Shadow, transparency and fog problem

#1 You need to edit the materials, try taking Z buffer off to start with.

Use the Materials Editor, it's real time (lovely!) and the transparency info is at the bottom.

//LEFT IMAGE
new Material(abranch1)
{
   mapTo = "abranch1";
   basetex[0] = "abranch1";
   translucent = true;
   translucentBlendOp = LerpAlpha;
   translucentZWrite = true;
   alphaRef = 192;
};

//--------------------------------------

//RIGHT IMAGE

new Material(abranch1)
{
   mapTo = "abranch1";
   basetex[0] = "art/shapes/foliage/templates/abranch1";
   translucent = true;
  translucentBlendOp = None;
   translucentZWrite = 0;
   alphaRef = 180;  
   diffuseMap[0] = "art/shapes/foliage/templates/abranch1";
   doubleSided = "1";
   castShadows = "0";
   alphaTest = "1";
   materialCategory = "Uncategorized";
};

Be aware, messing about with translucency settings has been a little crashy for me.

My translucent edges are a little hard because that's the way I made the texture.

EDIT: Seems my crashes were caused by a bug with Billboard LODs, in the models.

#2 Also not getting shadows on your road surface... make sure you don't have it as translucent with blending or emissive.

#3 Thanks Steve and Tom. You both are great.

#4 Looking nice!

#5 That's a nice lookin' screenshot @ post #3!

#6 Looks great!

#7 Beautiful!

#8 Wow, nice screenshot :)

#9 Can anyone elaborate on how to implement the above changes into your object? My model is doing the exact same thing, and when I edit it's materials.cs literally nothing happens. I can delete all the code in there and the model is unchanged. I can't seem to find where the above code pertains to the material editor, besides a few boxes and a slider.

My model is in the shapes root of my project. How do I implement the fix?

#10 The engine reads the lowest directory materials.cs file, so if you have other folders with other materials files, it'll read/write to them and leave the higher ones untouched/unread.

Also do your changes via the editor rather than typing, that way you'll see the effect change in realtime.

#11 Alright, trying to get all the changes inputted through the materials editor. Still can't seem to make any visible changes. Am I saving incorrectly?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v416/mistmod/FPSGenreKit2009-05-1319-27-19-62.jpg

#12 You've got select your material you want to alter. In your pic, where it says "TerrainShadowMaterial", click that and it'll open up a big list of all available textures. Choose the texture you want to alter and it oughta do it in realtime.

#13 When I select the dropdown menu in the materials selector where "TerrainShadowMaterial" is, I can't find any of my object's textures.

What I did was make a new material, a 'palmfrond01' to match the palmfrond01.png texture and mapped it to 'frond,' the object map. I changed as many of the variables as I could to match the above //RIGHT IMAGE. Where do you change basetex, alpha test, translucent?

Still unable to make any of my changes show up.

#14 Watch the video tutorial on materials www.vimeo.com/4380195. Changing basetex is just pressing edit in the diffuse map section of the material editor, and navigate to the image in the pop-up directory.