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Home ? How Do I ...? ? Transparent Windows?

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15/11/2013 22:43:15

BigWhirl2012
BigWhirl2012
Posts: 32 		I have a scene I want to do that takes place in a spaceship. The passengers need to be able to see outer space whizzing by. I've created a super-wide backdrop and imported a cool star field onto it and I've animated it to get the right feel I'm looking for. In front of that I created a mirror-wall. What I want to do is to create portholes along the mirror wall that allow the passengers to see out. I've looked through several topics but either haven't found them yet or they don't exist. Any help would be appreciated!
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15/11/2013 23:55:09

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		hi there i made a couple of transparent windows if its for muvizu play

http://muvizu.com/3D/21842/windows-with-transparency

and likewise you can make some if you want here is a tutorial on one way of how to do it if you want round or something

http://muvizu.com/Video/23378/Muvizu-Tutorial-How-to-get-transparent-object
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16/11/2013 01:46:31

fazz68
fazz68
(Account inactive)
Posts: 763 		i would say in muvizu there are many ways to do things.
1.make models of the portholes and place them on the mirror wall with a built in starfield texture in the porthole.
2.totally do away with the mirror wall and make a wall with portholes built in from scratch (the method i would use).
3.use small floating backdrops the size you want the portholes with the starfield texture on it and another floating backdrop in front of that the shape that you want porthole to be. placed on the mirror wall. because whatever you do you wont be able to make the mirror wall have any type of transparency on it because it not built to have any. which i find strange in muvizu not having the ability to put textures onto a muvizu wall (which is why i dont use them)
so it all depends how good you want it to look and how much work you are prepared to do to achieve to effect you are looking for.
edited by fazz68 on 16/11/2013
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23/01/2016 22:03:56

braj
braj
Posts: 286 		I really appreciate this tip, but how do you do the same using SU>Collada>Blender>FBX?
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24/01/2016 01:17:38

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		this is how its done now those tutorials are older and predate fbx
http://muvizu.com/Wiki/wiki/125/fbx-blender-material-settings-make-shiney-transparent-light-thingies

put anything you want to be like this on a seperate material layer if you need parts to be not transparent. Unless they added the ability to create a mask for fbx, but last time I checked this was not an option.
edited by urbanlamb on 24/01/2016
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24/01/2016 02:03:21

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		and maybe there's something useful here as well (if you used a backdrop for the inside of the spaceship)

http://muvizu.com/Video/12480/Backdrops-Making-a-backdrop-with-transparent-
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24/01/2016 12:24:12

braj
braj
Posts: 286 		Well, I am giving up on Sketchup, I think there is just too much that can go wrong with the models when going between the different software, I got transparency to work with .ase but it gave unpredictable weird results. So... I just bought a 3 month subscription to the Blender Cloud, I'll go over all the modeling videos, and figure this stuff out. The FBX output is nice and sharp in the objects I've made so far, just basic weird shapes but it is encouraging. So the transparency just needs to be on its own material layer? that seems simple enough.
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26/01/2016 21:50:35

braj
braj
Posts: 286 		OK, maybe it isn't so simple. I am not figuring out how to get transparent objects in Blender to show as such in Muvizu. Can someone say how to do this using a basic shape like a cube or a plane? I can make fancy transparent things in Blender but the .fbx in Muvizu doesn't show as such.
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26/01/2016 22:00:49

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		create a cube or ball and apply a material to it, use uvunwrap to unwrap. Ifs its a cube use uvunwrap cube projection if its a sphere use uvunwrap sphere projection (note this will not work on complicated objects). To access the unwrap function have the cube selected and go into edit mode and its under mesh or just go into edit mode with the cube selected and hit U.


once you have done this go into the wiki and click the buttons I showed in the diagrams.

http://muvizu.com/Wiki/wiki/125/fbx-blender-material-settings-make-shiney-transparent-light-thingies
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26/01/2016 22:14:01

braj
braj
Posts: 286 		I got that, the only thing is I get no transparency, no matter what settings I try. I can export objects with UV maps, that's not my issue, here are my very first models:

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27/01/2016 00:17:16

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		Regardless of what you do in Blender or SU, you can't mix transparent and opaque textures in Muvizu in the same model.
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27/01/2016 00:19:16

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		ziggy72 wrote:
Regardless of what you do in Blender or SU, you can't mix transparent and opaque textures in Muvizu in the same model.



