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A model with no diffuse texture: is it possible?

pierrot

pierrot

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france
Hi all,

Still looking for the perfect lighthouse beam, modelled with a rotating solid object instead of a light effect (not convenient for this purpose, see other posts).

I have come to a point where my (dusk/dawn) night texture rendition is satisfactory (looks nearly transparent but still bright enough) but I still have problem with day time.

Whatever my settings, and because it is an object, the beam is still slightly visible during daytime. Even if it is faint, it stays visible and thus not realistic.

My idea to solve the problem was to apply a night texture (the one I have made which displays perfect) but no day time (diffuse) texture. But that is not possible; there MUST be a diffuse texture present, if not a solid color will by applied.

So what would you suggest for a day time diffuse texture to remain totally invisible?
 
Just an idea. Can your daytime diffuse texture have a black alpha channel so that it's totally transparent when rendered in FS? Worth a try?

Ed
 
Yep, I agree - a black alpha channel in the day texture. But what sim is this for? While that works in FS9, I'm not so sure in FSX.
 
Ed, Tom, this is pure genius! (that's why I didn't think of that) ;)
Of course, this must be the solution!
But err... I just tried and I'm afraid I'm not good enough.
I made a small texture, pure white with a pure black alpha channel (called Translucent_pure).
In Gmax I applied both to my object and exported as FSX MDL.

When I then open this MDL with MCX... I only have 1 texture (Translucent) displayed in the material editor 'Properties' list. Is it normal? I can't see my original (Beam_R) in this properties list although it's here in the 'Textures' list.

What do I then do in the 'Properties'? The diffuse texture (Translucent_pure) is displayed, I can add to it a night texture (Beam_R) but what about all the parameters?
If I set them as for night time I'm confused by what I get:
- in MCX windows at daytime the beam is white, and red at night. Looks good.
- but when exported to a MDL again and dispayed in FSX/P3D2: I see nothing during day time (yes, wonderful) but during night time... it invisible too!

As you may understand I'm not at ease with these parameters! see details in the enclosed image

test.jpg
 
That won't work. FSX uses the day alpha channel also for the night texture.
 
Ah, I didn't dream long... :(

Arno, with all your expertise, can you imagine a trick to make an object invisible at day time and displayed at dusk/night/dawn?
Something like what we can do for effects, but applied to MDLs?

I can't find a magical work around to get this #@¤!! beam working, with a nice glowing additive night texture while remaining invisible during the day.
 
Of course it have his logic ¡¡, I know that something was going wrong but not knew what it was:scratchch :D . take a look here where the same issue was discussed. http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/posts/596141/ and tell how do you do. I found a method to get that effect, but I can tell why this worked it was a Little trial and error. and following the Tic thread about this.
 
Thanks for the info Arno. I should have known that it was too easy to work. Sorry I didn't help you Pierrot.

Ed
 
Don't be sorry Ed, that was a brilliant idea and I would have been proud to have it myself (even to find it's doesn't work eventually) ;)

Bernardo: very interesting trail, thanks a lot. I'm gonna give it a try asap.

But I'm not quite sure to fully understand what pair of textures did work fine with the settings you give in this other thread.
Won't you mind posting them in attachment, just to make things prefectly clear to me? I will then experiment with mine, but with a good understanding of what you mean (and yes indeed: all these trials and errors and SOooo time consuming!)
 
I'm not aware of an easy way to do this. Conditional display in fsx is harder then we were used to. Maybe using SODE is an option.
 
Dont feel bad Edhipps, at least you give your ideas and tried to help.No problem Pierrot but I will have to make the trail back again, I reread the post and not understood some things even myself.

By what can be seen, I have two textures. diffuse is full black with an alpha channel full White. and a night texture. here is what can be problematic. I wanted a light effect for the model. and it was difficult. here is where you have to test to get the best approximation. what I did was to apply an alpha channel too, with a greyscale gradient. and add two default lights effects as can be seen in the default Fsx rotating beacons.
The important thing is to set the parameters in "Framebuffer Blend" there is were is the trick. (see the parameters in the post of the other thread.)
 
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Hehe, thanks to you Bernardo, a giant's step for lightbeams ;)

In the meantime I have experimented with your settings given in the other thread, and here are my findings further to many trials and errors, but with a (yours) good starting point.

