What color should the texture background be, for alpha-mapped textures?

Josh White [josh@vectorg.com] wrote:

Plant textures: you do a good job explaining it. I agree with all you wrote except clearing the background to black. I think it's better to clear to an average-color sample, so the inevitable edge-anti-aliasing and/or alpha mismatch mistakes aren't as obvious.

Ben wrote:

Hmmm. I spent many hours trying many different approaches and color combinations. No matter what color i used (e.g.. green, since it would be against of background or grass and other trees) there was a bad-looking "halo" of that color (e.g.. green) around the tree. When i use black, there is "dark" halo but it is much, much less conspicuous. I asked my artist, Jill, and she said she always uses black. Also, the textures that commercial texture companies sell use black. I guess it's just more "neutral"... can look like shading, to the uncritical eye.

Josh wrote:

Yes, it's definitely an industry standard - but in my experience, it's not a good standard. I agree about the shading trick - sometimes we use a darkened color rather than a simple average - but you can also go the other way and use a lighter color, which can (sometimes!) look cool, like a highlight.