GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[SubDrag]

Anyone have any thoughts on how I could handle transparency? One option is we do it manually like TimEh did it. Others are some kind of param in the .obj materials (needs to be settable from editors) that does it, or even texture name (if starts with TRANSPARENT, etc). I also think we need to do more experimentation as I think it's different bitflags for different input types. Maybe if can just figure it out via the one new color support I import as.

[radorn]

Are we talking about transparency as in crystal panes or as in secondary indices?
anyway, I like the method of flagging it with texture names, as it would seem the most compatible method for all editors.
Also, if your editor of choice doesn't do what you want, you could always open up the material file in a text editor and add it yourself (and replace all instances of that name in the OBJ, too, which could be a bit tedious, but not too bad)
Of course, if we are to get to the point of manually editting the material file, you could also make a GE editor specific flag, command, or whatever they are called, to not only tell it to be transparent, but also to what degree, if that's supported at all.

Well, as much as I like integrated and automated stuff, there are many editors out there that handle things their own way, so editting the material file doesn't seem too bad, in my opinion, and it's not like level making in GE is free from loads of manual work anyway...

[Wreck]

I really don't know how difficult it would be for you (Sub) to set this up in the Editor, but I'd love to be able to select individual triangles from the background file and make them transparent. You'd hold either CTRL or SHIFT and choose all of the triangles that you want to modify, then right-click and choose a "Transparency" option from the selection window. It'd then take those tris, turn them into Secondary Indices, and request a transparency value. In most cases, the texture you would want changed would be all instances, such as caution stripes along walls. So when you select those, it'd just take the drawing commands out of the Primary Indice file and move them into the Secondary. As far as I know, that should work. I'm unsure how tough that might be to automate, but I know you'd be able to pull it off. Hell, look at all the crazy stuff you've done already!

(I also think that a Delete Triangle would be a great option. By clicking on a triangle and pressing CTRL+Delete, the points would be stripped from the drawing command. The Vertices would go untouched, and just the three points in the B1 Drawing command would be nulled. This would be a great way to modify existing stages, thus reducing the amount of triangles being drawn. Like what BMW is doing with Facility, and plans to do with some other maps. It may also benefit our custom maps, if there are certain tris we'd like to remove, either because it isn't optimized and we don't want to go through the entire process all over again for a triangle or two, or because we want to improve multiplayer performance by getting rid of certain architecture, such as lights and other detail oriented textures. I can't see this being hard to implement, but I could be mistaken.)
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[Dragonsbrethren]

I like Wreck's suggestions (tri deletion is something I've been meaning to suggest myself), and I also like the idea of using specific texture names to automate it on import.

DeleD has a comments field that might be of use, but I'm not sure if that gets reproduced in the .obj (nor if it's a standard feature other models editors have). I'll look into that for you, could be another alternative way of doing it at least.

[SubDrag]

I'd prefer to keep it in the mtl file as you don't want to have to manually in GE every time make things transparent for trivial changes...I suppose could say the same for lighting but lighting also is supported if you can modify Kd property in material in obj. By making it part of material it's just simply a parameter used during modelling. My first thought was naming bitmap so it's easy and pretty compatible. I do need to figure out how to turn it on and off though for colored 8-bit bitmaps and also old GE ones are backwards compatible in theory (not doing anything special).

Manually doing vertices isn't that easy yet due to how it was implemented in editor (as groups)

[bmw]

Am I completely missing something here, but isn't transparency as simple as reducing the alpha values in the color menu box?

[SubDrag]

I'm referring to transparent textures (black parts). I do not believe alpha actually works in vertices, but I think if you set alpha in obj file it is used by me putting out indice command for transparency.

[zoinkity]

Alpha can work with vertices, but you'll need to set the combiner to do so manually.
Objects and room models are actually "linked in" to a larger DL routine. Default settings roll over from each section to another, which is why you don't need to script half the stuff you'd think you do and also why failing to reset the combiner after using luster causes the effect to leak onto other surfaces.
From a source perspective, they "stole" the alpha value, but in reality it set up a convergence table. So, naturally, alpha by default was ignored on vertices.

It shouldn't cause a problem if set, but keep in mind it may cause a problem with some graphics plugins that don't expect it, and may need to be reset.

[forgot]
Usually, they used a static transparency value for a whole surface. That's as easy as setting the FG colour to white, alpha level of your choosing. Note though that this affects whole triangles and not vertices.
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[SubDrag]

Do you have offhand what commands would do that? Or assuming we decide to just use commands, how to turn transparency on and off for colored paletted textures?