You can actually but you need to assign a dedicated material to the model for it then assign the transparency settings only to that one material.

...so take your object and create a second material and take the mapped windows and put those onto the second material and remove them from the material containing all the other bits and pieces that are not transparent.

if you use ASE you can do this using a mask however the method to do this with fbx is to assign transparent areas to a second material.


here once upon a time they allowed us to upload models here is a window done in fbx format you can download this and import it into blender and take a look at how I did it.

http://muvizu.com/3D/31554/The-Door-to-the-cottage-Country-Cottage-part-
edited by urbanlamb on 27/01/2016
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27/01/2016 04:10:39

braj
braj
Posts: 286 		So far I am only using one material in my test to figure this out, so that isn't my issue. What is the exact setting that enables transparency for the .fbx output. I have everything set per the screenshots from the wiki. I'm keeping this as simple as possible, I have one material, set to Fresnel etc, I created a UV map, it is selected under Texture>Mapping. Everything related to transparency or alpha channels has been enabled or adjusted. I just cannot get this going.
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27/01/2016 14:41:00

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I dont know then just export it. I did the demo on a ball. I know fazz tested my info and it worked. Just press the buttons it should work I also tested my info and it works. Did you assign a texture?

I really dont know what else to say because that page is just a mechanical process.
Are you using the correct version of fbx? the 6.1

At the time that was created there was only the 6.1 exporter make sure the sliders for transparency etc are not set at 1 or something just slide them down and same with emit if you want it to work move the sliders down to about half.
edited by urbanlamb on 27/01/2016
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27/01/2016 15:47:08

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		ziggy72 wrote:
Regardless of what you do in Blender or SU, you can't mix transparent and opaque textures in Muvizu in the same model.

Sorry, yes, Urban's right - you can do it with FBX, but ASE? Really? How? I've never got that to work...
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27/01/2016 16:37:10

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I do all the trees with ASE they way to do it with ASE is to create a tga texture with and a seperate alpha channel mask and muvizu picks up the info in the mask.

I actually can't do trees with fbx in muvizu (they didnt include the mask function for some reason I guess because the unreal engine "tree maker" has that function normally lol)

I can't remember which assets I used this way but I think this one uses the alpha mask techqnique and one material.
http://muvizu.com/3D/23066/Joshua-Tree

There is one caveat with using the alpha mask method and there is an issue its a pretty common issue and not just a muvizu thing called "alpha sorting" which gave me a chuckle when I was making a door using the alpha mask technique cause this alpha sort issue is the bane of the existance of many creators using older software. It can drive you batty. Anyhow its possible but I would only use it for something like trees otherwise you will encounter the dreaded alpha sort issue which is typical of older engines.
edited by urbanlamb on 27/01/2016
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27/01/2016 19:06:05

braj
braj
Posts: 286 		Ok, I didn't had time to test much this morning, but it does look like the fbx export version was wrong. I got a transparent object, but need to nail down exactly how to do it all when I get back to the computer.
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27/01/2016 20:13:45

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I think 7.4 works as well now but I know for a fact 6.1 works. Also there is binary and ascii and I dont remember right now because its so automatic for me which one I have used.
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27/01/2016 20:19:01

braj
braj
Posts: 286 		And yep, it definitely was the export version setting. Now this is wonderful, thanks everyone. I can mix solid and transparent textures now, yay!
edited by braj on 27/01/2016
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27/01/2016 20:20:52

braj
braj
Posts: 286 		urbanlamb wrote:
I think 7.4 works as well now but I know for a fact 6.1 works. Also there is binary and ascii and I dont remember right now because its so automatic for me which one I have used.



7.4 is binary, 6.1 is ascii. I don't know if that makes the difference. The cool thing is now I can adjust the transparency level within Muvizu, which is ideal.
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