Watermasking Problems...

[Guest flightsimstudios]

Okay, I seem to have tracked down my watermapping issues and from what I can deduce it doesn't appear to have anything to do with waterclass...The problem is this:If one phototerrain tile contains only a water texture, and has the alpha channel set to black over the whole 256x256 pixel square then that whole tile is rendered as a ground phototile not a water phototile...Here's an image Notice that the tiles that have at least some white value in the alpha channel work correctly and turn the black alpha matte portions to water...The tiles that are just water and have only a black covering the entire alpha matte refuse to become a water polygon tile...Does anyone know a workaround to this? I'd prefer not to have just one pixel as a land pixel in the alpha just to turn the water into water...Dean.Do phototiles have a border around them of a couple of pixels that are not usually seen?

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Here's a zip file that has photoreal tiles as pure water:http://webpages.charter.net/ludowr/PhotorealWater.zipJust rename the version wanted to the appropriate Photoreal name. Versions are 8-bit-mipped, DXT1-mipped, and 32bit-nomip.Dick

[Guest flightsimstudios]

Okay I see what it's done, it's created the phototiles that don't have any water in it as a straight no alpha texture...Thanks for the file, helped me figure out real fast what had been happening...Quick question, does having an alpha channel affect frame rates and performance?I'm thinking of forcing the alpha channel on compile through imagetool but if having all of my tiles alpha'd affects both performance or data overhead, I'll just force alpha on the tiles that need them...

[Guest flightsimstudios]

Hey Dick,I tracked down the solution to the problem... Both the texture and the alpha channel need to both be at 0,0,0 black values... If you have a water matte for the entire tile...I believe it looks at the top left RGB pixel if it's an all black alpha channel to determine if it's a water tile or not...I dropped all my blue water tiles to straight black on the .tga's and it compiled perfectly...Dean.