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FPSC Classic Models and Media / transparency..?

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maxd
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Posted: 21st Feb 2005 16:50
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hi...

now trying to make a few models etc, but was wondering how do i adjust the textures to produce a tranparent area, ie i want some barbed wire on top of a fence. or to see through holes in a fence.

thanks afor any help..
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Simon
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Posted: 21st Feb 2005 19:16
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Hi Maxd
To make areas of a model transparent, the texture needs to have whats called an alpha channel.
This is a greyscale image that sits alongside the red, green and blue channels in the texture, either photoshop or paintshop pro will allow you to create this. Try editing an existing texture that you know uses transparency to see what I mean.
Black on the alpha channel shows as transparent on the model, white areas are opaque,different shades of grey produce translucent effects.
Note that we haven't fully perfected transparency in EA due to issues with the visibility system, I expect it to be working properly by V1.
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maxd
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Posted: 21st Feb 2005 19:20
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thanks simon.. will give it a shot...

ive noticed imaages, i assume bump maps that look like an iridescent blue colour, how do you go about making those...

thank again
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Simon
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2005 17:18
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They're called Normal maps - a bit like bump mapping only better.
Most of these were produced by creating a high polygon model (10,000 polys upwards) and mapping the normals to a low polygon mesh.
An alternative method is to take a greyscale bump map and use Nvidia's photoshop plugin to convert to a normal map (you don't get as good results from a bumpmap)
Note that you don't need normal maps for your textures to display, just the [_D2] maps. If pixel shaders are on and FPSC finds a normal map [_N] then it will use the [_D] texture for colour info, if not, it defaults to displaying the [_D2] texture.

Heres a list of the texture suffixes.
[_D] = Diffuse colour (use alpha for transparency) (24 or 32 bit)
[_D2] = Pre-lit Diffuse colour (default texture)(use alpha for transparency) (24 or 32 bit)
[_I] = Self illumination map (8-bit)
[_S] = Specular highlights map (8-bit)
[_N] = Normals map (24 bit)
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maxd
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2005 17:31
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thanks simon..

that about clears it up...
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