GUI problems

[pawelzaborek]

Hello, after searching through the internet without finding a solution, I decided to join leadwerks forum.

 

My problem is such, that I wanted to create a 2D button on the screen using context:DrawImage(), however when the camera in game is near a low angle (looking at the horizon), the button becomes semi-transparent: one can see the 3D scene through the black letters, whereas the white background covers the scene a little. This effect disappears if the camera in game is brought back up.

 

I only have one context, by the surprising name of 'context'...

--Render the world
world:Render()
context:DrawImage(A1, 0, 0, 400, 370)
	 --(A1 refers to a loaded ".tex" file, with DXT1)

--Refresh the screen
    context:Sync()  --Vsync is off

 

I'm not particularly interested in third-party GUI systems, since this is only my first project. Does anyone have any ideas?

[shadmar]

You should set the context blendmode to Blend.Alpha prior to drawing the button.

[pawelzaborek]

Hi shadmar, thank you very much, that was a very quick fix!

Would you be so kind to explain how this 'blend mode' thing works, and what the different blend modes do, please?

[programmed_sheep]

Basically, blend modes add effects to images and change how they are rendered on the screen. I cannot vouch for what the different blend modes do in the engine (since I haven't used them yet), but the most common ones are 1) A "Pixel-perfect" blend mode (doesn't add any smoothing effects; image will look exactly like it does when you make it) 2) A Smoothing blend mode (makes approximations based on nearby pixels and "smooths" the image to decrease pixelation) and 3) An alpha-based blending effect (takes the alpha channel from the image (0-1 or 0-255 depending on format) and applies it to the rendered image. There are probably more in the engine (and most definitely named differently), but those are the main three I have seen across several applications.

 

Hope this helps -- First post on the forum