the circular default alpha can be surpassed easily, you just make a rectangular alpha in the canvas not big as the rectangulat default, you can add to your alpha folder in the zstarup and everytime you need there you have a rectagular alpha instead of the circular one.
Andreseloy
andreseloy,
as you can see in Blaine91555’s first pic, your suggested technique does
not fully surpass the issue. Notice that there is a ‘dome’ to his square
which suggests that some fade is affecting it all the way to the center.
also, if you are setting up your square inside the circle, there is no accurate
guide as to where you need it to be (the furthest non-black pixels from the
center) to guarantee the least amount of fade…not to mention if you want
it to repeat, it is hit-and-miss to get the ‘perfect’ repeating value if using
the lazymouse (with lazystroke distance set properly for true wrapping), for
example.
in my opinion anyway, this clearly needs addressing in order to release
Z3’s true alpha power…
WailingMonkey
It also makes tiling alphas very difficult… first, you can’t do it with a radial alpha. Second, the non-ideal workaround makes it very difficult to make any precise alpha applications because the point from which you draw the rectangle is not the point at which the alpha is effective.
Plus, the alphas are still not flat. There is something rounding the alphas, even with -100 focalshift.
did you run the zscript?
Andreseloy
andreseloy,
if you’re talking about the script you posted (ZScriptRecordedSession_alpha.TXT),
yes, I ran it, but am unsure what you are achieving with it?
if you are referring to your ‘square’ alphas they have a clear
radial fade to them (rounding the edges once you’ve got them
on the sphere). Also, you’re masking on a sphere, which will hide
some of the dome-quality of the radial fade by the nature of it’s
shape…so I think I’m missing your point, if that’s the script
and ‘solution’ you’re talking about.
WailingMonkey
I am trying to cut down on the number of alphas that I am exporting from Photoshop on my current project. One thing that would really help would be if I could take to existing alphas and combine them.
Is there a way to do this?
Another option might be if there was a way that I could load an alpha as a mask and then select a second alpha and tell the masking feature to add it to the current mask selection…sort of like you can Photoshop.
I’m with Lemonnado on this one.
Yes the workaround works but it is a lot of trouble to get an effect that should be pretty standard.
It would also be useful if you could drag a rectangle from the top left corner (as in a photoshop marquee) as well as from the centre.
i haven’t tried yet in 3.1 but isn’t this the support for square alphas they were talking about in this update, or is that something else?
If the lack of square alphas issue has been resolved, it’s not obvious to me… can anyone comment as to whether this was addressed in the 3.1 update or not?
Hello. 
Yeah, the best way to get your square alpha is to set focal shift to -100. this will remove any softening at the edges.
r