Creating Transparent Textures

[stuart277]

Happy New Year to All

I have a question regarding creating textures with transparent areas.
I noticed that the LST 906 seems to have a 'mesh' runway.
I can create one in GMax but it over 2000 poly's.

Recently, Hiede put me onto Colins Essex carrier and a transparent texture that was used on the walkways.
I assume a single plane shape with the texture applied.

I have tried to recreate this affect but I am missing something.

I have:
made a plane shape in Gmax.
made a 256 x 256 tga with a black background and Haze Gray mesh.
applied the texture to the shape
saved it.
opened in DXTBmp
created alpha channel (black)

The picture shows the transparency



Saved as DDS 565.
(This is where I think I am going wrong)

It just shows up Haze Gray mesh with black in between (no transparency)

Any Idea's.

Cheers
Stuart

 

[Allen]

565 dose not support alpha transparency.

LST-906 did not use mesh. It used some type wood sheeting http://www.navsource.org/archives/10/16/160906.htm

LST-16 was mesh http://www.navsource.org/archives/10/16/160016.htm and a 220ft x 16ft flight deck https://laststandonzombieisland.com/tag/uss-lst-525/

LST-386 can bee seen here with what looks to be the same straight thin deck as LST-16 here https://www.navsource.org/archives/10/16/160386.htm but since the pic is from shore no way to know if it mesh or not. Pic here that says LST-386 launching hoppers. https://mikesresearch.com/2022/05/29/us-liaison-planes-wwii/

More pics of LST-16 or LST-386 https://www.klueser.de/story.php?id=27&language=en

 

[UncleTgt]

Happy New Year to All

I have a question regarding creating textures with transparent areas.
I noticed that the LST 906 seems to have a 'mesh' runway.
I can create one in GMax but it over 2000 poly's.

Recently, Hiede put me onto Colins Essex carrier and a transparent texture that was used on the walkways.
I assume a single plane shape with the texture applied.

I have tried to recreate this affect but I am missing something.

I have:
made a plane shape in Gmax.
made a 256 x 256 tga with a black background and Haze Gray mesh.
applied the texture to the shape
saved it.
opened in DXTBmp
created alpha channel (black)

The picture shows the transparency

View attachment 160077

Saved as DDS 565.
(This is where I think I am going wrong)

It just shows up Haze Gray mesh with black in between (no transparency)

Any Idea's.

Cheers
Stuart

Happy New Year Stuart

Save the bitmap as 555-1 format. The pure black will be fully transparent.

If you need a "graded" transparency, dxt3 works too, supporting several transparency levels.

Hope this answers your question.

 

[Dirtman]

G'Day All & Happy New Year.

Reading this thread has made me recall an old "invisible" air-frame: the MK10 torpedo.
Used as an exploding weapon when fired from the VN PT boat but also an invisible, flyable plane that has been used to take in-air screenshots.

I'm sure many of you remember this from "the early days" of CFS2.
Made by Joe Cool (2004) and included in the VN Driveable PT Boat package as a torpedo.
The MK10 installs into the Aircraft folder.

Out of curiosity, I checked the MK10 "texture" folder .. it was empty.
Took her up for a short "hop" this morning ... the only thing I saw was smoke on engine start!

Just wondering if you guys might be able to use this in some way to aid in what you are trying to accomplish.

 

[wolfi]

- fortunately, CFS2 needs only one single polygon as an object Converted into the MDL/BGL file, then you must name everything else in a correct way, and you can use it as invisible aircraft / ship MDL or infrastructure obj / weapon BGL. Important is that you have a polygon in the file, that polygon can indeed be very small, so you nearly can’t see it. I used a “dummy” bomber to create a bomb carpet with more bombs than visible aircraft. (CFS2 Bombers like the B24 Liberator or B25 Mitchel release only one bomb when used as AI aircraft)

wolfi

 

[wolfi]

-Back to the topic, transparent textures work best for close by objects but if you fly/move away sometimes those objects become invisible or blurry. In fsds2 is the option to make a tiled texture, which means you can use a single small texture sometimes on an object. For example the pictures below: One triangle object made from 3 points and 8 sections first picture the object with a single texture (gunsight.bmp), the second picture the object with a tile texture 2 X tiles and 8 Y tiles, third picture same object with 6 X tiles and 8 Y tiles, I created a second object and after applying the tiled texture I deformed the object (useful for cockpit frames). Now for using transparent textures: if you use tiled textures on an object the transparent part can displayed very sharply.

