I've been banging my head on this problem for almost 12 hours now and I just can't seem to get this to work. I'm hoping I'm just missing something obvious.

I'm trying to create a static water mesh that acts like regular water for a water trough mesh I'm working on. I started by adapting Meo's window box water mesh to fit my trough and I got the dimensions and texture mapping done in NifSkope without a hitch. In-game, the water ripples, reflection and raindrop effects work perfectly but there is no transparency. I didn't change anything in the nif other than the dimensions and UV mapping, so I was kind of confused at first.

Then I tried Texian's static water meshes, which are transparent, but don't behave like water at all. Next I tried throttlekitty/da mage's realistic water mesh but it behaves exactly like Meo's mesh in-game: water behaves like water but has no transparency.

Giving up on the realistic water mesh, I decided to try Meo's window box in-game and discovered (much to my surprise) that it doesn't have transparency! The screenshot of the window box on TESNexus clearly shows transparency in-game so now I'm really confused. :wacko: Is it a problem with my graphics card? My regular water works fine and has normal transparency.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk146/TheMagicianFromOblivion/watertransparency02.jpg. I scaled it up quite a bit to make it easier to see.

I know how to make transparent textures, and I know how to add a NiAlphaProperty in NifSkope, and I know how to use the NiMaterialProperty to override a non-transparent texture, and I can make transparent glass in NifSkope just fine, but for some reason creating transparent water mesh completely eludes me.

Bump.

After a bit more experimentation, and a helpful clue from Meo, I managed to get transparency by changing the water type for the entire world space. It seems, at least for the custom world space I'm working on, that setting the water type for an individual cell isn't enough. As soon as I changed the default water type for my entire world space, all of my meshes started working fine. When I tested them with only changed cell water types they stopped working again. Changing individual cells does work properly for the Tamriel world space, however. Maybe it has something to do with the world index.

Hope that helps someone else who runs into this problem. Really had me scratching my head for a long time.

wait? how do you do it?

I was struggling with the same problem the other day getting my pond to be transparent around the edges.

The default water type (the kind used in the Tamriel exterior) is opaque (opacity 100). I'm not sure exactly how the transparency effect is achieved, but it's not through normal transparency applied to the water type. Perhaps by gradually fading the water the closer it gets to the land mesh/shore. :shrug: If you change the opacity, the change is uniform, so the entire surface becomes transparent. Just to be clear, I couldn't get transparency from the default water type without changing the opacity, which affects all water for my custom worldspace.

If you are using the pond in Tamriel, you are luckier because you can create a custom water type for that specific cell and decrease the opacity. That will make the water in your pond transparent, but it won't exactly mimic the rest of the water. You could try fooling around with the fog distance and water colors to try to get something a little closer, however. I haven't had time to experiment with these settings yet. It may be that the appearance of the default water is entirely controlled by these settings.

Changing the water type in one cell of a worldspace only causes bugs afaik. At least I've seen it myself and heard others say the same. When you walk away from the cell the next time you see the default water it will be a mixture of the water that was in the cell you changed the water in and a missing texture (pink). It reverts back to normal after a while. It doesn't happen all the time I think, not even sure what causes it.

I've encountered various sorts of bugs trying to get this to work. I did notice that if you change the water in a cell, any water that touches that water at the edge of the cell 'competes' with the water in the cell, causing them to flicker back and forth depending on your distance. Best to change the water only for cells not bordering on water, I guess.

I've also encountered weird bugs where the default water in the cell would lose all transparency except for a wide circle around your character. I posted about this issue in http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1081633-water-transparency-glitch/.