Transparent buttons

Galeng wrote on 6/27/2008, 10:44 AM

Quick question-

I drop a button from DVDA button selection onto the main menu, then associate a file to play with that button, then go to the geneal under menu page properties, set inactive button colors to none (transparent) or even set up a color set and set all colors to transparent and assign that color set to the inactive button color, the buttons still show up. Why?

What is that option for?

I know this can be done in PS, but thought this would just be a quick way to have only the selected button showing until another is selected.

Thanks,

Galen

Comments

MPM wrote on 6/27/2008, 3:04 PM

There's 3 steps to creating buttons in DVDA - 1 of them is optional. You can create the button's image - what the viewer sees - and this will be composited (like flattening all the layers) onto the background for a menu video. That's the optional step, as you can import your background with everything already there.

The 2nd step is to select the rectangular area of the button's *Hot Spot*, & that's what a DVD keeps track of. It's just coordinates, & it's what you get when you remove the image from an image only button in DVDA. An empty button like that is invisible.

3rd, Highlights... Highlights are a set of 3 shapes that the DVD player will fill with a solid color. You can select the button & then choose a type of highlight from the dropdown box in properties, or you can import a highlight mask. If you don't want any highlights at all, click the menu background, go to the General tab in properties, then set your 3 button states to none instead of a color set. If you want a single button to have no highlights, use a highlight mask without anything for that button, maybe use a custom highlight without providing a mask, that sort of thing. You can specify fully transparent colors, but, it's harder to get that working for just say one out of 3 buttons, & too complicated for no highlights on all buttons.

"thought this would just be a quick way to have only the selected button showing until another is selected."

There is no quick way. ;-)

Galeng wrote on 6/27/2008, 8:48 PM

Thanks for your explanation. Guess I will keep doing it with PS.
No quick way???.....Dang!

Thanks

Galen

TeetimeNC wrote on 9/10/2008, 8:17 AM

I too am trying to have unselected buttons be transparent in a DVD menu. I am familiar with using Photoshop to create menus in DVDA, but am unable to figure out what type of mask DVDA needs for making the button transparent when selected. Could you shed some light on this for me?

Jerry

TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/10/2008, 1:18 PM

it's not really a transparent button. i'll assume these things:
a) you want the button to be blended in with the background.
b) you don't know it's a button, you want to make a "hidden" button.

to do that you just don't include an image as the graphic & for the highlight mask you use CUSTOM & select something that's all black (or all white, one shows up, the other doesn't).

then you have a button you can't see at all, but it Is there & if you hit "play" on that button it will run it's action.

TeetimeNC wrote on 9/11/2008, 11:20 AM

HappyFriar,

With your's, and MPM's earlier posting I was able to figure it out. For others looking at this in the future, here is what I wanted and what I did:

I wanted to have and arror that would display in front of the selected "menu item". The menu item was just text I place on the background image. I wanted to be able to move the arrow from menu item to menu item.

I did the following:
1. Created a hot spot (i.e., a button without image) in front of each menu item.
2. Added a highlight mask to each "button". The mask was a white arrow on a black background.
3. Set color set one mode 1 (fill color) to fully opaque yellow, and mode 4 (transparent) to fully transparent.

Now, the arrow only turns yellow when its hot spot is selected. This gives the allusion that you are moving the yellow arrow between the menu items.

Thanks for your help,

Jerry

L8R wrote on 9/12/2008, 6:39 PM

I was always trying to figure out how to do this as well.
One question and hold on it may be a stupid question but...
where did you create the button mask? in PS or somewhere in DVDA?

L8R wrote on 9/12/2008, 10:24 PM

figured it out.... thank you very much people.... I love this forum.

TeetimeNC wrote on 9/15/2008, 12:08 PM

For others that may be reading this, you can create your masks in any graphic editor. It would be best if it supports PNG format. Certainly, Photoshop or Paintshop Pro work fine.

In my case, I took the easy way out - I did a google image search and found exactly what I needed.

Wildfire1 wrote on 10/13/2008, 5:25 PM

I read through this thread and I was trying to do the same thing, however, I was trying to do it with a text only button style. I want to have a scene selection menu page with a photo as the background, then have 6 text only selections. I want to have the un-selected text transparent, or just the shadow showing, then have each selection pop up as you arrow through them. It seems the color sets and the color picker in the text edit area seem to not be getting along. Even if my fill color in my color set is fully opaque, the transparency slider in the text edit section overrides the color set and the fill color does not show up unless I turn up the opacity up at the text editor, now my text isn't transparent any more, am I making sense and am I asking too much of DVDA Studio?

bStro wrote on 10/13/2008, 6:45 PM

I assume you have the highlight style for these buttons set to Text Mask Overlay? In that mode, the highlight is literally based on the visible text. If the text is transparent (or semi-transparent), so is the highlight.

I recommend using a custom highlight mask (that's a link to a tutorial I recently wrote on the subject). The gist of it is:

1. You use a graphics application such as Photoshop to create an image that will define what your highlights will look like.

2. The highlights should be black, and the rest of the image should be transparent. (This just defines the shape and placement. You'll use the color sets in DVDA to define the color.)

3. Each button's style should be set to Image, but there should be nothing set for its thumbnail, frame, or thumbnail mask and frame mask. In short, the button is empty.

4. Each button's highlight style should be set to Custom.

5. The menu's properties should have highlight mask set to your highlight mask file.

See the above tutorial for more detailed instructions. Only where it says to add text to the main background image, you obviously would not. ;-)

Rob

EDIT: Corrected step #2. Original post said that that the rest of the image should be white. It should be transparent when using the default mask mapping mode of Transparency. If you make your mask a flattened black and white image, change mask mapping to Intensity.

Wildfire1 wrote on 10/14/2008, 10:49 AM

Thanks for the help, this will get me where I want to go.