help texturing a flexi skirt, please

I have an alpha channel on the texture for my flexi skirt, I want the bottom to have a scalloped edge, but sometimes half the skirt seems to go transparent. It gets worse when I walk. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong, any advice would be appriciated, thanks

Hi Aster!

You are not doing anything wrong, per se, it's the widely cursed "alpha sort glitch" technical stuff that causes it.

Basically, whenever you have a prim textured with an alpha channel bearing texture next to another alpha endowed textured prim you are seeing these prims flicker a bit.

The issue cannot be avoided, but it can be lessened:
-Don't put your skirt panels very close together, or lessen the width of them so they are not overlapping too much (this is how I normally deal with it)
-On the underside of the panel, use a texture which does not have an alpha (not my favorite solution mind you, but you can decide for yourself)
-Turning on "BRIGHT" can combat this somewhat (again..not the best solution, but I'll leave that for you to choose or not).

Best wishes on your skirt creating

~Ari

Another option is to have two skirt layers (all one object) with the over layer being a 24 bit TGA (or non alpha file type of your choice) and the under layer being the scalloped edges (just low enough to peek out from the over layer) with the alpha transparency on it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/abbathiebaud/SecondLife/photo#5134204734811719266
shows, in a quicky paint drawing, the blue signifying the outer layer (the non-alpha if you will) and the yellow signifying the scalloped edges (the alpha).

A

You can put the 32 bit layer on the outside, too. I've done that a few times. You get a nice shimmery effect, especially if you set the layer's transparency to something like 15%. The 24 bit underskirt shows through that way and you get a light, filmy look overall. You just have to be careful and not get carried away with wind and other flexi settings that make the skirt look chaotic.

Thanks, for the ideas everyone, I will play with it some more I guess.

Ah this was exactly what I was looking for. I've been having the same problem, does anyone know if this problem is being worked on?

Also, just because I see it occurring when I create a skirt does that mean that others will see it as well? Or is it random?

This "problem" is part of the underlying architecture of OpenGL, not simply SL. You learn to work with it, just as you learn to deal with design limitations in RL. In simplest terms, when two objects with 32-bit textures are adjacent to each other, your graphics card cannot figure out which one is supposed to be "in front" as you view them, so it flickers between them. In RL, your eye would have a hard time telling which one of two pieces of glass was in front if they were stacked together. Fortunately, your brain is smarter than your graphics card and can deal with many more subtle clues, but even it can be easily fooled by optical illusions. Don't be too surprised that computer graphics falls short of that standard.

Thank you That explains things I guess, I'll keep trying to play around with the suggestions left here and see what comes.

So if i used a non-alpha texture...with no transparent edge...such a jpeg..this winking wouldnt happen right?

Right. No 32-bit texture, no problem.