New program: Fix broken transparency for alpha materials.

[R Soul]

If you've ever set a material's 'Transparency' to 'use alpha' you will have noticed that in game the entire object is partially transparent.

After examining the files in a hex editor I was able to spot a pattern and develop what I hope is a reliable means of fixing it after you've exported.

Download the program here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/0mbb2a3bf0k8uxc/BTBTransFix.7z
Please tell me if it works for you.

 

[soramame]

A problemwas recoveredwhen I tried a tool.

Thanks!!

 

[banger]

thanks

 

[R Soul]

Well, this program has been rendered (no pun intended) obsolete just two days after release. The new version of BTB (0.9.0.2) fixes the bug.

Fortunately for me it didn't take long to write my program. Finding a pattern within the file was easy thanks to 3dSimEd showing certain vertex attributes. I spent more time making it user friendly.

 

[banger]

lol, thanks anyway for the quick fix.

 

[Brian Johnson]

For some reason the current version of BTB still causes the issue for me and this program was not able to correct the issue. I normally build oval tracks, so a track may have multiple layers of transparent objects. An example is like with a catchfence on top of the wall, with another fence behind it a few meters away, trees behind that or maybe some other object that uses transparency. Previously this transparency fix tool worked on other tracks I built before the update to BTB, but now BTB still produces the issue with transparent objects, but the fix tool no longer corrects the issue.

 

[R Soul]

Maybe it's a different error but it just looks the same. GMT file vertices have a colour and alpha value. BTB always sets the colours to 255,255,255, followed by the alpha value. My program looks for those colours and resets the next value, whatever it is, to 255. I don't know anything about the format itself, so it's that pattern of numbers my program looks for, rather than the parts of the file storing vertex data.

If you upload a problematic file I can have a look and see if there's a different pattern.

 

[Brian Johnson]

Thank you R Soul. It seems as though the issue occurs around the entire track which is only half a mile because the catch fence surrounds almost the entire track. I have uploaded the track to my dropbox. here is the link https://www.dropbox.com/s/7s3qs30t6i0a8j4/New Smyrna Speedway.rar?dl=0

 

[R Soul]

That's not the error my program fixed. The gMotor2 engine cannot properly render overlapping Alpha materials. For some reason it doesn't know which one to draw in front of the other. It's best to use Chroma.

I noticed even the grandstand seat textures are using Alpha. The poles can be set to chroma, as can the treewalls at the back. You should be able to leave the fence as alpha because it never doubles back on itself like a road course, but you might get rendering problems with passing cars which always use alpha materials for their windows.

 

[Brian Johnson]

Oh ok, Thank you for the info. I must have misunderstood what your program did. Thank you for looking at it for me.

 

[banger]

what your getting with transparent errors, is called the Z buffer effected. what that means is that the transparency of one objected is being carried over to another transparent objected. to count act this use one alpha transparency on catch fence & any objected that behind/infront of it with transparency... will have to use The chroma transparency.