Transparent widgets

[daves]

I'm currently using CEGUI within Ogre. By default Ogre comes with two CEGUI schemes (WindowsLook is one of them).

I will be adding my own schemes, but have not yet learned to do this, and am looking for a quick way to add transparency to some of the CEGUI windows.

For example is there a simple way to make an Editbox transparent or translucent? Can I set an alpha value for the background color?

[LennyH]

tga and png files support transparency. So, in your favorite image editing tool, you can set the alpha level of the area you're interested in, all the way down to 0 [clear] and up to 255 [opaque]. You can do the same with colors in cegui, which uses AARRGGBB, where AA is the alpha level from 00 to FF.

I'm not sure if you can set alpha level of an image from within, say, the looknfeel file, though. Somebody else would have to answer that, for the moment.

I lifted my own comment from this thread that was, funnily enough, posted around the same time you posted ^_^

[daves]

Thanks. We were able to use the SetAlpha method of the button and it worked, but it worked on both the background and the foreground text. This is not what we want since the result is that we cant make the background almost invisible and yet keep the foreground text bright and visible.

Independently we tried to set the RRGGBBAA color on the foreground text with an alpha of 1.0, but this didnt seem to work.

[LennyH]

My understanding is that alphas stack. What I mean is, if the alpha of the parent is less than 255, you'll never be able to make the children 'brighter' than that alpha [so, setting a child alpha to 255 would result in a blend that looked like the alpha of the parent].

I haven't delved this deep into effects, but, maybe you can modify the colors in the looknfeel file to set the individual imagery sections to have the proper alpha levels that you want? I am not sure how you would do this using just code, however.

[daves]

Thanks Lenny. Ill try it.