Alpha textures

[privite]

Hi all,

In gmax im creating a building and its all 3D, but i need alpha textures too (at least i think they are alpha textures), in other words, 2D objects aswell. I know how to create the .tga file and how to use attachments in gmax and CCP, but im not sure how to add the .tga to the .im file, so please could someone help me?

Cheers
Privite

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[shaneturner12]

From what I understand, this is done in Gmax.

I think the Material Editor may help here, but I'm having to make a few guesses here.

One of the other Gmax content creators will hopefully have a better answer.

Shane

 

[privite]

Thanks Shane, i will have a look

 

[privite]

I've taken a look at that, but with no luck.

If there any other ideas they would be appreciated

 

[whitepass]

You add a material to your mesh, add a texture to the material, and do a UVmap.

 

[ray_whiley]

Could you perhaps explain what you need the 2D objects for? The usual way to make a 2D object in TACS/GMax is to create a 'plane' which is a two-dimensional figure - found on the same tab as the 3D 'box' which you no doubt used for the building. I have created several of these planes and find that when created they lie on the base surface and need to be raised to the vertical position, then have their height above zero adjusted to half their nominal height to rest on the surface - that is, they are positioned at first with their centre at base height. They can then be textured with the usual tga.file - if you want both sides to be textured, just tick '2-sided'.

I don't think that alphas come into play unless you want to create a transparent window with frame, when the alpha would be used to create the frame - there are tutorials for this.

I hope this helps. If not, just give more details of what you want to do and I will put my GMax thinking cap on!

Ray

 

[privite]

Thank you both for your replies.

@Whitepass - I m not sure what you mean, but i will take a look

@Ray - Basicly, i need to make a border for a building, but this will take ages to do using the normal box and the total size of the building will be larger than i would like, so i would like to add an alpha texture to the mesh. If im right in thinking, the JVC grass by Jankvis uses as well, so it looks invisible when you look directly on-top of it.

Thanks for the help

 

[ray_whiley]

@privite:

If I understand correctly, your border would be like an area of grass at ground level surrounding the building?

My solution for this - which I have used - would be to make a shallow box slightly larger than the base of the building (eg. plus one metre on each side, or however wide you want the border to be) and use a suitable tga. to texture it - tiling in each direction until it looks right. If you keep this as a separate scenic item, it can be used elsewhere.

It whould only take a few minutes work and the 'box' could be no more than 0.05 0r 0.025 metre deep; probably all faces other than the top could be deleted so there would be only 2 polys.

If I have misunderstood what you mean by 'border', my apologies.

Ray

 

[privite]

@privite:

If I understand correctly, your border would be like an area of grass at ground level surrounding the building?

Sorry Ray, i meant something like this:

Just thought about this, could i just create a box and texture it like a window, in the way that they use transparent textures??

Cheers

 

[ray_whiley]

OK, privite, I understand - you mean the stone borders at the corners of walls. The technical name for these is 'quoins'.

My method when I made my recent flint and carstone station buildings was to use one tga. graphic for the whole of each building, with part of it for each of the four walls (plus roof, canopies, etc.) I incorporated window and quoin details in the wall graphics - no extra work after the original graphic had been made! (The windows were not transparent as I didn't want to model the interior as well.)

If you download and look at 'Brandon station building', KUID 275817:28158, you will be able to use 'edit in explorer' to see what I mean by looking at the various 'wall' tga. files.

Hope this helps.

Ray

 

[privite]

Quoins. I didn't know that! thanks

I know what you mean about the texture Ray, thanks for all your help

Privite