Quick question about alpha (Material editor)

Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Printable Version

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Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Mudbill - 05-25-2014

Hey, so yeah there's this alpha checkbox on the texture units. I haven't used it before, but I though it would be self-explanatory; adding a separate alpha texture to display transparency. Is this not so?

[Image: 1WcoagM.png]

I have this texture and I want the upper right corner to be translucent. This is a texture for a model I have, and I want a certain component of that model to be see-through. Am I doing something wrong? The original texture file itself already has this alpha channel baked into it, but that nor the alpha unit seemed to work. Having the blend mode set to alpha did not either. Any ideas? Tongue

RE: Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Romulator - 05-25-2014

IIRC, you make the area you want to be transparent either black or white (one of the two, think it is white) and leave the other parts colored in with your image. Something along those lines.

RE: Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Daemian - 05-25-2014

It doesn't look too dark to be invisible, for materials, alpha must be full black or full white. (No idea why)
But you can still change the material type to translucent and get a similar effect.

RE: Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Mudbill - 05-25-2014

(05-25-2014, 02:37 AM)Romulator Wrote: IIRC, you make the area you want to be transparent either black or white (one of the two, think it is white) and leave the other parts colored in with your image. Something along those lines.

Well, when it comes to alpha, white = opaque and black = transparent. Any greyvalue in between would be translucent at the strength of the value. Using only white/black only allows for either full texture or no texture, but I want a slightly see-through texture (because it is considered a glass lens). Putting the general type to translucent instead of soliddiffuse makes the whole object translucent, though it does make the alpha area more than the rest, but I can't have the rest use it at all.

So I guess the problem is that I want semi-transparency instead of something that cuts out a whole part of the image.

RE: Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Daemian - 05-25-2014

Look how dark alpha looks in this texture.

RE: Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Mudbill - 05-25-2014

Yeah, I can try making it 100% black, but wouldn't that make it invisible?

RE: Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Daemian - 05-25-2014

Emmm yeah I think so. Black invisible, white visible.
The only way to get semi-transparency, that I know, is to set the whole material type to translucent.
Remember that Amnesia display table? I think it uses two materials, 1 for wood, 1 for glass, because of this problem.

edit: display.ent

RE: Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Traggey - 05-25-2014

HPL does not support semi-transparency, you'll need a seperate material with the mode set to additive of multiply to get a transparent effect.

RE: Quick question about alpha (Material editor) - Mudbill - 05-25-2014

I see. Well, that change should be simple for me to do. Thank you for letting me know.