MSFS [MCX] Transparent glass?

[Rotornut44]

OK. I feel like this should be pretty straight forward, but for whatever reason, I have been unable to figure it out..

I have a static model where I want to make the glass transparent. Just as you would for a normal aircraft simobject. The glass material has a texture by default. Coming from FSX & P3D, normally I would just use an alpha channel in the texture to increase the transparency to my liking. However, this seems to no longer work in MSFS.

So far I have tried:

• Alpha Texture + White Albedo Channel
• Alpha Texture + White Albedo Channel at ~ 50% transparency
• No texture + White Albedo Channel at ~ 50% transparency

All tests used the MSFS "Glass" material type as well. The material was not set as a MSFS PBR material.

Everything displays normally in Model Converter X, but in MSFS the glass displays as opaque.

I have dug around for an answer on this, but all the threads I have came across don't talk about transparency. And as usual, the SDK is less than helpful (Although, admittedly, it's slowly getting better).

 

[mamu]

With msfs glass, starting From su6, you Need to set roughess in the material properties to 0
The alpha multiplier should be pretty low to get decent transparency (something like 0.2 or less)
Also advise put the reflection Mask to really low values (0.1 to get decent effect)




Inviato dal mio Mi 9 Lite utilizzando Tapatalk

 

[Rotornut44]

With msfs glass, starting From su6, you Need to set roughess in the material properties to 0
The alpha multiplier should be pretty low to get decent transparency (something like 0.2 or less)
Also advise put the reflection Mask to really low values (0.1 to get decent effect)




Inviato dal mio Mi 9 Lite utilizzando Tapata

Is that with or without a texture? And, does it need to be set as a PBR material for the glass to work?

 

[mamu]

Is that with or without a texture? And, does it need to be set as a PBR material for the glass to work?

without texture, using the Glass material from the msfs sdk, i don't use MCX but i think that with PBR you mean the MSFS Standard Material (wich can contain albedo, normal, ambiente occlusion-roughness-metalness, so , yeah, PBR)
maybe @arno could help you about this

 

[Rotornut44]

Yea. I'll have to wait for Arno to jump on. I've got the glass material to look good with your recommendations, but I cannot get it to become partially transparent for the life of me. It's just solid black with a reflective texture.

These are all the PBR settings I have to work with. This section should also define transparency, as it contains the alpha and render settings. I have tried it with "Alpha to coverage" both enabled and disabled, just to see if it made a difference. Although, I'm pretty sure that I shouldnt even need it enabled. It's usually used for fully transparent alpha areas (vegetation, fences etc).

 

[Rotornut44]

OK. I finally got it sorted out. The Metallic factor (Labeled "Metallic" in MCX) also needs to be set to 0. Or at least a lower value (not tested), but 0 seems to look just fine to me.

The Alpha multiplier is the transparency value of the Albedo color. 5. 255. 255. 255 will set the Albedo color to white and give it an Alpha multiplier value of just slightly under 0.2 (0.0196078431372549 to be exact).

Hopefully this info gives anyone with the same question in the future enough info to make it work themselves.

 

[Rotornut44]

Because of the limited information on this topic, I decided to take the time to throw together a tutorial video. Hopefully it helps someone out!

 

[stovall]

Thanks Rotornut44, very well done video. You can understand your voice and the steps described are perfect. I have struggled to change a static helo for over a month. Now success thanks to you. Much appreciated.