Making parts transparent

[Guest]

Hi,Got an odd request for some advice. I recently downloaded Mike Stone's awesome new Beech Starship, and am trying to make a strange mod to it. I'd like to somehow visually remove the prop blades (don't ask why, it's a long story), and the only way I can do that I figure it is to make the textures for the prop blades transparent. From what I understand, it has something to do with the alpha channel going either all white or all black, but that's as far as I've gotten.Can anyone shed some light on how to do this if it's possible?My thanks in advance,

[Guest Firestriker]

Most FS2k2 models have three objects representing each prop. Prop_still, prop_slow and prop_blurred. Each are displayed at different engine speeds. Usually prop_still is more detailed than prop_slow and for the most part, only the prop_blurred object uses a texture with an transparancy. So making it completely transparant would NOT necessarily make the other prop objects transparant too. It really depends on how Mike constructed and textured the props.

[Guest]

well I have no idea how he constructed it, but all I want to do in this case would be make prop_still transparent.

[Guest odog]

how is the prop texture named?try this, not for sure to work but worth trying...open mikes prop texture in DXTbmp.then click on the alpha texture in the upper right.it opens it in your chosen paint prog.create an all black texture and click save and close.now click "refresh alpha after edit" and the box should turn black.now save it out as a DXT3 texture with the same name it had.whew, lot of work eh? after you do it a million or so times it becomes second nature.On my designs I dont use a transp. texture for the props. I use a normal one, and then turn the opacity down in Gmax. If this is what mike did and the above doesnt work.. yer up the creek.joe

[Guest]

It's just prop_t.bmp, Imagetool says it's Indexed at 8-bit. I tried what you suggested, twice, using first DXTbmp and then Photoshop/Imagetool, didn't seem to work either way. Thanks for the help though, it is appreciated.