Guild of Writers

Simply duplicate your mesh, and create a second vertex color layer and paint the areas you want to appear transparent black. Then change the texture on that layer. (to grass, for instance)

Click to show image Show Spoiler

Once exported, the area above will look like this in plasma.

I tried that, but can give a little more detail on how to do it please.

It just so happens that this is what I am practicing on on my little experimental Age.

That and how to get avatar shadows?

Hrmm well, I'm not sure about the avatar shadows. I think Nad here can help you with that. *me hands question to Nadnerb*

And about the alpha vertex-paint. What in particular do you need to know more about? It was really just trial-and-error for me. The most important thing to know is that the second vertex-paint layer is alpha--white is solid and black is alpha and everything in-between. The rest of it is easy to learn from just google-ing and playing about with the buttons in blender.

I think what Grogyan and others mean is: "EXACTLY how did you do it?"

My own experience has been Trial and Error, with emphasis on the Error part,

I also think they want you to explain how you set it up to paint like that.

EDIT:

Hereis a link to one of the tutorials in the Blender Noob to Pro books. It shows how to use vertex painting. There will be things that you do different for Ages, but the basic priciples apply. It helped me out a lot, as before, with the old plugin, I just UV mapped everything. But with this new plugin, it's REALLY important to learn how to use things like Vertex painting, as it will help make your Age come alive and look more real. Don't feel bad, I'm having to relearn everything myself.

Wow, Lontahv! That's the best scenery I've seen so far in a user-created Age!

This new version has motivated me to start Writing again...

EDIT: I'm getting this error with the FuncChk:

File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts\alc_AlcScript.py", line 28, in <module>
import yaml
ImportError: No module named yaml

Erik:

The new plugin requires the Python YAML library to be installed; check out the revised plugin installation instructions here.

Thanks, that did the job. The Age exported nicely, but now nothing happens when I click the button in the Age...

Ah, about avatar shadows... if they worked, you would just have to make sure the "ray shadow" button was checked on your lights, but they don't work, unfortunately. They will probably work in some future plugin update.

Well, good textures are the key. I got my textures from "CGTextures" and then used the gimp to "make seamless".

Oh yes, and I used Terragen to make the landscape and then exported it as .lwo format and then imported it into blender.


Links:

Terragen: http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/
CGTextures: http://www.cgtextures.com/
Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/

Note: I've been waiting for alpha vertex-paint for a long time, knowing that it would turn the tide and make fan-ages look almost like cyan's ages--I had all the things needed in place so, if I forgot something on the list of things and you think I must have had another resource--please don't hesitate to ask. I'm sure I'm forgetting something that went into it.

Indeed. I had been bugging the pugin devs for alpha vertex paint for some months now for the very same reason. (I do believe you meant alpha vertex paint, not alpha textures, which we have had for some time now ) I don't know about "turning the tide" though.. I'm still waiting for animated, wavy, reflective water materials.