Hey all. I haven't had much trouble with the GECK until now. I'm creating a new outfit for an NPC. The collar on the trench-coat I'm using is just a bit too wide, and it pokes through the hood I've attached as part of the uniform. I want to make the part that sticks out transparent, but it's not working. I've had success with transparency on the hood without a problem, but the trench-coat wont cooperate. :banghead:

Why would Alpha trans only work on certain models? It doesn't make sense to me. Unless it has something to do with the shaders, but how could I get to those?

Any ideas, or suggestions?

personally, I think I might be inclined to trim the geometry of the outfit mesh, or just tweak it so it doesn't clip. dunno. I'd have to be looking at it to judge best course of action.

shaders- in nifskope- you can enable and disable all the different shader flags in the BSShaderPPLightingProperty.

alpha- I don't know if it is actually needed at all, but I think I always have SF_ZBUFFER_TEST flag enabled on alpha meshes.

to set up alpha transparency you need 2 things. an alpha map. and a nialphaproperty. you made no mention that you did either.

you'll have to add the alpha transparency map to the alpha channel of the diffuse map.

open the nif in nifskope. right click on the nitrishape block beloning to the outfit part you want to enable alpha on. or just right click on the model in the viewport. node>attach property> nialphaproperty

there are a lot of flag settings for the alpha property. I have some very brief notes.. if you want to use a boolean alpha. ie 100% opaque and 100% transparent areas only. no blending. Use DXT1 1 bit alpha to save out the texture. < you have to make sure that you only have black and white in the alpha channel. No greys. and use the 4844 flag. I think that's the tightest way to get this job done.

Thanks for the reply!

Here's a screeny of what I'm talking about. ( http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2961514/Help%20%26%20Tutorials/ScreenShot93.jpg ). Yes, I do have an alpha channel in my diffuse map. I should have mentioned that. In the past while working on other mods I've found issues with normal maps and cosine as well when dealing with transparency, so to be safe I even cleaned those up too, but I guess it doesn't matter to Gamebryo like it does with some other engines. This is why I thought I'd ask about the shaders.

I'm skilled in Maya, but I'd like to avoid 3d tinkering if I can... The moment I start tweaking models I'm going to want to make my own, and that's like crack for me.

[edit1:]
I haven't used nifskope before, but I have it installed... So, I'm looking through everything there, and I found the "BSShaderPPLightingProperty" you mentioned, but I am still having trouble figuring out how to enable/disable flags... What do I do to assign the 4844 flag? I see a dropdown menu of all sorts of stuff, but no 4844... Are you referring maybe to the threshold? Here's what I've got. ( http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2961514/Help%20%26%20Tutorials/Untitled-1.jpg ) Will this allow me to adjust the transparency via the alpha channel in the texture?

[edit2:]
Never mind... Thank you. You're instructions were perfect! I'm still unsure about Flag 4844, but the rest of what you shared with me is exactly what I needed. I'll remember this. I really appreciate all your help.

Thanks again!

There are different alpha flags. if you select the nialphaproperty and look at the block details, you should see a flag setting. its 237 that will certainly work at default. anyway. so you should just be good to go.


the 4844 isn't necessary. I would definitely use that in the circumstance, of say 2 objects in the same nif. both transparent. one overlayed on the other, the first use of alpha, the outer one would be like a hole cut in a cylinder, like a window. and would have no blending. 4844. the second would have blending. Zeta walls with windows, and plasmapistol for examples to examine. if you want to get confused at complex alpha set up look at the scope.nif. :S

no if you wanted 2 objects, both with alpha, and blending... its gets annoying.

you have to be very care with sort of this as the alpha is finicky. Alpha sorting. its drawn on screen according to vertex num. so on a single mesh you can get problems. accross several meshes you can get z buffer fighting. transpaent meshes blinking in and out when viewed at certain angles.

Anyway you should be good. as its straight forward stuff

I feel ya- modelling= super crack