1) The day time texure (the one which should NOT be visible) is pure black, with a pure white alpha
2) The night time texture (the one which will be displayed at dusk/night/dawn) is a gradient of color (gradient to mimic distance-wise intensity weakening), no alpha channel needed.
3) All the properties are yours (dest blend=dest alpha, source blend=source color)

This way, the beam is totally invisible at day time, and fully rendered at night time.
The transition in between is a bit tricky: with your settings, the beam is visible "a while" after dusk begins. I think the length of this "while" depends on some intensity parameters, but I didn't have time to investigate yet (eg. final alpha multiply? set at render time? I don't know, Arno surely has his own pertinent idea on that).

But I have an other effect (a flash) which starts dead on dusk-time and it begins "a while" before the beam becomes visible. I didn't measure yet, I use P3D2x time-preview feature to check my lighthouse quickly.

Anyway, this a HUGE improvement over my previous attempts, and I'm more than satisfied. With some tweaking I think I'll achieve what I was dreaming of.

Tanks you very much indeed, Bernardo ! ;)
 
Thanks, I think is an interesting trick to get those textures desapear at day time. and it was a struggle. People say that alpha channels not work at night time, till day I am not sure of that. but must be, it have his logic too, can't be two day/night alpha channels . anyway I left all the textures and paremeters as it was because worked. must be parameters that can be added, but I wan't to get back to the same matter though I was not very convinced with the effect light itself, but acceptable.
 
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For this very purpose (lighthouse beam), it is a good thing actually that the alpha is not used to emulate transparency.
Because alphas are 8-bit maps, with only 256 shades of gray ;) the transition is very abrupt and dependent of the alpha test level.
With a coloured gradient - as used in your "recipe" - coded on 24 bits the transition between full color intensity and full vanishing is much more gradual and smooth.
Furthermore, one can play with color saturation to lessen an overdone color intensity of the light source.
 
Good point Pierrot, as said before I think that the light beam could be better though the outcome is not bad. I almost sure the night alpha channel are working and it is what I wanted to control the transparency of the light. but still it seem to me too much solid. For this I took a look to the default rotating becon of fsx as this seem to me the perfect light house but license property apart the light was Green yellowish light . it's because I get involved in this.
Edit: confirmed the alphas work, the effect is not bad but many doubts arise as one observe more closely the damned light. it should be seen at distance pretty clearly not the beam but at least the point of light thing that not happen here. my ships are lost hopelessly.
 
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All default beacons were not my choice because:
1- their spread angle is far too wide and conic, as a lighthouse beam is focalised to infinite and perfectly straight and parallel
2- their range is far too short (one can see their beam for 100m long max!)
3- their visibility range (the distance from which the light source is visible) on the contrary is ridiculous: many tens of kilometers, more than real lighthouses, and their source point is able to pierce through the dickest fog.
4- not to mention copyrights

I am far more satisfied with my own beams, now that they look fairly realistic thanks to yout trick.
 
arno said:
I'm not aware of an easy way to do this. Conditional display in fsx is harder then we were used to. Maybe using SODE is an option.
Click to expand...
You're right, that's what I do for other models, eg. wind driven like socks or windmills, and radio controlled runway lights.
I did not investigate yet to see if multiplying SODE objects has a big impact on framerates or not (I should make a secene with tens of them just to see).
Models with a visibility condition, like effects are, would have been nice. Too bad...
 
I'm still not clear, how did you get your daytime texture to vanish? I can't seem to get that to work. I'm using SFX and I only want my object to show at night. Do I need to make my daytime texture with black alpha and my night texture with no alpha?Is this even possible in SFX? Which textures are my day texture and which ones are my night? I use MCX to edit my models and the paremeters are a bit limitted. I have a bump texture,diffuse,emissive, enviroment,specular,and fresnel textures to chose from. which of those are for what. I have no idea what each one of those do what. I can't find any detailed information on MCX textures.
 
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I've been working on this for several hours and can't get it to work. I think it is not possible with SFX. I think i only did it once by a "fluke" of some kind. I can't figure out how I did it so I think I will move on to something else. I get a headache trying to figure out something that should be easy to do, but then again, we're talking about SFX, nothing is easy with that thing.
 
You can not make a texture only show during the night. What you should probably try to do is have the entire object only show during night. For that you can use a tool like SODE or maybe if you try to place the object via an FX file.

With P3D things are easier, as it allows conditional scripts to display part of the object at certain times.
 
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