What I'm trying to do is have a selection of pre-drawn images with transparent areas translate, rotate etc. in the GEM window.

Is it possible to apply a texture with transparent areas to a geo so that the edge of the geo is invisible, and just the coloured area of the texture is visible? Is it possible to make the geo invisible?

I created a .tif with a transparent background and applied it as a texture to a square. but the transparent areas appeared to be rendered black.

I'm a rank newbie at pd/gem/ so any ideas / help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Yes, it's possible - you need the [alpha] object in the Gem chain.

See attached for example (not commented much, though).

It expects an RGBA PNG file called transparency.png next to the patch, so create one with your favourite tool(s)...

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/transparency.pd

I went you through so many of the patches in the Gem folder, but of course I missed the first one...

Thanks, this is great, just what I was after