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burgoofj
06-06-2002, 11:40 PM
Hi folks,

I'm struggling with the windows on my locomotive. The windows are transparent, but when you look through the locomotive you cannot see the scenery objects on the other side.

A bit more of an explanation. The loco is modeled using TSM. The windows are made with an alpha channel on the textures. When assigning the materials to the cab, the outside is alphanorm+, the inside alphanorm-. Other combinations work the same as long as the inside is "less" than the outside. I can see into the locomotive and see the interior and can see outside the loco from the interior just fine. The problem is when looking completely through the locomotive. Scenery objects are not visible. Tracks, roads and the ground can be seen, but not buildings, trees and other objects.

I can solve this problem if I do the following. Make the material of both the interior and exterior of the cab TransNorm. However, I originally made my alpha channel with rgb values of (48,48,48) on the window area. This works fine with an alpha material, but with a trans material, it's not transparent. If I change the RGB of the window areas to something like (8,8,8) then using the TransNorm materials and everything works.

Now I just think the less transparent values look a little better, and would like to keep them. Also I would like to understand the reasons for what I am seeing.

Thanks in advance for any help on this issue, and thanks for all the information you all have provided in the past.

Frank Burgoon

Stew
06-07-2002, 12:04 AM
I can't tell you why AlphaNorm does this but I can tell you that TransNorm is what Kuju used for the cab windows of the Dash 9. From that I'm guessing that Kuju knows that AlphaNorm material blanks out the scenery in the background. I think it's better used to blank out foreground model parts where another part needs to show through that's other than transparent.

Stew

Groquik
06-08-2002, 08:30 AM
Hi

Making semi-transparent windows with Alphnorm map without vanish scenery is possible but the alphnorm triangles need to be sorted.

Under 3ds max, the material needs to be named "alphnorm+1s" for example

I don't know the equivalent solution for TSM but you may be able to assign a priority to these triangles