Creative Voxel

Generally in my experience in game development you have a head artist, and you adapt to their vision, or they find someone who can.The second life platform is massively different than that of current engines. That being said I don't personally feel constrained by the Alpha blending mode aside from the fact that you cant control the draw order of other objects which makes comparability from different creators 'using alpha blending' impossible. But no offence to anyone I'm not looking to get into a debate about the topics, I simply wanted to provide some clarity to OG posters question, on how to fix their texture using the alpha blending mode; While I agree since it's hair they could probably get away with using Alpha masking, but honestly that wasn't the question.

PNG is a compressed file algorithm, TGA is uncompressed, and as mentioned above it's a tad easier to modify Alphas with it, but this is entirely upon ones personal preference

Ah, I see where the disconnect is happening, I'm aware of the 3 different alpha modes that second life has, what i'm referring to has more to do with what happens inside of the 3d program such as 3ds max or blender. While Alpha masking is great and less intensive on the render engine, the problem with it is your are incapable of getting see through effects, such as (Windows) with the mode, hence why Alpha blending is necessary for some objects. What i'm suggesting has entirely to do with the mode 'alpha blending' nothing else.

To my understanding if i'm understanding you correctly, You are saying the texture itself which has the alpha influences the zsorting of the alpha blending mode, or draw order of the mesh; In my experience I would say you're mistaken, the only two factors that i've seen that influence it are Material ids (Select faces) and how the object is attached together in the 3d program (Vertex draw order essentially) There's no number or order I can give you as it's different from object to object, my recommendation is to do research into Alpha Z sorting to understand how it works why it occurs and how to control it. That being said I'll give you some tool tips on what to look for. One influence is Material ID's (Select Faces) My memory is fuzzy but if you have multiple faces The overlapping object must be set to a higher material ID than the underlying object. The second influence is the (Draw Order), this is how you attach the mesh together. so hair for example you generally have Leafs of mesh, or Strips. You attach each object based on when you want it to draw. So (Underlying objects first) then the last ones should be The overlapping object. The program I use is 3ds Max, so i'm not sure if it works the same in blender or Maya; but the guide is universal all around, and the bug isn't bias to one application. Unfortunately it's very hard for me to explain what i mean in text but I hope this helps you out.

My recommendation is to increase the Padding from 2 pixels to 6 pixels, ontop of that, Secondlife LOD's textures from a distance which causes Seams to form, to get around it you can pull the texture into photoshop, and to a content aware fill, which should fix the issue.

The problem your facing is called Alpha Z sorting, Essentially it's the draw order of the mesh itself causing the Alpha Z sorting problem, This occurs on both Rigged mesh, and un-rigged mesh. Though it tends to be more noticeable via Un-rigged mesh. Alpha masking Is the "Path of least resistance" way of fixing it, since it's rendered different. But ultimately I imagine it does not achieve your desired effect as Alpha masking tends to make the texture look less soft rather than hard. To fix the problem, you need to attach the mesh in an order, which the Render engine can understand, Also note that having Materials(Select faces) on the object can also effect the draw order. If your porting between programs this can also mess up the vertex order if the file format is wrong.

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