transparency

[IFailedEnglish]

i made a bladed weapons pack that has blood effects, but the blood marks that show up when you hit someone always make the area around them black, and the same problem happens with a blood splater picture i made that is supposed to show up on the sword itself when you hit someone, but the area around that is black also. in the pictures for the blood. the parts ofitthat aren't blood are colored in black, so the black part shouldn't show up in jedi academy. but it does. ive included the pictures i used.

[Inyri Forge]

Black is not automatically treated as transparency. You must have an alpha layer, and you must have an appropriate shader.

[IFailedEnglish]

whats an alpha layer? and what would be an appropriate shader? this is the one im using for the cut marks:
gfx/damage/cut_mark
{
polygonOffset
{
clampmap gfx/damage/cut_mark
blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA
}
{
clampmap gfx/damage/cut_mark
blendFunc GL_ONE GL_ONE
rgbGen wave noise 1 0.5 0 2
}
}

and this is the one im useing for the blood splatter:

gfx/damage/blood_splat
{
polygonOffset
q3map_nolightmap
q3map_onlyvertexlighting
{
clampmap gfx/damage/blood_splat
blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA
rgbGen lightingDiffuse
}
}

[Inyri Forge]

Alpha layer = alpha channel. Google it.

[Crossbolt]

http://qbranch.cottages.polycount.co...haders-3.shtml

That shows you how to make an alpha channel in PhotoShop. If you are using Paint Shop Pro, you need to go into the layer menu, throw a mask on the layer you want to make into the alpha channel, and go into the mask toolbar along the top (only shows up if you have a mask selected) and then choose convert to alpha channel.

Hope that helps.

[IFailedEnglish]

im not using any of those. the only picture programs i have are picture it 9 and HP image zone.

[Inyri Forge]

Then get GIMP.

[Szico VII]

You dont need an alpha channel for those effects, you can actually use a png with transparency, which is often preferred for decals.

And, as we can see with that shader, there is no 'alphafunc GE128' or 'LT128' meaning even if you did make an alpha layer, the engine doesnt know whether to use the black alpha layer to make thigns transparent or not. I think by default with the shader you posted, it just assumes black sections of an image are transparent, for example, if you look at the effect images files, you will find they have transparency and are Jpeg files, thus, not having an alpha layer.

[Inyri Forge]

Szico, what do you think the transparent part of a PNG is? It functions exactly the same way. A PNG basically is a targa anyway.

[lassev]

Originally Posted by Szico VII

And, as we can see with that shader, there is no 'alphafunc GE128' or 'LT128' meaning even if you did make an alpha layer, the engine doesnt know whether to use the black alpha layer to make thigns transparent or not.

Those are cut-off alpha functions. So, in a certain sense when you use them, there is no actual blending. The engine just determines whether to draw a pixel fully or not at all, based on the alpha channel. In the case of those two funcs if the alpha value is 128 or over, or if it's less than 128. The characteristic of transparency created by alphafuncs is, thus, very sharp borders between fully transparent and fully opaque portions of the texture.