Transparent textures [SOLVED]

[Nova]

Hey,
Like the new forum and I hope this means we'll be seeing something interesting soon?

I thought I'd share a bug I've been having for a while now (Since May 2010, to the best of my memory). Basically, I end up with transparent textures whenever I export to .tif from wings, as it adds an alpha channel to it. I don't know if it's intentional, but if it is, would it be possible for an option to turn it off? I'm using Win7.

The workflow goes like this.

1. Make cube
2. Unwrap cube
3. Create texture with the dialog set to draw background and draw edges

4. Hit tab to switch to shaded mode and bam, it's transparent

5. Exporting it as .tif and opening it and you'll find an alpha channel with faces set to black, edges to white


My workaround for a while now has just been to use a photoshop action that removes the alpha, which makes it bearable, but it can still be annoying sometimes.

Anyway, love the program, I use it every day in my work (making games for a small game studio). Together with ManifoldLab, I can't do pretty much anything I need

[micheus]

It's not a bug - it's a feature.

Just note there is an button named "Options" enabled for Background item on Render groupbox in Draw Options (see image on your item 3).
Access it and click in the square following "Color" - you will access the Choose Color dialog. Now, change the alpha (A) value from 0.0 to 1.0.

[Nova]

Ahh, now I see. Can I suggest changing it so by default the alpha is set to 1.0? Might be a bit more intuitive.

[micheus]

You still have the option to Draw Faces - it should be enough for the most situations you need a "background".

[Nova]

I get that, I'm just suggesting setting the alpha of the background color to 1.0 by default. I think it could avoid some confusion to new users.

[Ramjet]

Hi Nova,

You can make transparent textures in Wings 3D and the best way is to use a transparent texture like a Glass.tga, etc.. (there is a lot of transparencies texture over the Web!).


My two pence

[micheus]

Ramjet, your information is useful, but what Nova wants is not export alpha channel in the tga, tif or png file. Follow his steps and you will understand exactly what about he was talking.

[Ramjet]

Hi Micheus,

I try your solution, and it works fine along all my process (ie: until the transparent object is half visible and transparent in my scenery game).

Just have some difficulties to set correctly the value of the alpha channel and to understand that I must set directly in the export options a Targa File as Default texture file type.

So after, I get my 3ds file with and an external Targa texture file with an alpha channel.

Then converting, 3ds to X file, put the object in the scenery and binding the external tga texture to the .X file was easy as usual.

As a newbie in Wings 3D, I still have a lot of subtleties to experiment, understand and use!

Now I know how to make any type of transparencies of any colour.

So thanks a lot!