# Creating and editing a P-Mode preset

When you save a cel with a P-Mode mask, the 3DO CelWriter offers several P-Mode presets in the P-Mode settings pop-up menu.

At times, the available P-Mode presets will not result in the effect you want. In that case, you can edit an existing P-Mode preset or create a new one.

This section helps you work with P-Mode presets and discusses:

- How to create a P-Mode preset
- Which cels allow P-Mode

  Note: For more information on which cels allow P-Mode, see "Tools for 3DO Art Production," in "Introduction to 3DO Graphics" in this manual.

## How to create a P-Mode preset

To create a new P-Mode Preset follow these steps:

1. Start a save process to display the CelWriter dialog.

2. Click New in the P-Mode Settings box in the bottom left of the dialog.

   The P-Mode Preset dialog appears.

   Figure 1: P-Mode Preset dialog.

3. Give the new P-Mode preset a name, then adjust the settings in the dialog that appears for the desired effect.

## Which cels allow P-Mode

You can create a P-Mode channel for uncoded 16-bit cels and for coded 6-bit, 4-bit, 2-bit, and 1-bit cels. However, if there are a lot of colors where you place the mask in the original image, you may potentially lose a lot of color resolution since P-Mode for the listed coded cel types is effectively computed on a per-color basis.

For 8-bit coded cels, there is no special P-Mode bit. However, the P-Mode pop-up menus in the Coded-8 CelWriter are provided as a convenience for the programmer. The programmer may decide to flip between P-Mode 1 and P-Mode 0 for the whole cel as part of the program. For example, the program could alternate between an opaque ghost and a translucent ghost if the two P-Modes had previously been specified.

## For more information

For more detail on how the hardware uses two data sources and uses multipliers and dividers, see Introduction to 3DO Graphics in this volume.