A last example, an object with two different textures, I flipped the outer frame polygons to the front, applied a normal texture to the front. On the back I applied a tiled texture, at last I flipped the frame polygons again, so you have an object with a normal textured frame with a tiled texture inside.

wolfi

 

[wolfi]

Here is a render of a simple object with two textures applied. I made an alpha texture for the gunsight with a round hole, and tiled the gunsight texture, the frame is a single untiled texture. For a better visibility I placed a green box in the background (rendered in DAZ studio)

wolfi

 

[stuart277]

Happy New Year Stuart

Save the bitmap as 555-1 format. The pure black will be fully transparent.

If you need a "graded" transparency, dxt3 works too, supporting several transparency levels.

Hope this answers your question.

Hi UncleTgt
It's lunch during the 5th Test at the SCG. Very interesting.

It is a thick mesh, equal sized mesh and space.

I have saved the TGA as a bitmap 555-1 format.
It looks line the attachment. ( the finger is pointing at the 'mesh'.
Mostly invisible.



Still Struggling.
I am missing a step somewhere.

Where you say 'Save the bitmap as 555-1 format.'.
I am using a .tga file (direct from Gmax)
Gmax uses .tga files as texture.
I then have convert them to bitmap.

Is this the problem.

Cheers
Stuart

 

[Allen]

If I had to guess your texture is too small. With a small texture the game tries to scale the image up and things get blurry and than add the alpha layer and end up with what you have. Try a pixel resizing the image up to 512x512 or use what I below that I upscaled from you image.

 

[UncleTgt]

Hi UncleTgt
It's lunch during the 5th Test at the SCG. Very interesting.

It is a thick mesh, equal sized mesh and space.

I have saved the TGA as a bitmap 555-1 format.
It looks line the attachment. ( the finger is pointing at the 'mesh'.
Mostly invisible.

View attachment 160186

Still Struggling.
I am missing a step somewhere.

Where you say 'Save the bitmap as 555-1 format.'.
I am using a .tga file (direct from Gmax)
Gmax uses .tga files as texture.
I then have convert them to bitmap.

Is this the problem.

Cheers
Stuart

Stuart,

I'm assuming you're using Martin Wright's DXTbmp to do the conversion.
I think Allen has a good suggestion. Making the texture larger will help.
Wolfi's comments are also really useful, but I'm not sure how that converts into a sequence you can use in G-Max....

 

[wolfi]

Ok, I was curious and tried it out, I downloaded your model, made a similar very low poly model and textured the flightdeck with a tiled transparent texture, converted the texture map with a transparent alpha channel to DXT3. It worked very fine when you fly around the carrier the transparent holes are very sharp even from further away (Picture Test1 and Test2). Now the “but!”, if you start from the little carrier the aircraft was completely untextured (picture Test3). At my PC (Windows 10), I noticed another failure, if you exit the simulator the PC freezes, so I must restart the PC. I think that the tiled transparent texture causes a heavy CPU load and freezes the PC.

So unfortunately, it doesn’t work as I expected

wolfi

 

[stuart277]

Hi all
Thanks for your help.

This is what I did

Creating Transparent Textures

Open new 512 x 512 bitmap

Save as .tga

Create image, black is to be transparent

Create Shape in GMAX

Add texture to Shape

(Save and export model etc)

Open MWR tools

Open .tga

Create Alpha Channel Black (Alpha tab)

Export as Extended Bitmap 16 bit 555-1

Looks like this (I need to do a better image)



I initially tried DXT-3

It looked like this.

The whole ship was transparent!!!
(except the aircraft and the hold cover (which was a separate part)

You can see the ocean.





Again thanks to all for your help.

Cheers
Stuart

PS
Working on a Brodie System at the moment.

 

[Klein]

Hello Gents
Stuart, you put the finger on a problem I have often with the models I work on, CFS2 don't jig very well with transparent textures.
Here is a fix that might work with the problematic part on your model:
In the Gmax file, select the guilty part, the one fitted with the transparent texture, and save this selected part (File/save selected).
It will be saved on an other Gmax file with all its hierarchy.
Now delete the part, and merge with the one you saved (only the part, not all the hierarchy, File/Merge and select the part to be merged)
In the dialog box that follows, agree to keep the hierarchy.
You'll have to do it each time you re-work on an other part, or create one in your Gmax file, for the transparent part to be the last added to the file.
After that the DXT3 texture and other transparent formats might show normally.
I don't have any idea on how to do if you need more than one part to be transparent.
Hope that helps, cheers
Martin

 

[Allen]

You mean DXT3 is doing something like in the pic? If yes that is a normal DXT3 thing. If you want to use a DXT3 formated texture IIRC you need to make the deck material have some transparnecy by setting the Opacity in gMax to less than 100 but IIRC this also will cause the loss of shadows from that material.

