How do you add see-trough spots in textures?

[Endritv]

I want to make my own see-trough textures, but I can't seem to figure out how they are made. I've tried using a alpha channel and making the spots i want to be see trough black but that doesn't work.

 

Edited February 19, 2016 by Endritv

[hgn]

To do this, yes you can just paint the spots out in an alpha channel, or you can just erase the parts from the main texture, and leave a transparent background.

 

I'm assuming by "not working", the material just seems to be incorrectly / not displaying the transparency in game, if this is the case, you can follow this little guide.

1) Export your texture as a .png (it doesn't have to be png, anything that supports transparency.)

2) Using VTFEdit, import the texture using these parameters:

3) Once you have created the VTF and VMT through VTFEdit, add "translucent" 1 to the vmt 

$translucent can cause some issues, and if the material doesn't fade from solid, to partially transparent to transparent, you should use $alphatest instead. This works well where materials have clean cut holes into them, like the image you posted from nuke.

 

And here is an image from VDC explaining the problems with translucent

 

Hope this helps!

Edited February 19, 2016 by Terri
*Expanded in case others fall onto this for help

[Endritv]

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Edited June 5 by Endritv