The Anti-Alias CelWriter lets you create smooth anti-aliased cels and
animations for the 3DO Station. When you export source art with this
plug-in, it saves one file that contains two cels: a source cel and a mask
cel. The mask is partly translucent, averaging the background with the
source cel.
The program that displays the cel on the 3DO system has to display both
the cel and the mask.
To convert the source art to a cel and to create the mask cel, follow
these steps:
Open the picture you want to convert in Adobe Photoshop.
Select the background with the Magic Wand tool.
From the Select menu, choose Inverse to invert the selection, then
choose Save Selection to save it.
Adobe Photoshop creates a new channel in which it places the selection.
From the File menu, choose Export, then 3DO Anti-Alias CelWriter from
the submenu.
The plug-in writes a file containing two cels:
A 16-bit packed uncoded cel containing the source art
A 4-bit packed coded cel containing the mask with an edge that's
averaged from black to white over 16 levels; this will show up as 16
levels of translucency on the 3DO Station.
Note: You can use the Anti-Alias Cel Writer as a plug-in to the
DeBabelizer tool to batch process all files in an animation.
After you have converted the cel, the program that renders it has to
display first the mask and then the cel on top. An example using animation
that consists of several anti-aliased cels is included in the aaPlayer
folder on the release CD.
Note: You can't preview an anti-aliased cel on the Macintosh, since
there is no Anti-Alias CelReader.