semi transparent textures and lighting, does BAM render these differently?

[Slippery Jim]

I've converted one of my tables to BAM and FizXLite and one particular part doesn't seem right. It's got the "tube" ramp model from Xenon and uses the same texture and transparency settings yet it doesn't render right, it is only just transparent even at the lowest transparancy settings and the lighting doesnt go through the tube, even if I put the bulbs inside the tube they still do not illuminate it. I can see the bulbs are turning on, I just cant see any lighting effect through it. Is this a BAM setting?

 

[AnonTet]

Notifying @Runner as he's the one who probably has the best answer.

That tube does look amazing, I agree. Especially in VR.

 

[GeorgeH]

Does it use the exact same model as Xenon? I have found that different models can perform completely differently. I had a model once that was transparent but the ball was invisible under it although you could see everything else through it.

 

[TerryRed]

This is normal. You need to do a few things.

- tube should be a ramp model
- texture applied to it needs be a TGA with some transparency
- texture transparency setting (in FP) for the ramp model should be all the way to the left
- it should have sphere map enabled

You may need to right click on the tube and change it to either Send to Front or Send to Back. If you don't get this set correctly (after doing the above stuff), then things like the ball, and other items may not appear through the ramp. This is because of how FP's forward rendering works.

 

[Runner]

Could you attach your table so we can have a look at the problem?

The tube model on the Xenon table must have materials assigned to the clear tube (instead of a texture) and the metal rings would have texture material assigned. The texture that is assigned in the FP editor is the spheremap which is a metal ball and this is only being applied to the metal rings on the tube, and not the clear tube. So this is why I think there is no textures being applied to the clear tube, and is a transparent 3d model.

 

[Slippery Jim]

This is normal. You need to do a few things.

- tube should be a ramp model
- texture applied to it needs be a TGA with some transparency
- texture transparency setting (in FP) for the ramp model should be all the way to the left
- it should have sphere map enabled

You may need to right click on the tube and change it to either Send to Front or Send to Back. If you don't get this set correctly (after doing the above stuff), then things like the ball, and other items may not appear through the ramp. This is because of how FP's forward rendering works.

The tube is definitely a ramp model and exported from Xenon, it is sphere mapped and the transparency set the same as Xenon, but somehow originally even all the way to the left or right transparency didnt seem to change. I have noticed in the Xenon texture manager the file is a BMP. Yet it works in Xenon as a BMP but not if I import it into my table. So I saved an alpha channel and saved it in TGA format and now it is completely transparent, 'invisible' if you like. So I went back into my image editing program, "inverted" the texture, resaved the alpha channel only for it to look strangely mapped. Deselecting "sphere mapping" seems to have fixed it and now it looks right.

 

[AnonTet]

BMP transparency comes from the "Color to make transparent" you choose. You can see in Xenon that is NOT pink as you have it

 

[Slippery Jim]

BMP transparency comes from the "Color to make transparent" you choose. You can see in Xenon that is NOT pink as you have it

earlier I did try to match the colour in the "Color to make transparent" choice, but it didnt work. It mustnt have been a close enough match

 

[Slippery Jim]

oh and off topic do you know why it is spelled colour not color? It is because the author was an Australian, Australia tends to use British spelling of the English language, though that is slowly changing now a third of the country is now comprised of non British background immigrants. It is also why we have the "Pinball Meditation error red box", Christopher Leathley was an Amiga programmer/cracker in the early nineties and a huge fan of the Amiga, the Amiga had a similar red error box titled "Guru Meditation Error"

 

[TerryRed]

Yes, I'm Canadian, and I too use Colour instead of Color.... and it causes me some script error headaches at times because of my habits. :)

I too was a huge Amiga nut, and recognized the Guru Meditation Error from the Amiga days right away that is visually shown for FP errors :)

I had an Amiga 500 (with 20 MB HDD and 3 MB ram), 2000, 1200 (with 80 MB HDD, 68030 cpu and fpu, and 10 MB ram) and a CDTV. I still have my Amiga CDTV kicking around.

 

[AnonTet]

OK, I learned something about... demography in Australia :) I do have family that went there to retire so I totally believe that it is probably a "New Florida" already... or in a near future.
The remaining facts are obvious for anyone that crossed the 2 golden decades of gaming (if you ask me)

 

[Slippery Jim]

OK, I learned something about... demography in Australia :) I do have family that went there to retire so I totally believe that it is probably a "New Florida" already... or in a near future.
The remaining facts are obvious for anyone that crossed the 2 golden decades of gaming (if you ask me)

are you an ex Amiga owner? I had one in the early nineties, I loved that machine

 

[AnonTet]

Only emulated