Odd texture depth problem

[Alex Kyriak]

Hi all, I have a problem with textures on a spectator stand model I'm making. See the attached pictures, comparing the model in BTB and in rfactor:





The problem: notice the rows of seats on the right half of the stand, and compare to those on the left. In rfactor, the seats on the right appear one behind the other, as they should do. Those on the left seem to display showing the rear seats in front of the seats at the front.

In BTB, the model displays perfectly, with no error, so the error seems only to appear once the track is exported into rfactor. The model was textured and manipulated in 3dsmax.

I have no idea why this is! Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[mianiak]

You need to use chroma transparency alpha does that and I don't think anyone knows a way around it. You will have to tweak the texture to avoid getting a black line around the edges.
I wish there was an explanation to this, it's something that comes up a lot.

 

[Alex Kyriak]

Update: well, I fixed the problem with the seats on the left by going back into the max model and deleting the ones that didn't work, and copying over the ones that were working ok from the righthand side. (Then re-exporting the 3ds file, importing it to BTBXpacker, into BTB, then into Rfactor...phew, big process). But still no clue as to what caused the error....!

This is using the alpha, not chroma. Not sure what the chroma is about.... any explanations?

 

[Andre_1th]

nice seats ! my 2 cents, can it be the size of your texs ?

 

[mianiak]

ahh, I completely missed that bit, sorry, I was real tired when I replied. It looks like the flipped normals issue, you can fix it by using reset xform.
I don't know exactly how alpha and chroma works so I won't guess, all I know is that when there is an alpha transparent material in front of another alpha transp. material, the back one shows through the front one. You see it with trees a lot.

 

[Andre_1th]

all I know is that when there is an alpha transparent material in front of another alpha transp. material, the back one shows through the front one. You see it with trees a lot.

LOL I had the same with my bloody sheeps

 

[woochoo]

a quick difference between alpha and choma:
alpha has 16 (i think) different levels of transparency, choma has 1. so chorma will give comparitively jagged edges between transparency and opacity. If you're careful with bleed areas and that sort of thing chroma can be good enough for most things.

 

[martinez]

It's always good to have some background on your texture which have similar color as the object. Then even when use chroma, the egdes should look good. If you have "simple" transparency, save as DTX3 and "Use Chroma" or "Use Alpha". For gradiented transparency you need to save as DTX 5 and "Use Alpha" for object's material. DTX 1 with 1 bit transparency will always cause bad looking edges.