No transparency in background wall image

[ebrich]

I'm having a problem getting the 'sky' in my background image, transparent.
I've - saved the image ( 2 diff xpacks) in jpeg and dds, with the sky blacked out.
- in xpacker, imported via texture into materials
- size ok, Diffuse only, Transparency alpha, Use as wall only
- save into BTB,
- use as material on wall. Black sky evident
- export to RBR
- sky, of image, black

Many thanks for your time. I,ve just read back 20 pages of the forums and found lots of interesting
DIY,s with BTB. It might be a bit frustrating coming up against these problems but it doesnt half
make it interesting.

 

[Pangaea]

Hi there,

well, im not quite sure what you mean exactly, is it possible to post a screenshot of your problem

 

[Kyle Puttifer]

He's probably creating a treewall but his texture has sky in it. He's removed the sky, but now those areas are showing up black in-game?

 

[ebrich]

Kyle Puttifer has it. This is from BTB manual.--
Transparency There are three settings for transparency.
None – The Material is opaque.
Use Aplha – The Alpha layer of the Diffuse Texture is used to determine how transparent the Material is. A black colour is totally transparent, a white colour is totally opaque and shades of grey give partially see through results.

 

[ebrich]

One screen shot of not very transparent sky!

 

[R Soul]

 

[ebrich]

 

[Kyle Puttifer]

You're probably looking at needing an alpha channel, but I'm not entirely sure how they work.

 

[Pangaea]

um.. hi there.. just trying to understand that screenshot .. is it the black part only you want transparent?.. what is the part just under the black strip?

it looks like, based on that screen shot ,. one a foreground tree wall.. (the dark green part of your image).. then the faded green is distant trees... above that is sky (the greyish white part).. ?

if i have that right, what you need to do is either make 2 things, a treewall (or object) with the foreground trees mapped to it, and use the faded trees on a separate object .. but im still thinking it still wont look right. You aught to map distant things like those distant trees onto something like a skybox.

anyway, thats besides the point about your alpha issue.

there could be a few reasons why your not getting it to work

what dds settings are you exporting the image with?
have you made sure your image in ps is on a transparent background layer.
if its not looking right in btb.. ide say the problem is with the file itself.
but sometimes ive changed an option in the xpacker mats section like setting alpha but forget to hit "save" before i click onto another material or before i zip to xpack..
In btb itself, open up mats editor and check to make sure alpha is set for it.. also try chroma..

as i said, its most likey a problem with your dds settings or ps file.

check those things

for dds you can try dxt3 .. leave the other settings on default

if your still having trouble u can post your original ps file and i can have a look at it .. or take a screen shot of your image open in photoshop just before you export it as a dds

the texture you are working with is not ideal for what you are tying to do.. there are 3 layers in that image, a foreground, then trees, and finaly distant trees.. this will look odd mapped onto one thing
as i suggest above, u aught to make the foreground with terrain.. (or use road as terrain , aka emel method).. then make a tree wall.. then either make another tree wall with the faded out distant trees and put is at a greater distance from your near tree wall.. or map that distant stuff onto a skybox... if your doing all that ull need to break the image up in ps

just a suggestion

anyway, hope u get sorted

 

[ebrich]

Many thanks Pandaea. Will have a look at all that this evening. The image itself is not important at the moment as I'm just trying to get the process to work, or should I say, trying to understand why I cannot get it to work, as it does, doesn't it? Its just a matter of understanding all the settings by trial and error and with a little bit of help, from my friends, it will work. I took 3 days to get all the images I wanted into BTB materials and textures. I did find that if there was a problem texture that would work in BTB then not in RBR , if I put it into sketchup, on an object - saved it as a texture and then used that image/texture imported to BTB as texture, it would work.
I did find, looking back through the forum, that Martinez was building up a manual on just that, - materials and textures. Would love to see the other pages Martinez. Great work.

 

[martinez]

In your first post - it looked like your image had not alpha channel at all. Transparency itself in Photoshop will not create any alpha channel when you save as dds. Check it again please.

 

[Pangaea]

after youve "cut out" your image in photoshop, make sure its on a tranparent layer.. you`ll know this by the grey and while chequred patteren background. If its not already on a transparent layer, make a selection around your image . Then edit/ copy merged..Next, File/ new, (leave size settings as they are since the size of the image should be set according to what you copied into your clipboard).But dont forget to set Background = transparent in the file new dialogue. After that ull see a canvas with the grey and white check pattern.. all u need do then is "paste" your cut out into it. and it should fit perfectly. After that you can go ahead and export as dds with an alpha mode (preferably dxt3).
Also make sure you re-size the image to one of the correct aspects for dds (128 x 128, 256, 512 1024..etc)..

make sure you hit "save" in xpacker when you set the material to alpha (as i said before sometimes u need to click on the material in the list twice then hit save).. or you can also set this within btb materials editor.

beyond that ive no idea why your not getting what you want without more screen shots .


yes sometimes its hard trying to get it all work in rbr.. even tho it looks fine in btb. IF you think alpha is tricky to get working with rbr just wait till you try add and multiply.. its almost impossible to get it looking good in both btb and rbr at the same time.
when it comes to off standard textures such as alpha, specs, bumps, add, multiply. its all about trial and error and experimentation... you`ll eventually home in on something that works.

 

[ebrich]

Having taken all advice in I've managed to get the image with 'transparent sky' into BTB but having exported it to RBR there's no backdrop image. If I render the wall in BTB I just get a black wall in RBR.----for dds file-DXT3 & ( No mipmaps or generate mipmaps - same result) --In Materials- Use Alpha or Chrome (same result for each) Diffuse only Render norm up Mip Bias 0 . So I'm getting there, just one more step. Anybody with a few more ideas to throw my way.Please.

 

[Pangaea]

i think an rbr screenshot of the issue would be more helpful
as far as the btb screen shot you posted it looks fine?

 

[ebrich]

Well we must have done something right! Not sure what yet. thanks all, for your help. See if I can get another pic onto wall.

 

[martinez]

This looks very nice There is also aspect of the "specular color" (and it's power, but it works in rF only), which affect textures that are rendered in some distance, so they get some different shade/tone - just like in real world - it is a simulation of real world's air atmosphere and angle of sun shining.

 

[ebrich]

Just one thing. There is a fine line in space above the image, where the top border of original image was and I read somewhere in your forums how to avoid that, but I cannot find the thread. I think it was very simple.

 

[Paul Minnaar]

ebrich, just adjust the Y value slightly upwards on the material in the BTB properties. This will effectively push the line away and out of the bounding box of the material.