LE Help! Texture transparency issue with Squall's pants (FFVIII)

[BubbaJonesYa]

I've been slowly chugging along at creating Squall from Final Fantasy 8. I looked over tutorials on how to create armor and get it in the game. I've conquered that so far, the pants I made are fully functional and working in game.

 

HOWEVER, I have a very weird partial "transparency" issue with part of my textures that is very irritating and I can't figure it out!

 

Here is what I mean:

 

This is a closeup of the pants/buckles/belt where everything seems all fine and dandy:

 

When zoomed out, the vanishing begins on parts of the buckle, belt, and large buckle!!! It seems to get worse the further zoomed out you are, but only certain parts are effected:

 

Here is another picture showing more transparenct issues on the top buckle and large buckle:

 

 

In the zoomed out portion, you can see that the top buckle is becoming partially "see through" as well as other parts of the mesh (parts of the top belt and large buckle piece.)

 

I don't understand this because the mesh portions are clearly on top of the lower mesh. The buckles, pants, and belts are each individual items (so I could add cube maps on buckle parts etc.). Should I convert them all to one item? I made them individual pieces in case someone ever wanted to take my mesh and just use the pants/belt, but I suppose I could release a separate version with just the pants or something.

 

This issue is happening in NIFSkope, the Creation Kit, and In-Game. It doesn't show up weird like this in 3DS max, but I'm not very good at adding materials to the model so I do most of the texture adding through NIFSkope.

 

Technical Info:

 

I'm using 3DS max 2012 for the model creation and the latest nif exporter (at least as of two months ago) that was on the nexus.

I'm using the Gimp 2.8.16 to make the textures.

 

 

 

As a side note, here is where I'm at with his face/head/hair:

 

 

I've had some weird transparency issues with the hair as well, and I know his head could use some more work, but I wanted to get the clothing done before going back and polishing up those points. However, if I have weird transparency issues like this with the pants, I don't want to move onto the jacket for fear of more annoying issues popping up!

 

 

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!

[FrankFamily]

I don't think its texture related, you don't have an alpha property on that so it won't use the transparency channel even if you had it.

Does it happen ingame too or just in nifskope? check that.

Do you actually need it double sided? if not try removing that flag.

Lastly, maybe those faces are almost overlapping? try giving them some more space if they are too close.

[BubbaJonesYa]

Thanks for the reply! I did just recently check the double sided feature and that helped slightly, but only with the large decorative buckle. It didn't do anything else on the smaller buckles or belts. The issue does happen in game as well and it's worse than what shows up in NIFSkope.

 

I was thinking maybe the faces were close to overlapping, but checking in 3DS max, there seems to be enough room where it shouldn't cause that. As a test, I moved the top square buckle forward completely off the belt in 3DS max so it wasn't touching it at all, then exported the file and checked again in NIFSkope. It was still becoming partially transparent in the same spot the further out the zoom was...

 

All the square buckle meshes and belt meshes were copy pasted in 3DS Max as well. I just edited the shape after pasting so I don't believe there should be any issues with the face layout, but it's probably possible that something got changed along the way, I just don't know where to look.

 

 

 

I'm trying to go back into 3DS max to change more stuff around but some of my backup files won't let me edit the buckle/belt meshes anymore. It shows they are selected, but it won't highlight them or show vertices or anything.... I can go back to some older version and it works fine, but the UV mapping is not updated. I'll mess around and see if I can import my proper UV maps to the file that let me edit every part of the mesh still.

[FrankFamily]

Regarding it not showing anything try making it an editable poly if not already, vertex mode, go to the visibility tab of graphite tools and unhide all. Sometimes you accidentally hide stuff or forget you have hiden stuff before.

 

If the areas that become transparent are specific tris, which it looks like they are, then it might have something to do with the normals (though having it double sided should actually solve this kind of issue, so more oddness), try face normals and update tangent space in nifskope. Or select the affected tris in 3dsmax and flip them (or add a normal modifier on top and unify)

[BubbaJonesYa]

I just want to say thanks again fro trying to help me out! I still have had no success in fixing the issue though unfortunately.

