Transparent or shiny?

[Roger]

Chris,
What makes the alpha channel determine if a texture shines or becomes transparent in a typical .dds file in FsX?

Cheers,

Roger.

[Chris B]

That's one I am still working on. The old FS9 method of pure black doesn't seem to work. I think the maker has to set a trigger when he exports his mdl into FSX... there was something in the SDK, hang on.

Glass
Glass is used for windows and light lenses.

Under Blinn Basic Parameters, set Opacity to a value less than 50%. For the DC3 sample a value of 46% is used. The lower the opacity, the more transparent the glass.

Assign the diffuse image by checking the Diffuse Color box and selecting an appropriate diffuse color map.

Assign the specular image by checking the Specular Color box and selecting an appropriate specular map or assign the bump image by checking the Bump box and selecting an appropriate normal map.

Assign the reflection image by checking the Reflection box and selecting an appropriate normal map. Note that the sample DC3 uses the file GlobalEnv_AC_Chrome.dds file.

Under Fresnel Ramp assign Fresnel bitmap by clicking on map browser button and selecting an appropriate Fresnel map. Check the Reflection option box and the Specular option box.

Under Special Functionality, check the Blend environment by inverse of diffuse alpha box and the Use global environment map as reflection box, move the slider for Reflection Scale to 30, and move the slider for Specular Map Power Scale to 202.

Under Bloom, check the Allow bloom box, move the slider for Specular Bloom Floor to 0.9, move the slider for ambient light scale to 1.0.

Under Framebuffer Blend, click on Set Default Transparent. Source Blend and Destination Blend are set to SrcAlph and InvSrcAlpha, respectively.

[railrunner130]

One thing I found out by accident is that missing texture files will make the model parts disappear!



This is the Manfried Jahn's L1649 with the textures from the Turbo Connie on it. I did it just to see how it would work out!

[Chris B]

Looking at what I quoted, it looks like us painters have now been totally cut out of chrome platingthe exterior surfaces. All we can do is adjust the basic and alpha, but we can't access those export checkboxes in the 3D modelling tool.

That is rotten luck... I wonder if I can get a comment written on an MS Blog Site that will get read?