Editing the Ot channel
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I managed to apply glow or transparency to my model but i tried everything i could think of to get the Ot channel to work…
So far no results other than
1. all went white
2. model disappeared
3. game crashed
-.- Can FL even use the Ot_names / flags?? i mean theres gotta be some way, i hope
(looking at the ale e.g. for thrusters one can see that theres gotta be some sort of function to use grayscale images for an ot channel, right?)
Please help! -
Oo…
This is bad! If i cannot use a texture in the Opacity channel of a material then i will have to actually model the whole structure… omfg!
Well THX anyway at least i know now that it’s not possible. -
Opacity and transparency pretty much describes the same thing. You just add an alpha channel to your texture and walla, opacity without any flags
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Well, i am sooo sorry for those noobish questions!
But here is the thing… if i add texture say in milkshape ( a tga with a transparency) it still won’t work. i tried adding a second inversed texture with “combine alpha” same result, no transparency. Now what i wanna accomplish is, that some parts of my borgsphere texture are rendered and others are transparent, so that i can use several layers of a simple object with that texture combined as a part of the hull which can be nuked. If i cannot figure out how to do it with texture that model will be incredibly tough to create / render for FL.@ Sol: i found you awesome post on digital brilliance 'bout textures and i thought they were supplied by FL (besides of course those who u already said they aren’t).
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I am pretty stuck atm.
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FREELANCER recognizes an internal Alpha channel as transparency but MILKSHAPE interprets it as an illumination channel. Therefore, don’t worry about how Milkshape treats it, it WILL work in game if as long as you have it set up properly.
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Seems not easy to do that… if i use a partially transparent tga light (of sun e.g.) can pass through but thats about it, LOL. It’s really weird. i don’t mind milkshape or hardcmp for preview cuz i know they wont show the ingame result but i really can’t set it up propperly!
i use a simple form (cube) and got DcDt only in my .mat. the actual tga file is as i said partially transparent and the transparent parts show up white. Only the sun’s light can pass through (i know, weird right?).
What am i missing here?PS: If i add Oc the texture disappeares and the model becomes invisible -.-
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I’ve always had issues with getting partial transparency to show up properly in game. Something you may want to do is look at the Nomad ships as they are all partially transparent. See if you can pull some of the numbers or settings out of their MAT/texture files and apply them to yours.
Just an idea.
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:oops:
:oops:
Ha ha ha… i love photoshop. One should think it will save my alpha channel if i told it to, but guess what, it wont! Gotta force it to… Anyways it works now -.-;
As for the Nomad ships: it’s kinda different for them i think. I couldn’t find alpha channels there. As far as i could see they use different layers of Hulls and some rather weird texture together with a rather high setting of opacity.Thx everyone for your input on that topic!!
Now if i can manage that bump mapping thing i am all set… I’ll post an image when i am done
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Ok, successful test… Thx again everyone =))
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Looks good there
Try experimenting with the other material options too; I think Bt or Detail map -something close- gave interesting results, especially on Nomad type materials. Some other funky options are changing the Int array value (it’s 64, 72, 80?). Someone else here can supply the numbers for that, I haven’t got FL installed on the new system yet or I’d provide those. But check in Planet atmosphere entries for one, and maybe the other is in starsphere -sorry for the poor guesses, but its a start ^^. The Nomad stuff has lots of options -not just the ships, but the Dyson Sphere and hrmm Nomad base / mothership, where you’ll also find a handy animated texture entry in the latter. Copying that can be tough, easier to just copy the whole node over and modify the tex name.Looks like you got the glows set up and lookin’ good, next up, you might try a hand at texture animation. Might look cool for reversed sections (parts of the texture made transparent, so you can see the animated light texture moving behind it on another planar section). Looks rather neat for simulating electricity moving up wires and such. Key to making that look decent is by creating non-uniform “light” bands, otherwise one straight bar looks a bit hokey.
Pretty cool all the stuff you can accomplish with just materials alone.
