Can Xpms Have Transparency In Maya?

[jda]

I've searched high and low and haven't found a definite answer yet. I did find out a few things though.

XPMs do support transparency. You can go into the XPM file it self, it being a txt file, and edit which color(s) are transparent. You do this by simply redefining the colors you want transparent to "none". When I tried this, the pixels specified as color "none" came out pure green in Maya. I did find an old thread on another board that addressed this problem but it didn't quite understand what the solution was. Here

[naughty]

image transparency for ELF UI controls is not what you think it is. transparency on icons and images for use in a UI is NOT real alpha.
For example, you have an image in your formLayout background, and an iconTextButton on top of it with a "transparent" image as it's icon.. you will NOT see the underlying image in the transparent colour of your icon image.

Image transparency for UI controls only works on buttons, and ONLY shows the default OS background colour through, and that is all. The only point to having transparency at all on maya UI buttons is so that when the user changes thier system theme to a non-grey colour, the icons wont have a grey background.

EVEN if you create a MAYA UI and set the -bgc flag to something, say red, the transparent colour in your images over this will still appear as the OS UI colour (i.e. grey)

perhaps the problem you're having is related to this..?

:nathaN

[jda]

If I am understanding you correctly, the colors in the XPM that I have defined as

[naughty]

I've just spent the best part of this morning trying to figure this out too... I never actually bother using XPMs, I only use BMP files and I naturally presumed the same rules applied to XMPs. However, after digging around, the only conclusion I can come to is that Maya doesn't render XPM transparency..? This still doesn't make sense though because if you open MayaRes.dll and look at the icons they are all listed as XPM files, and all have the GREEN (0,254,0) background colour that you should use on BMPs to make them transparent. I tried making an XPM that had both "none" colour AND #00FE00 colour and it STILL came out green... weird..?!?

My ultimate advice is to use BMPs, where green (0,254,0) is your transparency colour.. Not much help if they're intended for use on a non-Windows system..

:nathaN

[jda]

Yeah, I am trying to make the script as cross platform friendly as possible. But that's OK, people can just live with the color of buttons I choose.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this, now I know and can sleep at night.

JDA