Animated alphas

[Hawk]

Zoë made a campfire with a static base and 2 'spinners' with alpha channels as night textures and sent it to me to animate.
After animation (rotating the spinners), we now get the S/DS when changing from day to night in RE and the sim at around 1800 hours.
I also noticed when using 2 D9's that the engines flash when gong by the campfire at night and the second engine will disappear when going by it during the day.
Could this be caused by animating a part with an alpha texture?

[lnghairedwizard]

Are you using both alpha-bright material settings and using a night texture?...not sure if that would cause an issue or not but you shouldnt need a night texture on this with the bright material settings.

I usually use trans material settings on this as more than one alpha-plane will cause the other to become transparent as they interact. I used a "cross-hairs" flame texture (trans not alpha) with one plane taller than the other to get an animated writhing effect....You can see it on my flare tower in the freeware refinery kit.

Bill Bzak

[rpicardi1]

Hawk, I think that Cal had this problem with a windmill which caused a crash at night.

Alpha is a problem as one needs the translucent shading that it offers for glass and flames. I am having problems of trains vanishing behind windows using alpha channels. Any idea how it was made to work on the glass tunnels and dome of Sea View?

SRV Ron

[Hawk]

Marc Nelson did the tunnels for Sea View. Maybe he can help Ron.

Bill, we're using a transbright for day and night, but the 'spinners' are not seen during the day. Only at night.
By eliminating either the night texture or the animation all works fine, just not as we'd like. It seems that the combination of the night texture and animation are what's causing the problem.

[GreatLocoChase]

Bill,

The Camp Fire uses both DAY and NIGHT TEXTURES
and animated lighted pieces,

In the DAY mode,
the fire uses a burned out TEXTURE
with the 'spinners' totally masked out alpha channels .

In the NIGHT mode,
the fire uses a 'lighted' TEXTURE
with the 'spinners' lighted through their alpha channels.

In it's NON-Animated version
the OBJECT works fine,
but with ANIMATION added
the fire will work in both DAY and NIGHT periods,
but delivers an S/SD message
both when cycling through to NIGHT in RE
and when passing into NIGHT in the Game.

[bwbrgb]

There is a small route on the Sim by Antonio M Sopena called Nigeria 1 that has fire pits with the rotating fire . Maybe some of his shapes and textures might give you some help .
Just a thought .
Rod

[Hawk]

The only thing I found in the File Library is an activity pack for the Modern Nigeria Route.
A search didn't turn up the route you mentioned.

[bwbrgb]

She's there - Nigeria1.zip - the route is called Kuru-jos .
Hope that helps .
Rod

[Hawk]

Found it. Thanks! :-)

[Hack]

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/msts-tech/message/639

:)

Cheers!
Marc - 3DTrains
http://www.3dtrains.com

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Pro Series v4.0 SuperPacks

[sinclair97]

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e341/sinclair97/AvatarMike.jpg


Could anyone...would anyone make this really come alive?

Mike http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/112883.gif

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e341/sinclair97/C1-1.jpg

[Hawk]

We're still working on making a small campfire come alive. :-)