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P3D v5 Double-sided material disappearing when above the horizon?

Thralni

Thralni

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247
Country
netherlands
Hello all,

I made this floodlight for use in one of my projects. It's modeled in Blender, textured in Substance painter, then exported to ModelConverterX for effect placement, and exported as a model from there for placement through ADE. The floodlight consists of two materials: one PBR material with mostly default settings for the pole and fixtures, and then a second one specifically for the little 'cage' up at the fixtures. This is also a PBR material, but this one is double sided using an alpha map to make some of the elements see-through.

The thing is, this double-sided material seems to disappear whenever the material is viewed against terrain or sky above the horizon. If you look closely, you'll notice that where the 'cage' is in front of the pole or fixtures it still displays, but then is invisible against the mountain seen behind it.

I'm at a loss to why this happens... Any ideas?
 

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The software was not written to render both sides of a polygon and models with full or partial transparency through more than one face are subject to visual anomalies that are not consistent with other simulator factors. If you must have transparency through multiple panes, it is recommended you use multiple layers of only front side textured polygons.
 
Huh, well what do you know. Never even thought there might be limitations like that. I suppose the only thing I can do is actually model those parts. Thanks for the explanation!
 
Glad to share. I thought I'd also add that it is good to be aware which faces you are working with, because they render shadow and reflection differently. This is the case with opaque, as well as transparent textures. There is no established "front" face that I know of, I work with Sketchup, so I use the default white faces as front, only because that is the first face beginning 3d artists see.
 
I use Blender in which program you can have it show the direction of the normals and you can flip them if necessary. Hence 'front' and 'back' is not too much of an issue :) I would highly recommend using Blender if you don't, it's very powerful and free!
 
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