A transparent mesh

[Legacy_dusty.lane]

               I am wanting to make a skin mesh half-transparent, but it's not working. Each time I go at it, even setting alphas, it only seems to want to be as it was before my changes. It's peeving me off. Any ideas on how to get past this?  :happy:
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <quaking...>

Quick iPhone response; compare your settings with the gelatinous cube. It is quite transparent and an excellent tutorial on skinmesh (being rather simple).

<...like a cube of jello>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               Again, your best bet is TXI. You can also do this neat trick where you give it an environment map and make the environment map itself have transparency, so you can have transparent metallic liquids! I hope you can find my tutorials on those kinds of things in a few months. I have some really wicked looking liquid spells based on animesh instead of skins. Can't wait to finish them...

Anyway, specifically, do you want the entirety of the mesh to be equally transparent, or do you only need parts to be transparent. If only parts, or if you need variance in the opacity, change the alpha layer of the applied texture itself.

Otherwise, use the TXI parameter combination of "blending additive" and set your "alphamean ####" value to tweak its opacity. I think TXI can also take an opacity value, but I can't find docs on it. Beware though that certain graphics cards draw things out of order sometimes, so you might unintentionally erase some hand-held items, or even erase effects further in the background. When I started my ghostly skeletons project, I had some issues with weapons disappearing, and their internal spectral fire was drawing OVER the ribcage instead of inside of it.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               somewhat related http://social.biowar...index/9103587/1
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               Not to hijack the topic...

MerricksDad wrote...

Again, your best bet is TXI. You can also do this neat trick where you give it an environment map and make the environment map itself have transparency, so you can have transparent metallic liquids!

Srsly? I wanted to try that ages ago but it didn't work for some reason I forgot. Is there a txi setting on the environment map needed, or did I just mess up something simple when I tried it?


As an aside, if you're using alpha transparency on the texture and not the model, then make sure you save the texture as a 32 bit tga not 24. I tend to make that mistake when I'm not thinking, since Photoshop defaults to 24.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 16 mai 2013 - 03:24 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_dusty.lane]

               Alright! Cool! I hadn't thought of the jelly cube, for some reason. I should open it up soon and see how it works in general, kind of driving my curiosity.

As for everyone else, the TXI advice and all that is very well-received. =) It's very nice to see just how friendly and helpful this community still is to somebody who is an absolute nob on certain things. I think that's truly a big part of what's kept things going and alive.

Also making me curious on this "really wicked looking liquid spells based on animesh instead of skins" honestly I've never tampered with animesh, so I am unsure what the difference is. Either way, sounds cool, can't wait to see them. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

_six wrote...

Not to hijack the topic...

MerricksDad wrote...

Again, your best bet is TXI. You can also do this neat trick where you give it an environment map and make the environment map itself have transparency, so you can have transparent metallic liquids!

Srsly? I wanted to try that ages ago but it didn't work for some reason I forgot. Is there a txi setting on the environment map needed, or did I just mess up something simple when I tried it?

Yes. After playing with OTR's TXI stuff, I stumbled upon it but kinda on purpose. I needed a shiny bubble what was transparent, but also where the environment map was transparent. What I did was use a TXI to give an environment map to a solid blue texture with an alpha channel dimming it down. I point it toward a waterfall / metallic kinda image, which as you know basically just makes a blue shiny metal. Then give the environment image its own alpha channel and boing, you got  shiny transparent bubbles with a environment map which is not too metallic. To give it more depth and color, I stacked up to 3 of the same spheres only a few points from each other, so it looks like a thick glass globe. I then used animesh to make all the layers of the globe flow up or down around the caster to encapsulate him like slime.

The only issue I can see with it so far is that the effect always has a true north facing, meaning that one side of it will always point north and be noticably painted and highlighted differently. This also seems to happen anytime I emit 3d models for some reason.

As an aside, if you're using alpha transparency on the texture and not the model, then make sure you save the texture as a 32 bit tga not 24. I tend to make that mistake when I'm not thinking, since Photoshop defaults to 24.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. I use PSP 7 for my tga's and i have it set to 32 bit default.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               Animesh can be used to make some very interesting animated stuff, as long as your animation needs to play the exact same way every time, or in a loop. I use it for spells I am building, but not much else. Other's have used it to create flowing water in rivers and streams, as well as some gears and belts on a machine.

For some stuff, skins work best, especially if you have a body mass and multiple animations it can make.

Animesh is only mechanical in that it animates the entire model by reconstructing its verts and faces, basically deleting the model before to reconstruct the model from scratch. Due to that it is best that you have small polycount objects to become animesh. I've also never tried an animesh where each frame had a different count of vertices, so you might find issue in that.

Skins are mechanical in that they just migrate or offset verts as the associated bones move and rotate. Animesh on the other hand needs no bones at all, just predefined vertex coordinates.

As far as I can remember, animesh can also cast shadows, can be transparent, can accept all TXI input, and is really quite easy to work with in Gmax.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               

dusty.lane wrote...

...somebody who is an absolute nob...

Now now, you're a lovely person I'm certain.

:innocent:
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_dusty.lane]

               

MerricksDad wrote...

Animesh can be used to make some very
interesting animated stuff, as long as your animation needs to play the
exact same way every time, or in a loop. I use it for spells I am
building, but not much else. Other's have used it to create flowing
water in rivers and streams, as well as some gears and belts on a
machine.

For some stuff, skins work best, especially if you have a body mass and multiple animations it can make.

Animesh
is only mechanical in that it animates the entire model by
reconstructing its verts and faces, basically deleting the model before
to reconstruct the model from scratch. Due to that it is best that you
have small polycount objects to become animesh. I've also never tried an
animesh where each frame had a different count of vertices, so you
might find issue in that.

Skins are mechanical in that they just
migrate or offset verts as the associated bones move and rotate. Animesh
on the other hand needs no bones at all, just predefined vertex
coordinates.

As far as I can remember, animesh can also cast
shadows, can be transparent, can accept all TXI input, and is really
quite easy to work with in Gmax.

Sounds sexy. With how it works though, I can see why it is not used more often. Really want to see that stuff you've been mentioning now.

_six wrote...

dusty.lane wrote...

...somebody who is an absolute nob...

Now now, you're a lovely person I'm certain.

:innocent:

*Is a total nob.*