Torque Question_ about alpha sorting

tremulant

Hey guys, I am using the newest version of maya to export my .dts files for torque.

What I have:
I have a plant, that is basically 5 planes facing up with their outer edges curled downward and stacked on top of eachother with alpha'd texture of some greenery. The planes themselves aren't touching they are hovering right above eachother.

The problem:
The error is with the top plane and some of the others below it, excluding the bottom one, disappearing. This happens in the maya vieport to a very small degree (the top plane disappears momentarily when moving around it). In the engine tho, I lose sight of all but the bottom plane from most points of view.

What am I missing?

Thanks for your help.

dave

Vailias

You aren't really missing anything.
The maya to torque art pipeline is HORRID.
Z-sorting being just one of the many un-solved, or at least undocumented issues.

For your application the simplest way will be to separate the planes into separate objects, then select them in the order they should draw, then combine them into a single object. I'd recommend working from top plane down if they get smaller as you go up, or from the bottom up if they are all the same size. It might take a few tries to get them to render right in Torque, and it still might not look perfect once its all rendering.

tremulant

dang, i suspected this. Thanks for the tip vailias.

So do you think if i did this in 3ds max, i would have less trouble...Is torque much more friendly with max? if so in what ways?

I am a 3ds man myself, and I would like my team to use 3ds max, but they were already using maya when i got there///

thanks,
dave