Question for MDL's and design experts

L

l'iguane

SOH-CM-2024
Hello,

I started a long time ago an update of the yak-130 by d'Attomo and Quai, I did a couple of livery and a full VC rework (replacing texture and gauges to look closer of the reality)

Mick kindly turn my MDL into a reflective one, as I was willing to have a reflective canopy, as the real plane.

I solved the VC reflectivity issue as usual, following the JDTinball tutorial.

Remark : The canopy is fitted with a specific texture (glass_yak.bmp .....and no _t suffix..) so when I tried this texture on the newly reflective mdl, the canopy becomes reflective, but completely transparent, and not showing the cockpit inside and airframe. I did a few screens to illustrate.

I strongly suspect my issue to come from the design of the mdl (not an expert in fsds or gmax...) and the absence of _t suffix on the canopy texture name may explain that.

Remark 2 : I tried the canopy texture with and without alpha channel, result : with alpha channel, reflective canopy. without alpha channel : no reflectivity. In the both case, I get wrong transparency I described.

I would need advice from expert modellers, Is there a way to fix that ?

many thanks in advance

L'iguane

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Here is a screen of the canopy untextured. I delete glass_yak and I get a weird result : the pilot and cockpit are not "shadowed" by the canopy but the landscape does. Weird.
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l'iguane said:
Here is a screen of the canopy untextured. I delete glass_yak and I get a weird result : the pilot and cockpit are not "shadowed" by the canopy but the landscape does. Weird.
Click to expand...

This is caused by the part hierarchy in the model itself. To avoid any issues (not just this one) any transparent parts must be the last parts in the model itself. It's a simple thing for the model designer, just cut each part and paste it back in, et voilà the parts are last. Not easy and/or possible for the user to tweak though.

Jamie
 
l'iguane said:
Remark : The canopy is fitted with a specific texture (glass_yak.bmp .....and no _t suffix..) so when I tried this texture on the newly reflective mdl, the canopy becomes reflective, but completely transparent, and not showing the cockpit inside and airframe. I did a few screens to illustrate.

I strongly suspect my issue to come from the design of the mdl (not an expert in fsds or gmax...) and the absence of _t suffix on the canopy texture name may explain that.

Remark 2 : I tried the canopy texture with and without alpha channel, result : with alpha channel, reflective canopy. without alpha channel : no reflectivity. In the both case, I get wrong transparency I described.

I would need advice from expert modellers, Is there a way to fix that ?

many thanks in advance

L'iguane
Click to expand...

From your screenies I can make out the faintest transparency through the glass. This may be caused by the model materials. Before you made the model reflective the alpha channel on the glass.bmp was used for transparency, this is no longer the case relying entirely on the model itself for transparency, thus without this component the glass becomes less transparent. This may be the cause, without the model, not sure.

Jamie
 
Thanks a lot for these explanation JDTINBALLS,

yes D'Attomo and Quai mention "highly reflective" in the readme, which is pretty wrong as they confuse it with speculiar shine, I had to tweak the mdl with MDLMAT to reduce the speculiar shine.

I will mail them, asking kindly if they can modify the hierarchy of parts and recompile. I'll keep you updated !

Thanks again !
L'iguane
 
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