transparent weapons

[vilas 477]

okay , i know, we don't have official tools

but i observed "funny" thing in ARMA

some of textures (although) without alfa channel are a little transparent ?

for example i imported to ARMA OFP CZ75, Glock

and those weapons were sometimes transparent

i found it happens with mostly grayscale textures

as for exapmle steel textures on weapons

when i put some color elements to Glock texture is now okay

why texture without alfa channel is sometimes transparent in ARMA

[nephilim 0]

can you show us a picture?

[vilas 477]

on this picture another part of model of M60 (mount of sight) is visible through receiver cover

you can observe it in contrasts, for example when my policeman (in black uniform) holded pistol Glock and he was on the front of white house i could see white house wall through the pistol or his black arm - when i was in front of him

as i found - mostly on Sahrani

i edit Glock, CZ75, TT textures, so not seen now

but i noticed it with my Thompsons from WW2 pack ?

when i made shadow LOD for them weapon was looking like *** (dirty word)***

maybe game takes one gray colour as some kind of alpha

my weapons have metal in grey scale, because real steel is grey, not blue, not red

[simba 0]

is it transparent or just sky blue ?

don't know what causes the bug either.

[Al Simmons 0]

i think thats just sky blue.

ive noticed that transparence bug with my shield addon too.

[DarkGiver 0]

which texture format did you use ? paa or pac ?

Maybe try to investigate about the texture format to solve this issue... Personnaly i put all my solid guns textures in .pac and all that need alpha transparency in .paa and i have actually seen no problems...

[Skaven 0]

I have the same problems in my addons Vilas, I'm gonna try DarkGiver's suggestion to see if it works.

[mechastalin 0]

It has to do with alpha channels. I had a problem with some of the BMD textures.

[nephilim 0]

try saving as pac instead as paa

[vilas 477]

renaming all textures, opening all models, a lot of works to replace PAC to PAA

how could i have know this , there are no official documentation from developer (i am engineer with some years practics and i get used to read all information from documentation)

also i saw that some people have solution for shadows

how the hell they know that last LOD must be 10 000 and all triangulated if there are no tools ?

are they somekind of clairvoriant ?

or maybe someone from BIS gave somebody informations ?

edit, edit edit !!!!

i told wrong, my weapons HAVE PAA textures, on that textures there is an error, i mean , now do I have to change PAA> PAC ?

[nephilim 0]

try and error:)

[vilas 477]

try and error ?

oh, they tried LOD30, than LOD99, than LOD 128, than 129.578342 and they found that LOD must be 10000 , all triangulated and faces closed ?

i doubt it

as i observed in ARMA there are no PAC files from OFP, all textures are PAA ?

so how could i know that this can hipotetically fix "alfa" ?

[dm 9]

People worked out that the shadow lod was technically LOD 10000 by looking at the p3d file format.

By deduction, we can work out that *.pac is no longer used - there isnt a single *.pac file in the entire game install.

The main problem with the textures is that you are using obsolete tools to create what is possibly a slightly obsolete version of the *.paa file (I'm just posturing here, I haven't actually checked). This in its self is more than likely to cause issues.

[nephilim 0]

true

current texture conversion tool create ugly artifacts

so normal maps for example can turn out pretty grainy

[DarkGiver 0]

renaming all textures, opening all models, a lot of works to replace PAC to PAA

how could i have know this , there are no official documentation from developer (i am engineer with some years practics and i get used to read all information from documentation)

also i saw that some people have solution for shadows

how the hell they know that last LOD must be 10 000 and all triangulated if there are no tools ?

are they somekind of clairvoriant ?

or maybe someone from BIS gave somebody informations ?

Simply use software like Notepad++.. open all your .p3d at the same time.. and use a global search/replace .paa string in bin files to .pac.. in 30 seconds all the job is done

And maybe the pac isn't used ingame.. but the paa format we use is obsolete too.. and there is not alpha issue with pac :P

[Iron+Cross 0]

any update on this? & could you have a look at this & give me a hint? new zasleh texture prob..

[sparky 0]

we experienced the same problem (in HWM mod), when we use textures that have alpha channel it seems that in ArmA look more like a bit transparent just like your image.

we solve this by using paatool and the following options.

-DestinationFormat DXT 5:5:5:1

-Mipmap filtering : Box

-Sharpen effets :none.

-Dithering : Unchecked

-Np Alpha filtering : Checked.

it seems in paa tool that the "No alpha filtering" checkbox is causing the problem. by not filtering your alpha channel the texture is correct compressed.

anyway hope that helps.

[simba 0]

if anyone experience this :

it is not texture related, there are errors in the model but what exactly I don't know yet.

[sparky 0]

here are some tips.

1st) try and check the normals

2nd) check the "lighning" box, both in Vertex properties "shift+E" and face properties "E" you should have it in normal for exterior models.

3rd)this green/blue colour confuse me a bit, did you try to apply a specular map??? if yes try remove it and see if it works without

the specular map.

4th) how many lods does you model have? if you have only one and you see this problem from far but not from near, maybe is caused by the LOD bug, so try to have more lods than one.

hope something form all these tips help a bit.

P.S. pac format doesn't support Alpha channel, that's why it doesn't have isues with transparency.

P.S.2. triangulation is the base component for all models a face at least has to have faces made by 3 vertexes, plus a lot of game engines in real time converting every model in triangulated faces. also by using trinagulated faces you avoid the issue of not seeing the face from some angles, especialy for organic models where the 4 vertexes are different in space position, there triangulation is a must.(that's a bit complicated to explain it).

i found something about trinagulaton.

this is from open gl redbook

about triangulation

see figure 2.4

[simba 0]

1st) normals are ok.

2nd) everything set on normal.

3rd)this is direct port from ofp, no specular map.

4th) only one this does not cause the problem.

The problem is quite strange, my model appears textured when I remove some polygons that seem prefect to me, if I find the solution I'll let you know.

Thanks for the tips Sparky.

[Skaven 0]

I tried XSparky's suggestion and it worked perfectly, saving as DXT1 or 5 seems to have the same effect so I think that the 4 last suggestions solved the problem, thank you

Quote[/b] ] -Mipmap filtering : Box

-Sharpen effets :none.

-Dithering : Unchecked

-Np Alpha filtering : Checked.

[Törni 0]

There is a way. Had problems with this one too.

This is a problem with .paa textures. You can work around it by discarding all additional info (maps) and saving textures to 32-bit .tga and finally saving them back to .paa format again from targa.

I used the Photoshop plug and it worked ok. No unwanted transparencies any more.

[simba 0]

better like this:

problem was in "vertex properties/Surface "

do not set "on surface"