Game Development Community

Transparent Textures in 3ds 6 *Solved

by ChrisG · in Artist Corner · 04/28/2007 (5:09 pm) · 1 replies

I'm having trouble getting transparent textures to work on my DTS object created in 3ds max 6.

The object is a printer/fax machine and I'm trying to get the feed-tray to be transparent

I created a png in photoshop that has an alpha channel with a 50% grey
www.colab-aktiv.com/strangeDays/misc/transparency/photoshop.jpg

I then created a new material in 3DS that has both a diffuse map and an opacity map.
I tried playing around with various setting (not really knowing what I was doing) but with no luck.

Below are the final settings I ended up with (for the material, diffuse and opacity maps):
www.colab-aktiv.com/strangeDays/misc/transparency/material.jpg
www.colab-aktiv.com/strangeDays/misc/transparency/diffuse.jpg
www.colab-aktiv.com/strangeDays/misc/transparency/opacity.jpg

Here's what the printer/fax looks like in game, as you can see, no transparent feed-tray
www.colab-aktiv.com/strangeDays/misc/transparency/inGame.jpg

Any help would be appeciated.

#1
04/30/2007 (6:25 pm)
SOLVED

www.colab-aktiv.com/strangeDays/misc/transparency/goodInGame.jpg
There were 2 problems, the first was really obvious to do with the alpha mask on the png.

MAKE THE png IN PHOTOSHOP
1. copy the image and paste it into a new photoshop doc so that it is on its layer.
2. Set the layer transparancy to whatever you want. (you should see the checkerboard showing through)
3. Save the image for web as a png with the transparency checkbox clicked

THE DIFFUSE SETTINGS IN 3DS
Should be as below (I've circled what I had incorrect)

www.colab-aktiv.com/strangeDays/misc/transparency/goodDiffuse.jpg
I'll post this printer/fax in free stuff if anyone wants it.