Blending Modes

Contents

• What are Blending Modes?
• How to Set the Blending Mode
• The Future

What are Blending Modes?

When semi-transparent images are drawn, and particularly when two or more overlap, the graphics engine has to know how to draw the overlapping area. This is known as blending.

Blending Modes are the equations used to determine how to draw these semi-transparent images. We support 13 modes in total. There's no better way to show this than through a live demo.

How to Set the Blending Mode

Blending Modes can only be set during custom drawing, which is to say, only inside the "when drawing" event.

If you'd like an entire actor to draw in a semi-transparent fashion and use a different blending mode than the "normal" mode, you'll want to use the following approach.

1. Use the "hide sprite" block (Actor > Draw) to turn off regular drawing for this actor.
   
   
    
2. Then draw the actor inside a "when drawing" event like follows. The key aspect is using the "draw image" block, which will draw the current image for this actor
   
   

The Future

Currently, blending modes beyond a "normal" blend only work for web (Flash) games. Blending Mode support will be improved in Stencyl 3.0 by becoming a direct property you can set on an Actor or an entire Layer.

Summary

• Blending Modes determine how semi-transparent images are drawn, particularly when multiple ones overlap.
• View our demo to determine which ones fit your needs. The vast majority of cases just need Normal, Add and Multiply.
• To apply blending modes to an actor's animations, use the "hide sprite" block and then manually draw the image using the "draw image for [self]" block.

Challenge: Name that Game

Although most games can get by with Normal, Add and Multiply, can you cite instances (from real, shipping games) where other blending modes have clearly been used?

Leaufai
There is still mention of patch 2.5, even though that has morphed into 3.0
0 9 months, 2 weeks ago

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