My Club is See-through in Parts! =(

Sorry if this is addressed elsewhere, I searched in here and the textures section and cannot locate anything specific to my problem.

OK so basically I have a club and in certain areas, when you walk around the outside of the club, you can see plants through the walls. The plants are set back at least 5m from the walls inside the club, yet you can see them through the walls on the outside.

This never bothered me much until today when I hung Christmas garland around the inside of the club and now you can see almost all the garland from the outside of the club as well! Based on the dimensions and size of the garland you should never see it through the solid walls of the club.

Based on the information given...what is the cause, and where is the cause of my problems? Did I give enough information? I am pretty sure the answer is going to have to do with alpha channels and transparent textures but if there is anything I can do to fix this I would like to know

Tianna Burnstein

It's the alpha sorting glitch. To fix it, put 24-bit textures on your walls instead of 32-bit ones.

See the sticky on transparency at the top of the Texturing Tips forum for more information.

Oh man read that too. So if I found some store bought textures I really like and they are "bleeding" through the walls then they are 32 bit? Is there a way I can convert a texture in SL to 24 bit?

Not in SL no, the only way to do that is upload the texture if you have full perms and take out the Apha channel in a program like Photoshop etc.

I would first suggest though if you try and contact the creator of the texture to check that he/she might already have one available.

Another option would be to place normal prims between the walls.
Make the prims smaller than your walls so if they are 0.5 thick then make the ones you are placing 0.25 and centre them where you have the problems. Although this option will cost you a few prims it can eliminate a lot of the problems.

Edit: exactly what texure is on the prims, does it have windows built in or something or is it a plain wall type texture.
If its the latter then the creator made a big mistake in saving as a 32 bit file for upload and perhaps you should contact them to make them aware.

It was a Victorian style texture pack and included are a mixed of textures with windows built in, and solid concrete like textures.

So if I used the 32 bit texture with the alpha channel (the one with a transparent window) inside stuff will always bleed through?

It will bleed through IF the center of the inside prim is closer to you than the center of the outside prim. For instance, you have a 10x10 wall and a 1x5 garland.. the center of the garland would be closer to you at some angles than the 10x10 wall. This becomes even more apparent with mega prims.

This is why many builders avoid making windows that are drawn as transparent areas in a larger wall. That solution saves prims, but at the cost of alpha overlap problems. If you have a choice, build Lego-style walls, leaving actual holes for windows and doors, and then only put transparent textures in the openings. If you really have to use the 32-bit textures, take Larrie's suggestion and bury thin prims in the walls. It will raise your prim count significantly, but it may be worth it on a couple of walls where you are having really bad alpha problems.

Not necessarily, it will largely depend on what items you are placing in and around your building.

Taking the option of building Lego style as Rolig mentioned sounds like it would require a complete redesign of your build and that would be the last result and entirely unnecessary in my opinion.
To go that route you would need 2 textures, one with the windows and one with the walls and that would be the answer of your original post. This would be without a doubt time consuming and would most probably cost you more prims in the end than if you just stick with what you had and add the necessary prims between the offending ones.

You should not need to add additional prims between every wall that has a 32 bit texture, start with camming in and out and around your build. Identify where the problems lie, you might find there are 2 walls, a side wall and a front for example that are bleeding, you may be able to use just 1 prim hollowed and cut and stretched enough to form a corner and place that between the walls. You can also take a prim, flip it 90 degrees on the Y co-ord, hollow it out and stretch it enough so it in itself looks like a wall with a hole for a window and use that to place between a wall.

Also, before adding the additional prims see if you can move things around a little and place them in different areas. Moving a plant for example a few centimetres here and there can also change things.

Thank you very much for your help and understanding of the problem I am having

I think after the garland comes down i will find the trouble areas and textures and correct them by moving them or placing a "corrective" prim in a few areas.

