Can all viewers see alpha masking or only materials viewers?

[Nina Jashan]

Can all viewers see alpha masking or only materials viewers?

I'm using alpha masking on plants that look very bad with alpha blending overlay glitch flicker. Now I'm wondering how others might see these plants. I'm thinking many people are still using firestorm without materials. So will they see the crappy alpha glitch flicker thingy or do all viewers show alpha masking the way it's meant to look?

P.S. I turned off advanced lighting and I still see alpha masking ok.

[MIstahMoose]

Alpha is just part of the normal texture. It has nothing to do with materials?

[Nina Jashan]

Yes, I'm not really sure it relates to materials, except that the alpha mode options (blending, masking or emissive) came out with materials viewer. So I don't know if people who have standard viewers can see the alpha mode you set for the texture.

[Nina Jashan]

I would test it except that I'd need to install a standard viewer, like firestorm.

[arton Rotaru]

Non materials viewers see just the alpha blending mode. So yeah, alpha sorting glitch as usual. 

More problematic though, is the emissive mask mode. Again non materials viewers see just the usual alpha blending mode, which renders parts of the object more or less invisible then. :matte-motes-big-grin:

Alpha masking does work with ALM turned off as well, as you already noted, in materials viewers. Emissive masks require ALM though, to make them work. Of course, they won't render invisible with ALM off, in an up_to_date viewer.

 

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

old viewers without materials support  see the textures like you left the setting on alpha blend.

it appears that  viewing the new fittest mesh crashes those older viewers, at least the more popular ones, so they won't be a problem for long.

[Nina Jashan]

Thank you for the response. 

I would guess that there would be many people using the non materials viewers since the Firestorm materials viewer is still in beta, so it's a nuisance

Is it just me or does the alpha sorting glitch affect mesh items more than sculpties and standard prims? Most of the old plants (and hair) used alpha textures and they were OK, except when you had another alpha texture near them like a window. I see the alpha sorting glitch a lot more with some mesh items like my plant, which is just unusable with alpha blending. I don't remember standard prims or sculptie plants ever being unusable because of the glitch.

[Rolig Loon]

The Firestorm beta viewer is the one that most Firestorm users are running now, so it's not that much of a nuisance.  It's a beta in name only.

[arton Rotaru]

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Nina Jashan wrote:

Thank you for the response. 

I would guess that there would be many people using the non materials viewers since the Firestorm materials viewer is still in beta, so it's a nuisance

Is it just me or does the alpha sorting glitch affect mesh items more than sculpties and standard prims? Most of the old plants (and hair) used alpha textures and they were OK, except when you had another alpha texture near them like a window. I see the alpha sorting glitch a lot more with some mesh items like my plant, which is just unusable with alpha blending. I don't remember standard prims or sculptie plants ever being unusable because of the glitch.

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I wouldn't worry too much about outdated viewers. I even sell objects with emissive masks. :matte-motes-big-grin: It's been about 8 month now, since materials were released. That's time enough to update a viewer IMHO. Of course, some people aren't willing to install something that has "Beta" in it's name. However, that's anybodys own choice which viewer they will use. I certainly don't wait for any TPV to catch up anymore.

About the alpha sorting glitch. Yeah, if it's all one mesh with transparency, the sorting glitch may be more obvious. For sculpts there used to be some sort of workaround. And if it's multiple objects, it wouldn't be so bad as well probably.