Transparency Problem

[six_ten 208]

I have a section of a model that I want to use a _CA texture for to save polys, it is a netting of ropes. When I apply my material it looks fine up close, within a couple of meters, but any further away and it becomes a weird shiny transparent sheet that also makes water behind it look invisible.

In trying to fix it I updated the chainlink fence from OA and copied that geometry, tex, and shader, then placed the fence model section into my model and still have the same problem. Is there something new about opacity in A3 that prevents it rendering correctly or have I missed a step?

---------- Post added at 10:42 ---------- Previous post was at 10:01 ----------

In case anyone else runs into this I'll update this. It might be fixed -- I just now copied over the A3 barbed wire rvmat and applied that to my netting, and in the rvmat it shows:

class Stage7

{

texture = "a3\data_f\env_land_ca.paa";

useWorldEnvMap = "false";

uvSource = "tex";

class uvTransform

{

aside[] = {1.0,0.0,0.0};

up[] = {0.0,1.0,0.0};

dir[] = {0.0,0.0,0.0};

pos[] = {0.0,0.0,0.0};

};

};

The old one was different:

class Stage7

{

texture="ART\ART_18thc_Navy\Data\env_land_co.paa";

uvSource="tex";

class uvTransform

{

aside[]={1.000000,0.000000,0.000000};

up[]={0.000000,1.000000,0.000000};

dir[]={0.000000,0.000000,0.000000};

pos[]={0.000000,0.000000,0.000000};

};

};

One more test should tell whether setting UseWorldEnvMap = "false" fixes it.

---------- Post added at 10:53 ---------- Previous post was at 10:42 ----------

It worked!

---------- Post added at 11:11 ---------- Previous post was at 10:53 ----------

Now that I've solved this, another question occurs to me: Is a low-poly transparent model cheaper to render than the same thing done in geometry; the netting is large and would add 500 polys to my model. Would I get better performance by modeling it or using the _CA tex on the low-poly model?

[mp5gosu 10]

In general: Least polys = better performance. Alpha mapped geometry needs additional draw calls, the effectiveness depends on how much polys you save and the difference in time that would take it for both to render.

Don't know, if it's cheaper to render compared to a 500 polys model, depends on the engine.