Quick Modo Question
polycounter lvl 10
Okay. I like Modo. It's one the best modeller I've used. But there is one thing I absolutely cannot stand about it...
...how it handles transparencies in the realtime window.
It sucks. So absolutely horribly. If I want to make some low poly trees and bushes, I have to export everything as an .obj, and do all my aligning in Blender. Now Blender is alright, but I'd prefer to do all my modeling in one program. For the sake of simplicity at the very least. So I'm here to ask a question...
...is there a fix, or a step I'm missing to get transparent textures to work properly in the realtime renderer? See, this is what it does...
This is my test branch, made for example purposes. It's a double sided diamond shaped polygon with a fin extruded from the center. What you're looking at here is the fin and the left side. The texture 32-bit TGA, alpha in the alpha channel. The works.
Well, it's sorta working. The background is black, and it's showing the should be transparent bits as grey. Hmm. Well...what if I take the alpha, save it to its own texture, invert the colors, and put it in a separate channel?
WHOA! It works! Well...not quite. Notice what's missing? Yup. It isn't showing the rest of the texture behind the polygon. So it looks transparent, but only for the grid and backdrop. On occasion, I can see the texture on the other side of the transparency, but it all depends on the angle and whatever mercurial mood Modo is in. Get a bunch of branches in there, and it looks patchy.
For example...
What about a Stencil map? ...nope. That only works when I render the scene, which isn't what I want. I just want to make some damn low poly trees in Modo. I mean comeon. Alpha transparencies have been around since forever. Why can't Modo, with it's Advanced OpenGL realtime renderer, do it? I've looked in every setting and material property I can find. Found one incredibly useful sounding option called Alpha Channel, and set it to enabled. And it does...not a thing.
So am I missing something, or am I pretty good and well screwed?
...how it handles transparencies in the realtime window.
It sucks. So absolutely horribly. If I want to make some low poly trees and bushes, I have to export everything as an .obj, and do all my aligning in Blender. Now Blender is alright, but I'd prefer to do all my modeling in one program. For the sake of simplicity at the very least. So I'm here to ask a question...
...is there a fix, or a step I'm missing to get transparent textures to work properly in the realtime renderer? See, this is what it does...
This is my test branch, made for example purposes. It's a double sided diamond shaped polygon with a fin extruded from the center. What you're looking at here is the fin and the left side. The texture 32-bit TGA, alpha in the alpha channel. The works.
Well, it's sorta working. The background is black, and it's showing the should be transparent bits as grey. Hmm. Well...what if I take the alpha, save it to its own texture, invert the colors, and put it in a separate channel?
WHOA! It works! Well...not quite. Notice what's missing? Yup. It isn't showing the rest of the texture behind the polygon. So it looks transparent, but only for the grid and backdrop. On occasion, I can see the texture on the other side of the transparency, but it all depends on the angle and whatever mercurial mood Modo is in. Get a bunch of branches in there, and it looks patchy.
For example...
What about a Stencil map? ...nope. That only works when I render the scene, which isn't what I want. I just want to make some damn low poly trees in Modo. I mean comeon. Alpha transparencies have been around since forever. Why can't Modo, with it's Advanced OpenGL realtime renderer, do it? I've looked in every setting and material property I can find. Found one incredibly useful sounding option called Alpha Channel, and set it to enabled. And it does...not a thing.
So am I missing something, or am I pretty good and well screwed?
Replies
The "layered" alpha not working in the viewport is due to alpha sorting issues and is common to many 3D apps (Max being the most notorious). If that's bulletproof in Blender then that's a big plus for Blender.
If you are using Modo 501 you could turn on Ray GL in order to see the polygons in the "back" while you work, though it's definitely not an ideal solution.
For the alpha channel of the material itself. As you already have discovered, it seems to be best to apply it as a separate texture layer set to "Transparent Amount".
There is an "invert" option under properties of a texture layer which should take care of inverting the black and white areas so you don't have to manually invert your alpha texture in Photoshop. Unfortunately it seems to only work with actual renders or with Ray GL turned on, not in the Advanced OpenGL viewport on it's own.
I wish I had a better solution for you, but sadly I think there is none
I guess I should look on the bright side, and see this as a good excuse to learn Blender a little more. It's kinda clunky, and not exactly the easiest thing to use, but there are quite a few surprisingly nice features buried inside of it. It'll be decent for whipping some low poly trees together, at least.
Appreciate the help, man.