 

I did have the model as an editable mesh in 3DS max, so I'll go back and change it to an editable poly. I wasn't quite sure where the visibility tab for the graphing tools was so I didn't unhide anything from there, but when I right click, I hit the options "unhide all" which maybe is just a shortcut to that option? In doing that, nothing came unhidden. However, when I hit "h" to open the skeleton selection menu (to grab parts of the skeleton and make sure the mesh moves accordingly) there were a few objects like "box001", "sphere 001", and "box" that were showing up. When I clicked on them, nothing rendered, but it let me delete the entries. I'll see if maybe that made a difference!

 

I did try "face normals" and then "update tangent space" in NIFSkope on all three segments (belts, buckles, and pants) of the mesh but it didn't change anything unfortunately either. The Areas that become transparent are definitely specific locations, but the transparent area gets larger the further out the zoom is. With the top buckle for instance when zoomed in close, it's fully visible. When you zoom out a little bit, it starts to become transparent at the front left portion. Then, when zooming out further, it becomes more transparent to the point where only the top bar of the top buckle is showing. The top buckles stays rendered though no matter how far zoomed out.

 

Another thing is that when changing the angle of the camera, some more of the buckle (and other parts of the belt that are becoming transparent) actually start to show again. It seems that certain parts of the meshes below want to have priority rendering.

 

 

 

Ahhh anyways I'll keep messing with stuff and I'll see if changing to an editable poly and deleting those invisible boxes helped!

[BubbaJonesYa]

Well converting to poly and deleting the random hidden meshes didn't help.

 

I also tried making the pants/belt/buckle separate items by making several copies of the file and then deleting the NiTriShapes in NIFSkope of the other objects. I then made them all separate items in the creation kit.

It made no difference in game either...

 

The pants by themselves have no issues when worn, but the pants texture shows through part of the belt and buckles in some spots and the belt texture shows through part of the buckles in some spots..... This issues is very demoralizing!

 

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Also with some 3D modeling insight has any knowledge, I'd love for you to take a look at the file! I could upload it here if anyone wants to look.

 

 

EDIT: I just noticed something interesting as well which maybe will help someone figure out what it is.

 

I have a mod on that makes the player use a "cover animation" if considered naked and I didn't set up the pants to have the proper keyword so the character tried covering himself. In doing so the hand placed over the belt area also became transparent.

 

It seems like for some reason the front crotch area of the pants are wanting to render their textures over anything else placed in view! What could be causing this?!

Edited September 26, 2016 by bubbajones_ya

[FrankFamily]

That definitely sounds like a zbuffer issue, make sure you have the SLSF1_ZBuffer_Test and SLSF2_ZBuffer_Write enabled in shader flags 1 and 2 respectively on all your meshes.

But still the problem should be on the whole mesh i think, not part of it. You can upload the mesh and i'll have a look if you want.

[BubbaJonesYa]

Hmm I checked each individual piece of the model and all three each have the SLSF1_Zbuffer_Test and SLSF2_ZBuffer_Write shader flags enabled.

 

For uploading the file, it says I can only upload a file size up 250KB or less so I can't do it here... I'll look for a place to upload it and put the link here!

[BubbaJonesYa]

Okay I finally got it uploaded. The file contains my current .nif and an older .nif (which just has a little different placement and shape of the buckles, but otherwise it should be identical. They both have the same issue). It also has the textures and stuff too.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/78998/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D78998%26preview%3D&pUp=1

[FrankFamily]

Found something, deleting the bsdismemberskininstance branch on all pieces effectively solves the issue in nifskope, of course not a solution but means the issue is on the skinning, which is something.

I'll open it in 3dsmax tomorrow and see if i find something wrong but i'd say check the dismemberment partitions sicne they can cause weird issues, compare them to a vanilla equivalent and try to match that.

Is still odd since the issue is not clipping or misplaced geometry ingame (which is what you'd expect from bad weighting and that wouldn't show in nifskope) but instead some kind of zbuffer error related to skinning...

 

What 3dsmax and nif plugin version are you using btw?