What is the proper setup in Blender that the exporter requires to add and alpha mask?

Good Evening Folks,

My Friend BlackDiamond1964, needs some help with regard to this issue;


What is the proper setup in Blender that the exporter requires to add and alpha mask to a texture?

"this is using the latest Blender (3.5) and the Rileyzzz .im exporter.


Now here is the full back story, Scott is making all of his Assets with Blender, he used the older Version, then decided to move up to version 3.5.


Below is Scott's overview;

The night mode model is it’s own model. In this case it’s the windows and doors that have windows on them…anything that shines light through. You take the existing windows and doors on the model and make a copy of them.


You separate them from the main model and make them there own model with in the Blender scene. You then take the existing texture and open it in a paint program and create a night mode texture and a alpha mask. This works because the night mode model keeps the same UV mapping that is on the main building model.


An alpha mask is used to separate the light shining through windows and not the window frames. This is more of a detail choice. It makes the night lighting look a bit more realistic.


The exporting seems to be the main sticking problem here as I don’s know the proper setup in Blender that the exporter requires to add and alpha mask to a texture.

This was easily done in the old Blender/exporter versions.

In the new Blender texture materials are set up differently using nodes. The old way of setting them up is no longer an option in the newer Blender.
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Folks we are just hoping that someone has knowledge of setting up the Night Mode section for this Asset.

It's quite simple. Use nodes for your material and a Principled BSDF Shader. Create a diffuse/colour texture and add a greyscale alpha channel. The alpha could be single shade of grey or patchy if you want some dirt, etc. Connect the diffuse color node alpha to the alpha input of the shader. Riley's exporter will create a correct texture.txt for alpha channel use.

I sent Scott a copy of my test Blender file and a cdp of a test asset.

Is that info and diagram for a Blender onetex material with opacity map not in the Wiki? The equivalent for gmax/Max is there. Blender should get equal treatment, I think.

Dinorius_Redundicus said:

Is that info and diagram for a Blender onetex material with opacity map not in the Wiki? The equivalent for gmax/Max is there. Blender should get equal treatment, I think.

Click to expand...

The information on the Onetex page is for older versions of Blender and the old XML/TrainzMeshImporter but not for Blender 2.8 and later plus Riley's exporter.

Scott did ask me earlier about it but I didn't know the answer at the time.

Good Afternoon Folks,

Wanted to thank you for your Input if there is any additional, feel free to add to this thread.

Yes, thanks for the help. It turns out that I took the building model and placed it back into Blender 2.79. I had to re-apply the textures. This was done just for the sake of completing the model because I was stuck on it for so long. I have plenty more buildings to make in the future so I will be visiting this issue again in the near future.