 

[wolfi]

I found this

Historic Aircraft - The Grasshoppers, Part 2: The Ships | Naval History Magazine - April 2014 Volume 28, Number 2
As I read the flight deck base was made “constructed of timber topped with metal landing mesh”

I think the extra flight deck should not increase the wight of the ship to much, so it was made of timber covered with landing mesh, “Landing mesh” -that reminds me on the good old Marston Mats’s Marston Mat - Wikipedia. In one of the pictures was an extension for the tail wheel fitted to the flight deck, this was indeed made of steel grating. So I think you can’t look through the flight deck because of the timber deck below the gratings.
Here are a few other pictures: The Smallest Aircraft Carriers
An interesting information is, that those little carriers are also used in the pacific (Philippines, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima)

wolfi

 

[Allen]

The kluese link LSTs do look like PSP/Marston Mat but than the deck would have to be 10 feet wide every part of the deck has holes. If the deck was wider than 10 feet there would be some spots missing holes where the PSP butts together. Also taking the head on pic from the kluese link and using the Cub's/Hopper's know prop size (72 inch / 6 feet long). The deck is wider than 12 feet.

So if the deck was PSP the only way I can see it is if they butted the PSP at the center line where much of the detail has been lost in the pics than cut off the excess from the sides but this seems like a lot of work.




LST- 906 was not mesh.




EDIT: Found a pic that looks to be around June to August 1943 (The roundel with red outline on the right side cub dates the pic but could be later if they didn't get around to overpainting the red outline)

It is using something that looks like PSP as you can see the butt joins to make a 15 fee wide deck?. Also a lack of white stripe so this isn't the same LST or LSTs as seen in the kluese link



I guess the deck would be a whole PSP than a half PSP. Next row would be a half PSP than a whole PSP. Repeat tell end of deck like the below image?

 

[wolfi]

I think that last picture looks very close
wolfi

 

[Allen]

Well my now fully sick brain spotted something. The LST in the kluese link. (My guess is LST-16 for all 3 pics) is not using PSP. It using some PSP like metal mat but the holes are triangles!



and must of looked something like below but I can't find anything about metal mats with triangles during WW2 or at anytime for that matter..

 

[stuart277]

You mean DXT3 is doing something like in the pic? If yes that is a normal DXT3 thing. If you want to use a DXT3 formated texture IIRC you need to make the deck material have some transparnecy by setting the Opacity in gMax to less than 100 but IIRC this also will cause the loss of shadows from that material.

View attachment 160239

View attachment 160240

Hi Allen
This looks something like it.
I will give it a test today.
Thanks,
Stuart

 

[stuart277]

The kluese link LSTs do look like PSP/Marston Mat but than the deck would have to be 10 feet wide every part of the deck has holes. If the deck was wider than 10 feet there would be some spots missing holes where the PSP butts together. Also taking the head on pic from the kluese link and using the Cub's/Hopper's know prop size (72 inch / 6 feet long). The deck is wider than 12 feet.

So if the deck was PSP the only way I can see it is if they butted the PSP at the center line where much of the detail has been lost in the pics than cut off the excess from the sides but this seems like a lot of work.

View attachment 160244


LST- 906 was not mesh.

View attachment 160243


EDIT: Found a pic that looks to be around June to August 1943 (The roundel with red outline on the right side cub dates the pic but could be later if they didn't get around to overpainting the red outline)

It is using something that looks like PSP as you can see the butt joins to make a 15 fee wide deck?. Also a lack of white stripe so this isn't the same LST or LSTs as seen in the kluese link

View attachment 160250

I guess the deck would be a whole PSP than a half PSP. Next row would be a half PSP than a whole PSP. Repeat tell end of deck like the below image?

View attachment 160254

Thanks Wolfi
It may be Marston matting.
The holes seem to be circular, from the shadows on the L5.
Cheers
Stuart