Leaf Transparency Issue

[Razorwing]

The only difference between your transparancy map and some of Bethesda's that I could see was that Bethesda sometimes uses a considerably wider fade, for instance in bwfern01.dds.

They don't always use such wide fade though. The pitcher plant texture is very crisp for instance. But perhaps it's worth experimenting with a wider fade?

Another difference is that Bethesda uses NiStencilProperty nodes a lot on their plants, so it might also be worth experimenting with deleting one side of the leaves and adding one of those nodes to see if it helps.

The weird thing is that the palm tree's transparancy looks perfect in Nifskope. I can't say I've seen a transparant surface before that looks like it should in Nifskope but not in-game, so I wouldn't be surprised if the problem lied elsewhere than the transparancy texture.

[ra5946]

I got it to work, maybe not the best way, but it works. I unattached all the "leaves" from each other which made my nif have around 35 children. I used a threshold of 64 and a value of 4845. It looks much better now. Thank you all.

[Ja-Kha'jay]

dude, that is beautiful. could we please (pretty please with a cherry on top) have this for ELsweyr?

[windsurfer]

Another way to remove that weird effect is to make the background of the colour texture the same colour as the majority of the frond.

[ra5946]

Good to know windsurfer. I'll keep that in mnd.

Ja-Kha'jay- I work in the Akavir section and we're gonna package all the trees we've made and release them as a modders resource.

[jman0war]

Hi,
I'm having a similiar problem.


I'm using a transparency for the 'grunge' along the floor, where it meets the wall.

I've tried using the settings listed in this thread but they made no difference.
I've tried to re-work my .dds file too, to insure the line along the edge really should be transparent.
Any suggestions?

[TheImperialDragon]

Is the 'grunge' that black layer going alongside the wall? If so, is the texture just black fading into transparency? What is the UV map like on that part of the mesh?

Sometimes, I get the UV map 'leaking' back over to the other side of the texture. It might be worth making it so that the faces only have the UV go just *before* the fully-transparent end of the texture, to see if that helps. However, if I understand what you mean by 'grunge', wouldn't it usually be better to do that with vertex painting?

If that doesn't do it, then it might be a good idea to upload the mesh and the texture so that we can see how it's set up.

[jman0war]

Vertex painting?
I've heard of it but have never looked at it.
I have no idea what or how you do that.

[Razorwing]

I agree with TheImperialDragon in that the best bet in explaining the problem you're experiencing is that the uvw map of your fade shows a sliver of the opaque part of the texture. Try dragging out the uvw map a tiny bit more in the direction of the fade. Are you using Oblivion's shadefade.dds texture? If so I've experienced the same problem, i.e. mapping a plane perfectly causes that kind of graphical glitch.

For more information on vertex painting, check out my old tutorial. (Even though it's close to three years old that particular part of modelling for Oblivion has remained the same.)

Personally I use both vertex painting as well as the shadefade.dds texture depending on the situation. I like the perk shadefade.dds has of allowing me to shade one model through another, like Bethesda did when they added shade to the ground through a statue model. One time I had a bit of fun by making my own shade texture by rendering shadows cast by my model in Max, thereby letting me add a fake shadow to the model.

[jman0war]

Hiya,
Yeah i just saw your vertex painting tutorial.
It looks easy.
But again, it didn't work for me.
I was hoping to get my mesh to appear all white, like yours did in the tutorial.
I followed it word for word but didn't get the same results.

I add vertex painting modifyer.
I expand the modifyer and select "faces".
I press Control+A and see all my model's faces hightlighted in red.
I click the colour in the vertex paint bar, and select white.
Then I press the "Paint All" button, but nothing happens to my model.
I try changing all the "view" buttons at the top of the Vertex Paint bar.
No result.


on edit:

Well, i think it's something to do with the UV's.
I tried creating a box primitive and got vertex painting to work, so it's something up with my mesh.
thanks for putting up that tutorial.