Making things Tranparent

[SickleYield]

All models with textures have materials or they won't show the textures in game.

 

The best way to control transparency is actually with the alpha channel of the texture, not the mesh. Make the parts of the texture transparent that you want to be transparent on the mesh itself. This way you can have different parts be more or less opaque if you wish.

 

For the mesh to display the transparency in the texture, it has to have a nialphaproperty.

 

You can add a nialphaproperty to a nitristrips by right-clicking the nitristrips in NifSkope and choosing "block--insert" and "nialphaproperty." Then you will have to copy that property and paste it into the individual nitristrips again for it to behave properly.

 

Keep in mind that anything with a regular nialphaproperty (one with 237 flags and a 0 threshold) will "fight" with anything else alpha'd that it overlaps visually. That is, if a character with a hairstyle that uses the same kind of alpha stands behind it, he or she will suddenly appear bald. Transparencies do not layer well in Oblivion so plan your items to have only one transparent/translucent layer at a time.

[armageddon818]

OMG thank you so much this is exactly the kind of information that i was looking for! I'll get right on that then! :thanks:

[LHammonds]

it was mentioned earlier about the "Reflective Metal" tutorial on the CS WIKI and yes, that will help you get an icy-glass look on the mesh if that is what you want. Two posts above this one explains well the steps to get transparency added to the mesh and texture and likely issues you will see.

 

Be sure to search the cs wiki site for the multilayer transparancy tutorial as well.

[armageddon818]

Thanks! I think I am actually all set to start the stuff now...and I think for the sake of my sanity, I'll leave transparencies out for just about everything...but it will definitely be used! Thanks Everyone!