Alpha Blends and 1.5.0

[andylegate]

Hey did anyone finally get this figured out? I just got rid of the couple I had in Camp Bravo and went with some texture blending instead.

But I've got a LOT of these in Zephyr Cove.......I'd really hate to go back and re-texture the entire age.....

[andylegate]

Bump.


Wow, look at that. 3 months and not ONE single person replied to this question.

It's STILL a problem that I'm having. HOW do you alpha blend?

Old way, Pre 1.4.0:

Take your mesh, set an all white vertex color for it.
Make a new vertex color and lable it "Alpha"
Set your vertex brush color to black.
Paint along the places you need to have fade out or be come transparent.
Export, link in and enjoy.

Only NOW this no longer works, and has not for a LONG time.

Here's a link to the wiki tutorial for this Again, it no longer works, nor has this tutorial been updated.

http://guildofwriters.com/wiki/Decal_Blending

Texture stenciling, etc works great in place of this. But that won't work for things like, Disturbed water, where you want the edges of the water to simply fade out of existance, instead of having a sharp end.

[Grogyan]

Have you tried creating a new "UV Layer" named Alpha?

It works fine in my Shell, been exporting the fence mesh just fine

[Nadnerb]

Yeah, but does your fence mesh fade out at the top? Somehow I don't think so. >.> I believe Andy is asking about vertex alpha blending here, though the title doesn't make that clear, his quoted example does.

As for whether this actually still works... I'm actually not sure, as I converted all my decal style stuff over to multi layer vertex-uv-gradient stencils so that I could deal with just one mesh a while back, but I'm pretty sure I have some that still work. >.>

As a side note, you should be able to approximate vertex alpha using stencils. Just omit the bottom layer. (stenciling works by just applying the mask to the top layer, making it transparent)

Edit: I do have some vertex alpha in some places, and last I checked, it still worked. Question: how many layers are there on the object you're trying to use this on? And does the texture have alpha? If it doesn't have alpha, does setting usealpha, calcalpha, and whatever other 'alpha enablers' are available, fix the problem?

[andylegate]

I tried the stenciling, didn't work. I've tried using a Alpha ramp, that sorta, kinda, if you squint hard did work.

All I have is the churning water as the top layer. I just want the texture to fade into nothingness (or transparancy is all).

None of my Alpha Vertex blends work anymore in any of my Ages exported with any plugin since 1.4.0

[Whilyam]

Just what is your problem, though? Here's what I do (I use vertex blending a lot in my Ages):

Duplicate the portion of the mesh I want to blend and make it a separate object.
Delete the portions of the original mesh I just duplicated with the exception of the faces that will get blending done on them on the other object. (otherwise the other object will be partially transparent and you'll see through the Age). I'm now all done on the first object.
On the second object, I make a new UV layer I name ALPHA. I click both the buttons to their left.
I go to the vertex paint tool, then go to the edit panel and change the color to black and the opacity/size to how I want for the blending.
Paint the vertices that I want to be transparent.
Export.

Now I've had some issues where I need to set the Trans setting or the pass index properly so the thing will blend right. However, other than that, I've had no problems with it.

[Grogyan]

Bump.


Wow, look at that. 3 months and not ONE single person replied to this question.

It's STILL a problem that I'm having. HOW do you alpha blend?

Old way, Pre 1.4.0:

Take your mesh, set an all white vertex color for it.
Make a new vertex color and lablel it "Alpha"
Set your vertex brush color to black.
Paint along the places you need to have fade out or be come transparent.
Export, link in and enjoy.

Only NOW this no longer works, and has not for a LONG time.

Here's a link to the wiki tutorial for this Again, it no longer works, nor has this tutorial been updated.

http://guildofwriters.com/wiki/Decal_Blending

Texture stenciling, etc works great in place of this. But that won't work for things like, Disturbed water, where you want the edges of the water to simply fade out of existance, instead of having a sharp end.

I remember now, the only time I used it was a long time ago.
The proceedure was, to set the texture of the mesh to all white
Then use the vertex paint tool with black as the colour
paint what you want
This is the tricky part you need to export that gray scale as an image
go to the texture tab and set one texture that you want
next button down you should have the gray scale image
Make sure you have a UV layer named Alpha
make sure that the calculate alpha button is checked, and you should be off
for stencilling you'd normally want to have a second image to blend with the first, so you'd use the next button down from the grey scale

Is this what you were after?

[andylegate]

I was about to zip up my age and get it all submitted, but reading your post Grogyan, I almost disregarded it since I tried the stencil with no avail, but then I saw where you said Call it "Alpha" in the UV Layer. I haven't tried THAT yet, so I give it a whirl this afternoon and see what happens.

[andylegate]

Got it!

Okay, it took a combination of two things: the old way with setting vertex colors and painting black along the edges.

But then also adding a ramp (grey scale as Grogyan called it) as a 2nd UV Mapped Layer, but NOT in the textures under materials. When I did that, the mesh went white, or had no affect. Leaving off the ramp as a texture, yet still having it UV Mapped as a 2nd UV layer, and I got what I wanted: distrubed water that disappates into nothingness.

[GPNMilano]

Okay, someone walk me through this because I've been stuck on it as well.

In the materials tab, you have your main texture, UV Mapped. Then a second UV Layer for the alpha. Then you paint both the color of the layer, as well as a second vertex paint job for the Alpha color. But where does the "grey scale" that you guys are talking about go, if not in the textures section. (it needs to be exported after all for the second UV Layer to take effect, so where does the "grey scale" image go?