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FSX On transparent textures

lordofwings

lordofwings

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I am having a bit of a problem with transparent textures in the GSU->MCX tool chain.

Basically in MCX's Material Editor one marks the transparent texture (or the one that has some transparency, for example siloute of a person's photo) with the Set As Transparent. In there there are some parameters that I don't know if they need changed. Anyway, seems to work to a great extent.

Now, there are TWO ways I have used transparent textures in GSU:

a) In the GSU Materials dialog I used the + "Create Material" chose a texture and then selected that texture and applied it to a flat surface. OR,

b) In GSU use the File | Import option, select the image with transparency. After that it automatically puts you into the texture placement mode where you apply and resize the texture onto a flat surface.

So far so good. I then export to Collada, then Import in MCX, compile BGL and place it in FSX.

The problem is with how it looks in FSX. I have come to the conclusion that if I use method (A) the image (non-transparent area of the image) is visible on BOTH sides of the flat surface which is neat.

If I use method (B) the image and its transparency are displayed well on one side (front) but when looked from the back side you see nothing, i.e. the whole thing is transparent.

Am I missing something here?
 
You learn something new each time, apparently.
I have never done it that way because I thought GSU was always exporting textures as jpeg and so lose their transparency. So what I do is take an arbitrary translucent GSU texture and replace it with my own texture (diffuse, specular and night).
As per the foregoing, I therefore presume it has something to do with these GSU textures being jpegs and cannot contain alpha channels, afaik.
 
Might be worth studying the material properties of the FSX SDK to understand some of the options there.

In particular double-sided materials.

Arno has made many features of Modelconverter automatic, when it comes to handling of transparent textures and their conversion.

It is always best to understand what the settings do.
 
Hi,

SketchUp often uses PNG textures for transparent textures. ModelConverterX should detect those for you and set the right material settings automatically.

The double sided option is interesting. I have seen differences between exporting as DAE or KMZ. With KMZ it seems you get all faces double sided, with DAE not. But this seems to be a different issue. Most likely it has to do with the way SketchUp exports. But you can check if the double sided material property is on in ModelConverterX or not.
 
Will try that double sided material option next time. So far my "airport sign" that is stuck on three wooden poles looks real on one side and totally transparent on the other side (interesting in this case). The person stuck on the building appears from one side but disappears on the other :-)

I am getting a hang of airport signs though, my last one was purely non-transparent and I painted it on both sides of the surface.
 
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