Transparent textures

[Persephone Bolero]

I recently learned to use Blender, and so I learned on 3.1. I can build and texture mesh objects just fine with one exception -- I can't figure out how to make transparent textures. There are some tutorials around that show how to make glass, but they're on older versions of Blender, which look totally different, or they use Photoshop. I use Gimp, and it's hard to follow along.

Can anyone point me to a recent tutorial on how to make glass textures on mesh objects for export to SL, and preferably one that's a little easier for beginners? I'm trying to make a very basic four-pane window with a wooden frame. The frame looks great. The glass looks like the frame.

Thank you.

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

You create translucent textures the same way as always: use a paint program that supports transparency and can export 32-bit PNG or TGA files.

Also, it's important to know that you can put a transparent/translucent texture on any object face in SL (and set that face's alpha blending mode correctly) and it'll work even if you never previewed it.

Textures with transparencies don't preview correctly in Blender unless you change these settings, though.

1. Make sure your shader is using the texture's alpha channel. One way is to use the Principled BSDF shader node and plug the alpha channel in directly. You could also use two shaders -- an opaque one and a totally clear one -- along with a mix node that uses alpha to control how much of each to average together.

2. Switch the material to use alpha blending or alpha hashing for previews. (Materials have a lot of advanced optical features turned off by default in the Eevee renderer, and Blender always uses Eevee for material previews even if you're using Cycles for your final work.)

Edited May 29, 2022 by Quarrel Kukulcan

[Persephone Bolero]

Thank you so much, Quarrel. That was such a big help. I got it to work!