UDK - Transparency problem Help

djoexe

Hi, I'm currently doing test with materials to improve my knowledge. I've done a simple sand dune and I want to have a fading texture to blend the mesh into the terrain itself.

Here is the problem I got...


If I chose MASKED, i got this result


If I chose Translucent, I got the result I want but now I see through my dune.



So as I do not have super knowledge in shader creation, where do I get wrong ?

Thanks

James Ordner

Masked mode is either fully transparent or fully opaque, there is no blending. However, transparent mode should be able to achieve what you want. Double check to make sure your alpha map is at full value in the areas that should be 100% opaque.

Edit: I'm wrong. I thought it was working on my end, but it's doing the same thing that yours is.

Santewi

James Ordner wrote: »

Edit: I'm wrong. I thought it was working on my end, but it's doing the same thing that yours is.

Yep. Annoys the hell out of me. Been trying to fix this for a while now...

Adij

random idea: check compression settings

James Ordner

Adij wrote: »

random idea: check compression settings

Even if you apply a constant (1) to the opacity slot, the problem is still there.

seenooh

The solution is go to the Translucency Category in the Material Editor properties section below and find the check box "Use Lit Translucency Depth Pass" and enable it.

I also advise you of correcting your mask (I see you use a OneMinus node) to save one instruction as well as utilizing the alpha channel of the diffuse map to put that mask in instead of a dedicated texture. That would save some texture memory specially if you intend to use this method repeatedly with other meshes.

Ace-Angel

Change the Alpha in your image editing software, since One-Minus is direct math invert, so you will get alot of aliasing issues.

Also, changing the compression and size of the texture will also affect quality.

djoexe

Seenooh : Thanks a lot my friend ! Thats the solution I was searching for, big thanks.



This thread is resolved, thanks again

Oniram

what you could do that would be less expensive as far as materials. it would use 2 material IDs. the upper parts that are intended to be solid sand will be a basic sand shader without the use of any nodes for opacity.. then the ends will use a 2nd material and have the transparency nodes plugged in, making them fade out.

Ace-Angel

Remember that a Translucency material will be super expensive compared to everything else, especially if two of them are overlaying each other, you lose any kind of self-shadowing and a few other things/problems may occur, especially if you need finer edges with sorting.

I also think Translucency based materials don't like certain kinds of shadows being cast on them.

seenooh

djoexe wrote: »

Seenooh : Thanks a lot my friend ! Thats the solution I was searching for, big thanks.

No problem man, but may I ask what you are trying to achieve? If this is like a material excersice for you then fine, but otherwise this method isn't ideal due to the fact that translucent materials are not very good for performance.

djoexe

Seriously I didn't know that translucent materials wasn't good. I try to use this method to put dune where I wanted as a static mesh...like this.


This setup is only made of one static mesh duplicated everywhere and they intersec with each other without any seams at all, thats what I was searching for. But as a lot of you guys telling me this is not optimal for performance, well I gues there is a better solution.

I would go with a single big static mesh with tons of dunes everywhere and then I would convert this static mesh as a Heightmap to put it straight into UDK as a Landscape, so I could modify it as I wish.

seenooh

Yes you can easily achieve that with Landscape.

Ace-Angel

You can very well keep on doing this method, but as Seen mentioned, just use the landscape/terrain tools since that is their purpose.

Something like this for a demo is perfectly fine in offtime, but this method would never fly in a studio or production setting since the cost is too high for what is essentially a 'piece of ground' you will be walking on.