.....anyone?

or do i have a habit of asking too harder questions?

[HoTaConQUesT,

Are we talking about a solar object or a ship here..??? A ship is relatively easy to make translucent/transparent, dunno if it would work with planets.... though it might.

Can you provide more details about what you are trying to achieve?

Harrier





Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

lol, ok in full...

I downloaded the omega 13 black hole mod,, very nice to the eye, but had technicalities to it - i have ironed out those problems of it dis-appearing etc and i have customised the black hole itself.. created a new cmp, textured it and all is well and looks fabulous - only it has no translucency properties.

If you place down one of the games own black holes, the gravity well appears as a semi-transparency (the black element of the image is somehow alpha-channeled out) my own black hole does not do this,, and yet shares many of the same characteristics as the omega 13 black hole. Now,, the omega 13 one does have that transparency - I must be over-looking something, and was wondering if anyone has tinkered with this b4.

It would be super cool if i could just add this one last tweak

[HoTaConQUesT,

Now this is not really my area.. but if you look at the working .mat file you may see that a couple of nodes exist on the original that dont exist in yours... these could well be the values you are looking for... simply add the nodes.. edit the values to suit and it MAY do what you want....

Harrier

Thanks for the pointer,, i'll check it out

I have checked out both mat libraries side by side, neither actually contain any difference in immediate appearance.

I have also attempted to decrease the opacity from within milkshape too on the model to see what may come of it,, again no visible difference.

Logically tho, the imformation would be buried within the cmp or mat files.

HoTaConQUesT,

As I said this is not really my area, however as far as I know the only way to make .mat files have a 'degree' of transparency is to add 2 nodes to the material library node so the structure looks like this: (my example)

alien-256\
Dt_flags
Dt_name
Type
Dc
Oc

The two values necessary to make a .mat transparent/translucent are Dc and Oc

In Dc go the RGB values divided by 255..you obtain the RGB values by sampling the texture, (this can be done in simple programs like Paint - that comes with Windows or in Photoshop etc..), obtaining the RGB values e.g. (We'll use almost black) which has a value of 5 for red green and blue i.e. 5/255 = 019607

RED = 019607
BLUE = 019607
GREEN = 019607

These values are edited into the Dc node in float array

The Oc values detirmine the degree of transparency and I cant remember offhand the way the degree of transparency changes but the values for say 70% transparency would be:

0.700000
0.000000

Dont know what the last line does but it wont work without it so dont leave it out. You can change the degree of opacity/transparency by fiddling about with the first number..

Important: Remember to include a texture library node in your mat and import the MIPS values into it as you would with any texture file, otherwise your .mat file can throw errors (if they work at all.. lol )

I agree that the answer is probably in the .mat file and my feeling is that it will be in the way the nodes are set up.. you say there are no immediate differences..Are there differences? if so, my advice would be to edit the .mat file until it has EXACTLY the same characteristics as the original and try that.. as the smallest differences can mean one works as it should, the other does not. There are many mysteries still hiding in native Freelancer .cmp and .mat files but this area of modding seems to be largely ignored

I know of no way that Digital Anvil set transparency via files - it was done in the .mat file.. also, fiddling about with opacity values in milkshape has no effect on the .cmp exported as these values are ignored..

Hope some of this helps..

Harrier

Try adding Ot to your Type node so it's something like DcDtOcOt

Many thanks for the help lads, its always nice to learn new things - i also found that by adjusting simply the material library>texturename>type and inputing

1969382734
24940

changes the type to "nebula", this is a simple method that has so far proved effective for lowering the opacity.

Again, thanks for taking the time to help

Edit: oh and remember to set Utf editor to "Int Array" then input the above numbers

Edited by - [HoTaConQUesT on 1/17/2005 12:34:28 PM