Anti-aliasing and transparent textures in the game

[xannepan]

I just wanted to point out at this tutorial by autoVino at ST on how to mod models in the reader to get an anti-aliasing effect in the game. The same settings can be used to make sure transparent textures really are transparent in the game.
However, there is a downside to it. While anti-aliasing effect shows fantastic results against the base-textures in the games (and lot-editor) the orginal LODs cut-off all other models. Any suggestions how to solve this are much appreciated.

http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=37&threadid=94876

[jeronij]

Hello X

I dont exactly understand what you do mean. This technique allows transparency ( transparent plopable water ) and anti aliasing, but does not solve any LOD conflicts. Could you post a picture of your problem so i can understand it better ?
Thanks in advance 

[xannepan]

Hi J,

Here is a picture. The left one shows the great effect of anitaliasing on the tree props I'm wokring on.
In the pic on the right I have put a building behind the props... You see the invisible LOD cuts it off.

I've tried about every combination in the reader to solve the problem

X

[jeronij]

Hello again X

The problem is that there is no real transparency in your models. The transparency applies to transparent materials only, and the trees do not have transparent materials, in fact the trees are not trasnparent at all, that is why you can not see "across" them. Seeing the base textures under the trees is not transparency  A window is transparent.  A glass is trasnparent. This is the sort of transparency that this technique allows.

Frankly I cant see a solution for this, unless you make a really accurated LODs for the trees, like a skin, but this would make them really "graphic_card-consuming"  , and you could not totally avoid the glitches  .

The parameter that Autovino shows are related to the antialiasing. The parameter related to the transparency is the Depth Funct. one. This parameter says when transparency must be applied. But you wont get any results if the model has no real trasnparency.


I hope this helps you to understand the problem.

Anyway, I'll think a bit more about this. Who knows?, perhaps there is a solution somewhere 

[xannepan]

I have experimented a bit more... It seems that if you plop the props in the Lot editor in a certain order the problem is limited to a visual problem in the lot editor... In the game everything seems to look fine.

[autoVino]

haha, when I first expreienced the same problem it gave me a scare and I was about to abandon the whole project all together, but something made me go ahead and try it out in the game.
As far as I understand it (and have seen) this problem exists only in lot editor, and I think it's that the game graphics engine is better than the lot editor one and can support transparency (and maybe more optimized too?  my graphics card for my moniter has sometrouble with lot editor and transparency when it begins to overheat and shuts off for seconds at a time to cool down... but this doesn't happen in the game.)  But in short, this tecnique may look faulty in lot editor but it looks great in the game, and I also know of no way to make it work in the lot editor correctly.

This uses the same tecnique as transparent textures and it actually uses transparency too!  but only at the edges where we want the anti aliasing.  The alpha file should be specifically made so that it is anti aliased well againsed its (black) background, that is so there is a smooth transition (I think that gmax does this too, but I'm not too sure...) and part of that transition appears grey.  For transparent textures the same thing happens, where it needs to be transparent it is grey.

[xannepan]

Not sure if this is the rright place to ask... but does anyone know an easier way to enable the anti-aliasing/transparency? Right now it requires a lot of repetitive actions, which is very time consuming (depending on the size of the model off course).

[autoVino]

update: or better yet fixed.  There was an issue with the one at ST, something happened and broke the tutorial so here is the pdf file ~15mb this host is commercial heavy but it's free... so
http://www.mediafire.com/?yzt928ymhny

[jeronij]

Very professional tutorial Av 

It will come very handy for many people