I think my garland problem is best rectified but doing the following:

If the wall is .5 m thick then make the garland prim .502 m thick and display the garland on the inside AND outside of the club

Happy Holidays!
Tianna

Erm

Thats called "Lateral Thinking" I think and I think it will only make your situation worse as you could and most probably will end up with the wall coming through the garland and the garland from behind the wall coming through the wall and the garland in front.

Another option is to contact me inworld or send me a landmark to take a look and I will advise you on what could be the best option or even help in rectifying the problem.

Following on from that I would post back here to note what actions were taken so others reading this thread can also learn from this to avoid the same issues.

Alternatively go with the Lateral Thinking option and I look forward to answering your next post perhaps.

Yes I came back here to post my short comings

Even though in a perfect world the garland would be displayed on both sides of the wall, it moves, and is still a victim of the "center of the prim" theory. While I did not see a different effect inside the club (solid 24-bit interior texture?), outside remained the same (except before there were breaks in the texture, now its full).

As mentioned in my previous post I would follow up to explain what was done to overcome the bleed thru.

Firstly the Garland was only to be seen inside the build and not oustide. Inside the textures were 24 bit and outside the textures were 32 bit.

There was no reason in this case that there should of been any bleed thru what so ever but there was.

What Tianna failed to mention in her postings here was that the Garland prim contained a texture animation script and in the script it was set to texture the prim on all sides.
So with the Garland prim just touching the inside of the walls it was bleeding thru to the outside.

Changing the script only to texture the face of the prim to be seen and then adding a transparent texture to the rest of the prim has now prevented the bleed thru.

This didn't used to be nearly as big a problem, but Windlight has massively worse alpha-sorting problems than the old rendering code did. I've seen situations where textures show through even when the center of the textured face AND the center of the prim are properly sorted.

Not being technically minded regarding graphic cards and computer specs do these not play a role in the Alpha Sorting Glitch?

My reason for mentioning this is I setup an Alpha Sorting Glitch scenario and no matter where I zoomed or panned I could not see any bleed through. The person I was testing this with was doing the same, panning around etc etc and took a picture of the prims and textures bleeding through. I could not reproduce the bleed through on my computer but the proof was in the picture.

So why?

I don't know if they go away if you don't use atmospheric or basic shaders, because without them the old clients are unambiguously better than Windlight (instead of being ambiguously so) so I never bothered with Windlight clients when I was using a system that old.
What graphic settings were you using? That's a very interesting result.

The settings in SL are set to high,
16:9
1440x900
Open GL Vertex buffers enabled

running a Nvidia 8800GTS 640mb which has its own profile setup for SL but I am not entirely sure exactly what should be on and what should be off as I have never really played with it.

So Chosen if you read this can you let me know what should on and off in the profile setup for SL in the NVidia control Panel. If I remember rightly you run 2 8800's.

I run the normal client and RC's with no changes under the Advanced Menu and the normal day and night defaults.

It's the specific elements in this part that I'm interested in. What are your shader settings and so on, in the SL preferences pane?

Shaders:
Bump Mappping= checked
Basic Shaders= checked
Atmospheric Shaders= checked
Water Reflections= unchecked

Reflection Detail=Not available

Avatar rendering:
Avatar Impostors=checked
Hardware Skinning=checked
Avatar Cloth-unchecked

Draw Distance=128
Max Particle Count= 4096
Post Process Quality= High

Mesh Detail:
Objects=mid
Flexiprims=high
Trees=mid
Avatars=high
Terrain=high
Sky-Low

Lighting detail:
Sun and moon only=unchecked
Neary local lights=checked

Terrain detail = high

Argent,

I still have the prims and textures sitting in my trash can, if you like I could drop you a copy and see if you can reproduce it.

I'd appreciate that.

I have that problem with a couple of builds, where the window is inside the wall texture. I slid a thinner prim inside the solid sections of the wall. It's not perfect, but it greatly reduces the sorting problem.