pixmite Posted November 7, 2005 Posted November 7, 2005 Fellow AMers: I’m building a model of a WWII fighter plane and I’ve run into a decaling challenge that I didn’t foresee with the canopy. The plan was to use a simple spline geometry for the canopy shape, apply a glass material to the shape and then add a detailed decal to represent the canopy support structure (frame) on top of that. It appears that the frame structure decal is adopting the transparency of the underlining glass material, which makes the frame almost completely transparent. I can see that this would be a good thing in most cases, i.e. making sure that the decal has the correct surface properties, but this there a way to turn this off for the transparency attribute? Short of adding all of the individual detail of the cockpit frame to the model as splines, is there a better way to approach this? Perhaps a simpler question is; if you were to add an opaque decal to a glass material how would you do it? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Pixmite P.S. Anyone know what happend the AM, 11.1, 12.0 forums? I cannot see them in the froum menu anymore. Quote
pixmite Posted November 7, 2005 Author Posted November 7, 2005 Never mind the PS part I just found them... Quote
Williamb Posted November 7, 2005 Posted November 7, 2005 Couldn't you make a transparency decal in lieu of a glass material? Just cover the transparent areas with tranparency and leave the frame untransparent. Quote
KenH Posted November 7, 2005 Posted November 7, 2005 Good question! I've never needed to do that. Can't figure it out either. Cookie cut won't do it right. I think those forums have been pruned. The old stuff may still be in the archive.... Quote
pixmite Posted November 7, 2005 Author Posted November 7, 2005 Couldn't you make a transparency decal in lieu of a glass material? Just cover the transparent areas with tranparency and leave the frame untransparent. Well, this would create a frame but the areas that are transparanet would not hava any glass properties giving me a different probelm. Pixmite Quote
nf1nk Posted November 7, 2005 Posted November 7, 2005 I have been putting labels on bottles lately and I found that you need to go into to the properties of the the decal and there is an option to adjust the transparancy of the decal. it seems to default to 60% on glass objects. Quote
pixmite Posted November 7, 2005 Author Posted November 7, 2005 All: I think I just figured it out... Buy using two images applied via the same decal stamp. The first is the color one and the second is a transparancy one that has its alpha chanel defined to eliminate the transparency in the ares of the color decal. I can then keep adding images to the same stamp to reset the glass attibutes to the ones that my opaque surface should have. Thanks everyone for the suggestions! Pixmite Quote
heyvern Posted November 7, 2005 Posted November 7, 2005 I just tested this technique and it... works... but... you get halos. The transparency mask for the supports gets anti-aliased and causes a halo around the supports that is more transparent than the glass. You should "match" the transparent value of the glass to the grayscale value of the transparency mask for the support struts. You also need a map for any other properties. This is easy. Just create a grayscale targa of your canopy support "grid" white lines on black. You can add this image to the decal and use any property you like and just set the image opacity to control that value. One map... multiple properties. I keep trying to write this in as simple terms as possible... very hard. I have included my quick (5 min) test project with targas. [attachmentid=10845] -------------- As I am describing this... it sounds like a pain in the arse... but in reality it isn't THAT bad... Is there anyway you could use the canopy as a reference to extrude the canopy supports as a separate mesh? This would be a bit more work and more patches to the model... but you wouldn't have to use all those images in a decal... control everything with groups. Vernon "!" Zehr canopy_decal.zip Quote
pixmite Posted November 7, 2005 Author Posted November 7, 2005 Vern: After looking at the enclosed project, it looks like you did way with the underlining material all together and built the two separate materials out of two mutially excusive decal maps using the same stamp and then applied as many images as necessary to conver all of the surface attibutes of the original materials. Neat approach, to bad we couldn't use at least one of the orignal materals though. Pixmite Quote
steve392 Posted November 7, 2005 Posted November 7, 2005 I just tested this technique and it... works... but... you get halos. The transparency mask for the supports gets anti-aliased and causes a halo around the supports that is more transparent than the glass. You should "match" the transparent value of the glass to the grayscale value of the transparency mask for the support struts. You also need a map for any other properties. This is easy. Just create a grayscale targa of your canopy support "grid" white lines on black. You can add this image to the decal and use any property you like and just set the image opacity to control that value. One map... multiple properties. I keep trying to write this in as simple terms as possible... very hard. I have included my quick (5 min) test project with targas. [attachmentid=10845] -------------- As I am describing this... it sounds like a pain in the arse... but in reality it isn't THAT bad... Is there anyway you could use the canopy as a reference to extrude the canopy supports as a separate mesh? This would be a bit more work and more patches to the model... but you wouldn't have to use all those images in a decal... control everything with groups. Vernon "!" Zehr Now Im suprised I didn't think you Americano's spell arse... like that ,sorta you say tomata I say tomato ,mmm Quote
heyvern Posted November 7, 2005 Posted November 7, 2005 Vern: After looking at the enclosed project, it looks like you did way with the underlining material all together and built the two separate materials out of two mutially excusive decal maps using the same stamp and then applied as many images as necessary to conver all of the surface attibutes of the original materials. Neat approach, to bad we couldn't use at least one of the orignal materals though. Pixmite Oh crapola... i think I may have goofed. The maps are black and white and use a percentage of the image in AM for the other map properties... this would mean that they would "over ride" any attributes of the group settings... darn it. I like using images this way since it allows me to control tweaking in AM without having to go to photoshop. You could change the map to RGB and use an alpha to allow the canopy glass group settings to "show through"... but this would give you a halo... but it won't be as pronounced as the halo on a transparency map. Whenever I encounter these situations... there is always a bit of a "learning curve" as I figure out what I need to get my results. I don't have any idea how this would work with AM "materials" if that is what you mean. I don't use materials very often... I'm a decal kind of guy. Vernon "!" Zehr Quote
Williamb Posted November 7, 2005 Posted November 7, 2005 Pardon my ignorance but dont you use just a grayscale image to make a transparency decal? Why do you need an alpha channel with its inherent problems? Quote
heyvern Posted November 8, 2005 Posted November 8, 2005 If you use an RGB targa with an alpha channel, you can "hide" where the decal effects the mesh. If the mesh group is 90% transparent, and you use a decal to make a grid with 0% transparency... without the alpha, the map would need the 90% grey. And if you changed it, you would have to change the map in photoshop or whatever. So with RGB and an alpha, you don't need that 90% gray, just a solid white with the alpha that cuts out where the rest of the mesh is controlled by group surface properties. This is how I have been doing it. There is only one, singular problem I have found... halos around the alpha mask. The alpha goes to zero, to black... if your mesh group doesn't have 100% transparency, you get a halo of 100% transparency from the black. There are ways to hide this. Vernon "!" Zehr Quote
pixmite Posted November 8, 2005 Author Posted November 8, 2005 There is only one, singular problem I have found... halos around the alpha mask. The alpha goes to zero, to black... if your mesh group doesn't have 100% transparency, you get a halo of 100% transparency from the black. There are ways to hide this. Vernon "!" Zehr Couldn't one make a slightly larger Non-transparent decal to cover the halo area of the tranparent decal? Pixmite Quote
heyvern Posted November 8, 2005 Posted November 8, 2005 My brain hurts. I tried to respond but hard to do with out having AM open and some sample projects to play with. I will fiddle with this and give a clearer description of how I do it. I have encountered these situations before (my "bag of goop" project as an example"). So I know I came up with something... unless... some kind of miracle occurred... I don't think that is likely though. Vernon "!" Zehr Quote
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