Digital Workshop

I am working on an Opus Flex project - utilising an interactive map to be put on the web but I am having some issues with "ignore transparent areas"

When I preview the pub in opus - all works well
But once I publish and play in a browser or flash player, the transparent areas are no longer ignored.
Does anyone have any experience with this?

Cheers

Pete

Preview is not limited to the feature set of a specific publication type and works as if it was a full Opus publication. As for transparency, it's not on the excluded list but no it doesn't seem to work for images or vectors.

Mack

Hi Mack

Thanks for that.....

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I will need to look for another solution then
Have you by chance looked at v7's beta?

Will that support "ignore transparency" I wonder??

Any other ideas?

Cheers

Pete

Hi Paul,

I don't know how you've created the publication but if it's a case of using vectors for each county, then convert these to hotspots and add the actions to these - keeping all the vectors below all hotspots. They seem to work with transparency.

Mack

It won't work for a bitmap with a transparent colour (Flash isn't that clever), but it should work for a vector, or for something like a rotated object.

Unfortunately it's another one of those things that doesn't work quite the same in Flash as Opus.

My mistake, I'd assumed that you'd already used vectors and checked only transparent PNGs. As Dave says, vectors themselves works, so no need for the hotspots.

Mack

Hi Mack and Dave,

Yes you are correct
I had used transaparent png files...

I think the hotspot option was my next step

Is there a quick way to convert png files to vectors?

Pete

Hi Pete,
Since you need transparency, you will probably need to use a vector app that will trace the bitmapped png image and save a vector version as wmf or emf. Opus doesn't like to "import as vector" any png files converted directly to vector formats because they still contain bitmap elements.
CorelDraw and Illustrator have bitmap trace functions that would do this if the image is not too complex.

Paul

Hi Paul

Thanks for your advice

Yes, I was thinking that I would have to resort to CorelTrace,
Grrrrrrrrrrrr
More work!

thanks anyway - I was contemplating setting up some kind of batch action from the existing png files so your advice may have saved me more heartache

Thanks

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to export or create Opus vector ilv? files from something like Photoshop????

Cheers

Pete

Hi Pete,
One thing good about CorelDraw -- you can save a vector image as wmf and that will 'import as vector' into Opus.
Then you can export the vector as an ilv file.
I've done quite a few of these.

cheers
Paul

You dont fancy doing a couple of hundred more by any chance?

Only kidding

LOL

cheers Paul

How you doing by the way?

Tis a beautiful day here... Ruapehu looks magnificent - full of snow!!

Pete

Hi Pete,
Ruapehu is too cold for me; I've never been keen on skiing, or engaging in any sports that require me to go somewhere cold
I hope you are keeping warm up there; a hard frost in Levin is only 4 degrees .

Paul

As Paul suggests you can use vectors from Corel Draw or Illustrator but we would recommend exporting EMF rather than WMF as the former has smoother curves and fewer nodes - it matches ILV much more closely.

Paul Harris