Animated transparent textures and stencils ...

[boblishman]

OK, I sent a whole day trying to achieve an animated transarent texure that was using a stencil ... with no luck

I set up the transparent material ... using the stencil ... and that worked fine. But as soon as I added the IPO frames to the transparent layer ... the stencil effect uopn the transparency stopped working. The texture still animates OK ... but the stencil (which I was trying to use as a "mask" over the animated texture to give it a faded edge) just stops working and I can see the whole of the animated texture ...

Now, is there something "extra" I need to do to use stencils with transparent animated textures ? ... or does Plasma not "allow" stencils on transparent animated textures ?

(btw ... I managed to create the effect I wanted by using vertext painting to fade out the edges ... but it's not really the way I wanted to do it )

[Paradox]

I think originally stencils couldn't be animated or PyPRP would ignore something... that should be fixed now, animated stencils should work fine.

[Nadnerb]

So the question this immediately brings to mind is, what version of pyprp are you using?

[boblishman]

I'm using 1.4.0 ... but I think you may be missunderstanding me. What happens is, I am not animating the stencil layer itself, it's the semi-transparent texture layer above it (the one affected by the stencil) that I wanted to animate.
I can set up all the layers and it works fine until I add the Ipo curve to the texture layer (on top of the stencil - the one that should be affected by the stencil) ... that layer then animates, but the stencil becomes TOTALLY invisible ... so I can see the whole of the mesh/texture it was supposed to "mask" ... if I go back and delete the IPO curve ... the stencil works again...

[Jojon]

Umm, doesn't the stencil affect the layer *below* itself, in effect taking the part of an alpha channel for it?

[boblishman]

yes... it does ... (I know this is confusing ... ) ... when you look that the layers list in the Blender Texture Tab - the layer the stencil affects is the one BELOW it in the list ... but the way it WORKS is that it is like a "mask" (which would be the layer ABOVE, obscuring the layer underneath it) ... sorry if my post is confusing ...

for example ... in this case ...

layerswithstencil.jpg (32.03 KiB) Viewed 2776 times

... the stencil (middle layer in the list) affects the moss texture, not the pillar one


anyhow, like I said before ... the stencilling works fine ... until I add the IPO curves for the animation ... (to the semi-transparent tetxure, NOT the stencil) ... then it "breaks" the stencil ...

[Jojon]

Aaah, we just used different abstraction models. :)
I tend to think of it the airbrush painting way:

-Each layer is drawn on top of the previous, in turn.
-In our case, we have a pillar base coat.
-We lay a stencil over this - a paper with a shape cut out (really a negative of our stencil, I suppose, depending on how one see the alpha.)
-As we spray on the moss, it only covers the base paint where the hole is.
-The stencil is lifted off.

Anyway, I just did a quick test and can confirm your results; "top coat" takes over, as if the stencil wasn't there and everything got painted over -- remove the "base coat's" IPO curve and all is back to normal...

[boblishman]

phew ... glad it's not just me then ... I thought I was going crazy! (or doing something wrong) ...thanks Jojon ... so, is this a "limitation" of Plasma, the plugin ... or just a "no go" ... ?


EDIT: Just to clarify: in the above example ... WITHOUT any IPO the above example produces a pillar with "patches" of moss (produced by the stencil) ... however, add in an IPO curve to the pillar texture ... and you get a completetly moss covered object ... no pillar texture ...