Animated Texture Black, need help please!!

[Race]

Hi all, I am trying to make some animated foam at the bottom of my waterfall. I found a brush for photoshop that with one click makes a nice foamy look, so I put it put it on a png and put it into blender and this is the result when animated. When its not animated it looks fine. I tried using Ztransp and that cleared it up but made the plane 99% invisible, so no go there. This animated texture is on top of a waveset if that makes a difference, boblishman spoke of having the same issue in his age too. I am vexed, does anyone know what I can do? Thanks in advance for your time. Take care all. -Race

Without Ztrans1.jpg (242.91 KiB) Viewed 1852 times

Foam1.jpg (202.18 KiB) Viewed 1853 times

[Race]

Noone here knows anything about why this occurs? Given all the talent and class of this community thats hard to believe, I know this works because I have seen a few fan ages use something similar, I just do not know how to use it. Anyone?

[Jojon]

Well, since nobody else seems to be responding...

I don't quite get it, I'm afraid -- so if you leave the texture unanimated, it has a nice alpha channel, which blends smoothly with the stuff behind, whereas here, we see only the pure black parts acting as the transparent part of a 1 bit mask, is that it? ...and in the second picture, with Ztransp checked, the foam lets you see through the water?

I have no idea as to why just animating the texture offsets would have that effect, but wavesets seem difficult in general -- I have in one place some additive mixing mode ripples along the edge of a pool, where I had to put the ripple mesh a little *below* the surface, but give it a higher passindex value, with Ztransp checked for both waveset and ripples, to get things working. Maybe that might work with your case, too? (Not likely, since you are doing stuff that's floating on top, whereas I did additive stuff, which works about equally well on top or below...)

One thing worth keeping in mind, is that every animated layer, should have its own (single user) copy of the texture block used.


EDIT: Ok, you followed up while I typed... :7 I think others may well hold back on responding, because they are just as unclear on the question as I... :7

[Race]

I tried bumping up the passindex to maybe 7, but as I said if I enable Ztransp the plane is nearly invisible, I didnt post a snapshot of it because its impossible, those 2 show what it looks like when animated. And yes if I delete the animation the plane has a nice transparency, I can see the foam and the waveset beneath, but of course it doesnt move and looks static. I tried also mixing it up under Map to, by changing it from Mix to all the other options. No change there either. Thanks for the reply Jojon, I know the age Eder Bahvanin uses what I am trying to do, so again I know it is possible.