Textures show through objects in front

Here is the delema.

In an attempt to make my home with low prims and nice looking widows, I did not use the hollow setting on the component walls. Instead I mad a texture the size of the wall and then transparency where the windows glass would be. I upload the textures and slap them on. It looks great, except for one problem. If I put an object close to the wall, the wall shows right through the object. For the life of me I can not figure it out.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a244/karmabringer/problem.gif

As you can see the plant is in front of the window and yet the frame shows through.

Please can anyone help?!?!
Anderion

I'm guessing this is the alpha sorting "glitch." The renderer, when faced with two close objects with alpha channels, can't figure out which one to place in front of the other. This is what makes prim plants and fires look like they do, rather than like a bunch of intersecting plates.

I asked a question about it a while ago, and I got a couple very nice replies from the ever helpful Robin Sojourner and Chosen Few:

/109/21/87151/1.html#post885387
/109/21/87151/1.html#post886803

Unfortunately, I think the only solution is to move the plant farther away, unless you feel like making the section of wall behind it not have any transparency.

Miriel,

Thank you for the quick and informative responce. So it does seem I'm SOL in this situation. Back to the drawing board to find a new technique!

Thanks again,
Matt

Glad to hear you're maiking a good stab at low-prim building!

Yeah... I make a few extremely low-prim buildings, using alpha-textured walls with windows in them. And it's a trade-off as far as having that glitch or not.

One trick that can help is to do the wall in thirds. Three horizontal bands. Use a non-alpha saved copy of your wall texture (24-bit TGA) below and above the window height. Use a matching alpha-saved copy (32-bit TGA) for the middle band. Fiddle with the number of repeats vertically to make it match seamlessly.

What that will do is to make only that middle band susceptable to alpha sorting issues. So low plantings close to the wall won't be an issue. A tree might be, but not a shrub. And you'll only use 3 prins, instead of 5 or more. (How much you save depends on how many windows are in that section of wall - 5 if one window, 7 if two, etc.)

FYI - Even if you do all non-alpha textures all the way around the window, if you use an alpha or transparent texture for the window glass area, the window area itself remains susceptable to looking strange if a second alpha texture, such as a tree branch, gets too close.

Alpha sort issues also happen between nearby walls. I found that if you try to save prims by using a hollowed and cut cube, instead of two seperate prims for the corner pair of walls, the hollowed cube is more susceptable to sort problems than the two-prim solution is.