Texture Showing through another Object

[TarquinAnthony]

Ill try to explain the best I can, I have a shop put a shelf against the wall,not through it maybe .5 away when I put product on the shelf the wall texture shows through the product,it only happens in this one shop the other is fine been trying all day to figure out why or what is causing this and can seem to figure out how to fix it. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

                                                           Thank You

                                                TarquinAnthony Resident

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I'm pretty sure it's alpha channels in both textures. They don't like eachother.

If you don't need any alpha AND you have the texture full perm, download it and upload it again as 24-bit tga instead of 32 bit. That should solve it. or upload as bmp, that might be easier.

[TarquinAnthony]

Thank you ill try that right now

 

Ok not sure how to do that but would removing alpha channel get the same results?

[Peggy Paperdoll]

It depends on how the shelf was made as to whether or not it will give the same results.  The alpha sorting glithch (it's not something that is particular to SL but to digital images everywhere) occurs when your viewing angle to the objects line up so that one object is in front of the other object........if both objects contain an alpha channel video cards have trouble discerning which object is supposed to be front and which is supposed to be behind.  The textures will appear to swap back and forth or superimpose on each other.  The problem shows up in SL a lot because most creators are amateurs and don't understand what channels are, let alone what an alpha channel is.  To make sure the glitch does not show up the creator needs to make sure a texture containing an alpha channel is never able to be viewed when in line with another texture containing an alpha channel.

Removing the alpha channel from a texture that does not require transparency will not effect the texture (other than taking out an unnecessay channel.....which it good for rendering and does effect texture lag in a good way).  If you shelf is a single cube with a texture using an alpha channel to make it see through where it should be then removing the alpha channel will destory the texture (or, at least, make it not suitable for a shelf).  If any items you place on the shelf have an alpha channel and the shelf has an alpha channel the it will glitch.  The trick is to only use textures that absolutely have to have an alpha channel in front of textures that don't have an alpha channel.

A common misconception with amateur texture creators is that a 32 bit texture is better in some way than a 24 bit texture and so they save all their textures at 32 bit thinking it's better.  Each texture has channels to define the detail and colors of the texture.........8 bits for red, 8 bits blue and 8 bits for green.  Those three channels will give you every color you can see...you don't need any more.  But there is a 4th channel.  It, too, is 8 bits.  It's called the alpha channel.  It's sole purpose for existance is to define transparency..........if you don't need any transparency then don't save the alpha channel.  The alpha channel does not make the texture more detail or more colorful........it just gives transpency to the texture and nothing more.  As you can see each channel is 8 bits.  That's data that your video card must process..........and, if it's processing some needless channel it will contribute to lag (not only for you but for everyone who is within their draw distance).

That's why people constantly say do not use alpha channels unless absolutely necessary.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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TarquinAnthony wrote:

Ok not sure how to do that but would removing alpha channel get the same results?

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Like Peggy said, saving as 24 bit is removing the alpha channel. Saving as bmp aswell. Removing the channel in Photoshop or Gimp then saving as 32 bit means you add the channel again.

So as I said, the easiest would be to save as bmp, it's lossles (good quality) and it has no alpha channel, so you don't need to worry about the settings when you save.