any in that image.

As far as I know only Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro handle PNG alpha well.

Well I got corel to have a transparent background (checker) but it wouldn't let me save as PNG. I could Export as PNG but then the grey came back. It's crap basically. I'll try out Gimp now.

Gimp has full alpha support as far as I can tell.

Yo mamma Gimp is in the house. OK I got it working in Gimp in about 5 mins, wicked! Now I can make lush particle effects and antialiased EVERYTHING, woo.