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Guest simagic3d

Prop disc texturing problem - reflectivity

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Guest luhiss

Hi all,I have been working on some prop discs (slow and blurred) with alpha channels for transparancy. It has worked fine on exports that do not include "has reflective textures" in Make MDL.I have been texturing my aircraft and as I export now, I click "has reflective textures" in MakeMdl.Now my props no longer have transparency, but are metalic/reflective.I do not have any texture in the Specular slot for the props.My prop disc textures are 32 bit and are called prop_slow.bmp and prop_blur.bmp.Any ideas how to get transparency back instead of reflections?Thanks in advance. LuhissEdit: I should add I have my material opacity set to 50%

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Guest odog

which design program? gmax i just use 32bit opacity at -50%. Make sure there's no alpha in your texture. Should be enough. fsds... i cant help.but i just dont use alpha for transparency, i set that in the design program.joe

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Guest luhiss

I am using GMAX Maybe I am just confused about the whole thing. It seems that there are two types of prop textures I see from MS and other developers: 1) prop texture with a solid alpha 2) prop texture with an alpha that controls varying degrees of transparency.All the MSFS default prop textures have a non solid alpha. I was under the impression that the alpa cleans up the edges of the polygons that make up the prop disc Are you saying is all I need to do for a prop disc is to lower the opacity slider in Gmax?Why do you use a non-white alpha on your props, joe? Sorry for all the questions.If I use a non-white alpha on my prop, I get reflections.Luhiss

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Guest Milton

I usually set my blurred prop opacity to 8% in gmax (depends on color intensity of the bmp), use a xxx_T texture with a white alpha to eliminate reflections.

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Guest odog

I guess i spend a few more polys on the disc and make it look nice and clean, and then I just stick a normal texture on it and drop the opacity setting. Im sure there's more than one way to skin a cat. Im psp challenged for the most part, so i look to gmax for simple soloutions. maybe not the best way, but, a way.Im not sure of the side effects for other systems however, i just know it works for me.Milton, what do you use the alpha for? not the opacity setting right? just to eliminate the shine?Maybe, IM the confused one now. I dont see a the benefit of using an alpha at all. I try to avoid it in fact.I like to give the disc a little bulge in the middle to give it a more 3d look. Scale the center verts away from each other. Just flat looks strange sometimes.I was watching Discovery Wings one night and i was watching this Cessna. The prop appeared as tho it was barely rotating at cruise/level. I want to have my SLOW prop show during normal flight and blurred at full throttle only. I have not been able to get this, any ideas?????its always... too blurry and too spinny loljoejoe

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Guest Milton

Joe, I set the opacity in gmax (7-8%) for the material. The alpha is to eliminate reflections. I'll try it without it ... question if it will disappear at night though. I use a light map with that too. Maybe not the best way, but that's my current solution.I have been giving my blurred disk a "bulge" since my first project, the Dash 7, 18 months ago. Looks a bit more, well, 3D realistic :-) I also have feathering blurred discs which move with the prop lever. :-) That's a bit cool to see them move forward when more bite is put into them.I use around 50% opacity for my slow props for a good transition between still and blurred. For turbos, you get only a fraction of a second to see them. A little more for non-turbos in transition.My tests show that propn_slow kicks out to prop_blurred at around 350-450 prop rpms so that will likely not be possible. Too blurry and too spinny? :-) That's why I use 7-8% opacity on blurred. Key is to set the color intensity strong so you can go really weak on opacity. This eliminates the disk almost entirely and leaves you with just texture. At proper cruise rpms, the texture should be almost still or very slow rotation.

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Guest odog

gotcha. since were talkin all gmax and thangs...you know how you can name a selection of parts, with the "SELECTION SET" rollout, under the HELP box. I find this handy as all get out. The only problem is if i have a group named "NOSE" when i add a few pieces to the original, I cannot overwrite the original "NOSE" and must go with "NOSEI" and "NOSEII". Do you know how to delete the old selection sets? I think there's a limit, but its just confusing with all those names up there.thanks miltonjoe

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Guest luhiss

In Max you use EDIT > EDIT NAMED SELECTIONSInteresting about the prop discs. I was looking at the default aircraft yesterday and they DEFINITELTY use alpha channel to control opacity.. but they also have reflection alphas on their fuselage.I dunno.. but I think we are all missing something here.Luhiss

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Guest luhiss

<>Milton, can you explain this some more?Luhiss

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Guest Milton

Joe, that's the same progression I end up with for names. :-)See the post below (whoops, above lol) for editing. Also, if you merge your scene to a new one, it resets the named selections back to nothing. It also gets rid of unused materials and textures from the model.

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Guest Milton

I like to really reduce the blurred disc opacity as much as possible, like 5-8% in the material editor. This makes it less plexiglass looking, nearly invisible.To do this and still have a seeable blurred prop texture, I do my textures on white with really rich colors (black fading to white, and any colors for the tips should be very rich). This allows the nearly invisible opacity setting for the object while getting a reasonable/believeable texture to show up.Hope this helps.

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Guest flightmike1

>In Max you use EDIT > EDIT NAMED SELECTIONS>>Interesting about the prop discs. I was looking at the>default aircraft yesterday and they DEFINITELTY use alpha>channel to control opacity.. but they also have reflection>alphas on their fuselage.>>I dunno.. but I think we are all missing something here.>>LuhissI'm not 100% sure on this and have very little gMax experience but if you read the MakeMDL SDK(GMax Materials.doc) you will see how they do reflective textures, they set use a material and set the specular map to the texture name which makes fs use the alpha channel of that texture for reflections so i'm thinking that if you do this for all the textures you want to be reflective and leave the prop without a specular map it will use the alpha channel of its texture for transparency, I'll test the theory and let you know the results.

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Guest luhiss

thanks all for the help.I think I solved the problem by having only one texture for my prop. Previously I had a different texture map for each phase. When I put one texture into the texture folder called prop.bmp (32 bit) I got no more reflections and the transparency I desired.Luhiss

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Guest simagic3d

> I think I solved the problem by having only one texture for my> prop. Previously I had a different texture map for each> phase. When I put one texture into the texture folder called> prop.bmp (32 bit) I got no more reflections and the> transparency I desired.Explain the gmax material you created to use alpha as a transparency?I read in this thread something about Specular mapping for reflections. Where do you but the image with alpha to get transparency, then? If I put it the opactiy channel, gmax says during export that it can't use maps in channel 6 (opacity) and will ignore it.I don't like my solid props simply to have a reduced "global" opacity as it just reduces the opacity of the entire part rather than keeping the hub more opaque via an alpha.Currently, all textures have some alpha values to give reflections by default when the "Has Reflection Map" option in makemdl is enabled.It sounds like one has to instead put the same diffuse channel image in the specular channel to specify reflections on a material-by-material basis via the image's alpha and leave the spec channel unmapped for transparency mapping via the alpha in the diffuse channel and NOT check "Has reflection map" when exporting, yes?Would that then allow BOTH reflection and trans. to coexist if one places the appropriate images in both spec and diffuse?

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