transparent textures on models

[Rick]

So what do I have to do to get semi-transparent textures on my model to show up as semi-transparent via the editor? What would the steps be?

[AggrorJorn]

I use this matt:

texture0="abstract::lock.dds"
blend=0
depthmask=1
overlay=0
zsort=0
cullface=1
castshadows=1
specular=0.0
gloss=0.25
bumpscale=0.3
shader="abstract::mesh_diffuse.vert","abstract::mesh_diffuse_alphatest.frag"
shadowshader="abstract::mesh_shadow.vert"

[Pixel Perfect]

The alpha test shader will not give variable transparency, just full transparency for alpha channel values over a certain value. Rick appears to be looking for the full 256 transparency values to be reproduced. Your texture has no varied transparency set in its alpha channel, just the full on and full off values.

 

He's looking for the equivalent of the alpha_blend setting we used to use in material files (which is presumably the alphablend version of the frag shader) but i'm sure they needed to be rendered in the transparency layer to work correctly, although I may be wrong!

[Rick]

Pixel is correct. Think of something like glass. It would be semi-transparent not all or nothing. I'm looking for this for water. I have created a water object that lets you drag water into your scene. It's not an infinite plane like the water that comes so you can have many different instances used at all sorts of different heights at different sizes. You could use it for large bodies of water or puddles if you like. In fact I have an idea of making a weather object that you can link this water object to and the weather object can talk to these water objects to tell them when it's raining or not. This could them cause the water objects to raise vertically to a defined per instance level when it rains and to lower to a defined per level when it's sunny over a given time amount to give the effect of puddles forming and drying up.

 

So far I have the water but the texture I use is solid. If I could make it semi-transparent it would look better. If I can get that I can start looking at the other effects needed, like reflections and underwater effects.

 

 

This seems odd that this hasn't been done in the editor by anyone.

[AggrorJorn]

I tried to create glass last week. It isn't that easy. I used a slightly gray color as material. The matt file uses the default frag files for this. If I would set the blend to 2. I would get this yellow kind of glass which looks kinda flat. With an extra bump map, the glass texture looks better. The problem with this was that objects behind the glass would give a large glow when they had glossines enabled in the matt file. I''ll upload a pixture how this looks when I'm back home.

[Michael Betke]

I have the same idea of doing a simple modeled water plane with refraction but wasnt able to do a shader too.

[AggrorJorn]

I have the same idea of doing a simple modeled water plane with refraction but wasnt able to do a shader too.

 

Can't you use the shader from the water plane from the old water tutorials?

[Michael Betke]

No using the .mat file resulted in strange effects. Maybe it needs to be coded. But this would be beyong my skills.

 

Basically a basic river / lake could be done with a refraction shader.