PARTIAL SEMI TRANSPARENT TEXTURES

[ROMSEY Homewood]

Hi Guys & Girls

You prolly been asked this 1m times already...

Q. i have made a 1 prim door using a 8 x 128 sculptie map, split in to 8 parts, it has uprights and cross beams and the last part is the semi see thru screen. Now i want the wooden parts solid in the texture and the screen part SEMI transparent....is this possible? Sounds do-able but i cant find any answers. I am using PS CS5. :womanwink:

Thx for your help in advance.

[Carbon Philter]

Certainly doable, Romsey.

The surface texture just needs to have an alpha channel with the area covering the screen being the bit where the alpha mask contains the partial transparent properties.

However you must bear in mind that the alpha sorting glitch may affect how you see it and sometimes the sorting order of the bits will screw up and some bits will show forward of others.

The alternative would be to use the split sculptie to define only the solid parts of the door and link a separate regular prim for the see through panel. That way you are less likely to suffer the alpha glitch problem.

As an aside, bear in mind that if the door is to be scripted to open, you may come up against additional difficulty defining the axis of rotation or alternatively you need a more complex rotation/position script which does not need the axis of rotation to be at the edge of the door.

Here's a link to the machinimatrix tutorial I learnt how to apply textures to a sculptie. Things have moved on and there may be more up to date tuts covering this on the same site, but the principles are still valid.

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/3d-creation/video-tutorials/sculpties-older-tutorials-page/texturingsculpties_multiple_images/

Hope this helps.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

If you are asking is it possible to make one texture that will do this, Then yes its possible. There are two choices. One choice is to make it using an outside 3D program that can paint sculpts. Your other choice is to lay a texture grid map on it and see where the numbered squares lie on the prim and make a texture according to that.

If you are asking if one texture can be a true solid in parts and transparent or semi transparent on others then no.  To make any part of a texture see through requires an alpha channel on the whole texture.  You can make the texture "appear" solid in parts however you will still get the problem with the weird effects when another alpha texture is too close to it.

I don't use photoshop, I use another program.  However I imagine you can make a texture semi-transparent by making a section on it solid then using a tool to set the transparency level on just that part more than zero but less than 100%.  Maybe someone else can enlighten you on the specific tool or steps to take with photoshop.

[ROMSEY Homewood]

Ty so much! very helpful :womanvery-happy:

It is obvious when u think about it , i guess i will just have to bite the bullet and use an exta prim for the screen! :lol:

As for the door, Carbon, u can "save centre" in Blender so the axis is at the edge BUT it does create a larger prim (half of which is not visible) sliced/bounding box? and can get in the way sometimes if the door is non-phantom.

Thanks for all your help! You have amplified my awesome and receive kudos!