[Nico]

I posted this last week, for some reason the thread disappeared, so gonna post it again.
It's just some fast brainstorming anyway:
I don't like how transparency is dealt with right now coz, well, it doesn't work. I thought of an alternative way, which doesn't require a texture tag or anything, and should be quite nice looking:
you already know the invisible map, when you apply that to a poly, it won't show ingame. Now the idea is to duplicate that map code, so you have something like transparency2.pcx ( well, glass.pcx would be better, let's call it that way ). When you apply it, it does the same as the invisible map, excepted you can give it a specular map, just like on any regular texture. That way, the polys would not be rendered, but the specularity would.
Thoughts?

[CP5670]

The usual pure green method seems to work fine for me, at least in 8-bit pcx files. This had issues on Glide but that's not used anymore in FS2_open.

[Nico]

Hey, didn't think about green. Thanks, good point.

[Omniscaper]

I recall the errors that happened in the SOvereign class when I was still testing it. You can use either green or have an alpha map of black through TGA's or DDS's to give it a null texture. At some point I went nuts in brainstorming I was gonna put glass in all starship windows. I realized that would be a bit too nuts. SPecular does make that nice affect though, but the problem was culling. You can see stars past the null textured zone despite the fact that there is an object behind it.

[KARMA]

I think you have to put the object behind the window (namely a room or something similar) as a different subobject that the one whit the transparent poly. Nico and aldo verifyed this sometimes ago

[Omniscaper]

So the object that is gonna be seen through the window must be a subobject of that window? I'll try it. Because I really wanna go nuts with the Galaxy class and model the Ready room and bridge to be visible through the glass. The Arboritum is already visible but there is no glass.

[KARMA]

it just has to be a different subobject than the one with the windows.
for example you can have all the windows on the same subobject and all the internal bits in another.
But it's better if you make first a minor test, since I never did it on my own and i'm reporting you something little old, before HTL era

[Nico]

voila. basically, just make the whole glass part a subobject. Or do the detailing behind the cockpit, it'll look so much better :

[redmenace]

I thought phreak was working on a high poly perseus interceptor though. Is that it. Cock pit looks great though.

[phreak]

i can't model crap.  not to mention TS3 ruins any chances of me learning

bob did a perseus when he hit the "smooth quad divide" button twice

[Carl]

i think the pilot is a bit too large.

[Omniscaper]

What does your hierarchy look like? I'd like to try that with an UBER version of the Galaxy Class with visible bridge and ready room.

You should use the High resolution textures of the Perseus from the original Freespace 1. I believe its avaiable with the Freespace 1 Port.

[KARMA]

he doesn't even know what a TS hierachy is eheheeh

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Nico
voila. basically, just make the whole glass part a subobject. Or do the detailing behind the cockpit, it'll look so much better :
http://www.swooh.com/premium/venom/fs2pics/Valk00.jpg

Eh? I don't see any spec on the window regions.

And why does thoat skin look so low res?

Oh well, that's a cool mesh.

[Bobboau]

oh, I think we forgot to mention,we fixed that green transparency zbuffer bug, so you can now use the green transparency thing and it will work like you would expect it to

[Omniscaper]

Meaning........ no more negative space? Objects behind greened objects will render? COOL! Does the same apply to alphas for TGA's and DDS?

[Bobboau]

yes
yes
no

[Omniscaper]

Bollocks!!! Its alll good. Is there anyway I can create a transparency that has some gradual fade to opaque. Or is there only a particular shade of green that Freespace recognizes as a transparent zone.

I'm still trying to use transparency to create a cloud layer for my Earth model. Its a cloud sphere overlapping the earth sphere.

[Bobboau]

for that particular useage you could probly try to use an alpha mask, just make sure the atmoshpere is in a seperate submodel

[Flipside]

A standard PCX won't work for that Omni, only pure green, 0, 255, 0 is considered transparent by the FS2 engine, you would have to use what Bobboau suggests

Flipside