Why don't alpha masks work on BOM'd Belleza Jake?

[Qie Niangao]

Yeah, I know Jake is a kludge and I know it can use alpha cuts (such as they are), but I'm baffled by what happens when I try to apply an alpha mask to the body.

I mean, the BOM is working: it's taking BOM skin and system clothing textures and everything's cool and seems to be working perfectly UNTIL I try to apply an alpha mask. Then the textures rebake as if it's "trying" but to no effect: rebaked, it's as if there were no alpha mask at all. The same alphas work fine on the same accounts using the same BOM skins on the BOM-applied "Classic" Meshbody instead of Jake, so... what's going wrong? I mean, what's even happening when a BOM surface rebakes, such that it ends up still showing the BOM skin without the alpha mask applied?

Clearly I don't know as much about BOM as I thought I did.

[Theresa Tennyson]

17 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Yeah, I know Jake is a kludge and I know it can use alpha cuts (such as they are), but I'm baffled by what happens when I try to apply an alpha mask to the body.

I mean, the BOM is working: it's taking BOM skin and system clothing textures and everything's cool and seems to be working perfectly UNTIL I try to apply an alpha mask. Then the textures rebake as if it's "trying" but to no effect: rebaked, it's as if there were no alpha mask at all. The same alphas work fine on the same accounts using the same BOM skins on the BOM-applied "Classic" Meshbody instead of Jake, so... what's going wrong? I mean, what's even happening when a BOM surface rebakes, such that it ends up still showing the BOM skin without the alpha mask applied?

Clearly I don't know as much about BOM as I thought I did.

Since everyone associated with Belleza mesh bodies appear to be dead Belleza bodies haven't been updated since BOM was released, their alpha setting would be "none" so the alpha setting of the mask would be ignored. The body will still rebake because the bake is actually different; you just can't see that on the body.

[Qie Niangao]

6 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

their alpha setting would be "none"

Aha! That makes sense. Thanks!

[KjartanEno]

If the body was set to modify permissions (and the scripts could remain no mod), it would be quite easy to fix the alpha masking issue. One could then rez the body and edit the mesh to set it manually to alpha masking, or one could add a simple script to set the desired parts of the linkset to alpha masking. I dare any mesh body or head creator to give me a good reason why their mesh is so precious it can't be set to modify perms.

Edit: This was something I learned when BoM was new. Any object set to use the "baked" textures will default to alpha blending mode. BoM mesh that is set to alpha blending will not be able to use system alpha masks. Thus it is necessary to set the object to alpha masking, if possible, in order to use system alpha masks.

When one uses an Omega applier to send the "baked" UUIDs to the 'skin' layer of the body, that does allow the use of system skins. However, since Omega system was not designed to also set the alpha modes in the receiver script, there is no way to also set alpha masking.

On a no mod, BoM capable body, the creator of the body includes that alpha masking feature in the script after the part where it sends the BoM UUIDs to the appropriate linked mesh parts. This is what the "Reset to Bakes On Mesh" buttons on HUDs tell the script in the body to do: Set texture UUIDs and set linked parts to alpha masking. Again, there is no reason to sell a mesh body that is no mod. Even the Omega system creators emphasize that point in their documentation.

Edited December 17, 2020 by KjartanEno
a lot more information

[Gage Wirefly]

I own this body and BoM skins are all that works on it. You must use the HUD for alphas. Maybe some day they will update it......Maybe.