Inverted Mask

General Discussion
#1

Hi,

I’d really like to be able to use ‘inverted masks’. The Square and Circle Mask right now are used to hide the ‘peripherals’ while allowing the user to see through a square or circular ‘hole’ in the center. I love that you can make the mask itself transparent, so that the hole appears in a real life object, creating the augmented portal effect.

What I am looking for is the opposite in addition to the current mask. I’d like the ‘hole’ to be on the outside, while having a mask in the center that still shows the real life object while hiding the AR behind the mask (for now). This would also allow me to make irregular shaped ‘holes’, by using one of the existing mask, and placing an inverted mask over part of its hole.

#2

I’m sure someone at Zapworks can expand on this and correct anything that I get wrong.
But my understanding of the masks, is that you can already do this. All the masks are, are special 3D objects that are made really large with a hole in them, thus any 3D object can be used as a mask, as long as you make sure the rendering settings, and order in you zap are correct. For a square hole to the real world just use a plane.

I have played with this technique a bit while experimenting, and it even caused problems in my hinadan, since the objects the dolls held were just 2D images on a plane, but due to order of rendering, if certain ones were viewed in front of others it would look like one of the items was cut at the edge of the other items invisible plane.

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#3

Hi Bradley,

I was playing around with this before, and tried to make a subsymbol with a mask with a very small hole, then using the subsymbol in my project and scaling it. The mask would still extend into infinity, and not be confined to the subsymbol’s edges. Did I miss some rendering setting here?

#4

I just re-read your reply and figured out I misunderstood. Instead of using a mask, I should use a plane? I thought making a plane transparent was different from making a mask transparent in that the plane would just be seethrough and show the AR behind it, while the mask would hide the AR behind it and show the real world. I will have to experiment.

#5

YES! That is indeed how it works. A plane set to transparent will hide the AR behind it on full 3D setting and show the real world instead.

Thank you Bradley!

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