Track textures (lines, tarmac patches) how to?

[nothke]

Simple question: How to make good decals on tracks, such as painted lines, signs or new tarmac patches so my track looks like this:

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm163/nothke/P1120649.jpg

I tried making alpha textures, but then in rfactor I get this awful black borders on them. Is it the good way, and am I just doing something wrong getting the black borders?

 

[nothke]

This is the black border I get seen around the dashed lines near horizon (this happens even if I put anistrophy to max):

 

[Pangaea]

this thread may help
http://www.racedepartment.com/bobs-track-builder/47921-no-transparency-background-wall-image.html

 

[nothke]

I read it all, but I don't see the solution, these textures already have a working alpha (as seen at the bottom of screenshots line is nicely cutout) the problem is when I look them from far they get this black border!

I haven't tried DXT3.. And... "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.", I don't understand what line, but maybe it's mine =)

 

[Pangaea]

not really sure then.. the only thing i can think of off hand is that your original image cut out included a very faint boarder (perhaps when you cut out the image you had a degree of feathering to the selection, and the feather took a tiny bit of whatever colour was under it).. then when you convert to dds, the mips in the distance are exaggerating the line due to the reduced scale of the texture and in game aa might be exaggerating it also.. if thats the case , dont use the magic wand tool or even a colour range selection in ps.. make an absolute selection around the road markings (with polygon lasso tool in ps), but go a tiny bit into the white.. make sure aa is checked off in ps, and dont use any feather.

Beyond that, i cant think why that is happening.

 

[nothke]

Sure, that was one of things I presumed. I'll try to offset the selection to the inside few pixels..

 

[Paul Minnaar]

yes offset your selection in Photoshop outside the drawing area. This can help.

But regarding my comment on another thread about moving the material through the Y axis, what I mean is, in BTB you can go to the material and nudge it slightly in the direction of the 'thin edge' you seeing and when you nudge it, it will disappear from sight, no more worries

 

[R Soul]

An issue I've noticed with transparency is that when the track is exported from BTB, a sudden change from solid to transparent, as your lines have, leaves a black or blue border. If I subsequently export the object from 3dsimed, that border disappears.

 

[martinez]

This is because you have the background in your image filled in black. Make the background as gray as your lines and it will be fine. Remember - the shape of alpha channel is responsible of what you will see, not just the main picture.

 

[Raido]

W/regard to Mip bias: Do you need to set this in BTB/3DSimed directly, or are there other programs/workarounds to set the bias for materials?

I'm asking because I work on a Mac, and although BTB and 3DSimed will work, I always need to start Windows - plus the programs, of course - in a virtualiser program before I can do something simple like this. That's a several-minute wait on average, making it a bit of a nuisance after a while...

(In other words, imagine having to launch Windows every time you want to make a little edit.

rFactor itself will run on Mac OS X directly, but BTB and Simed will not, unfortunately. Well Simed will *run*, but its main window will stay black and therefore unusable.)

 

[Raido]

Well, sometimes I do have only one or two files to alter. So yes, be interested to hear the hex method. But I'll also try if I can get Zmodeler2 to run - thanks for mentioning.