Making transparent windows?

Hi,

I was just wondering if it were possible to create a window texture with solid frames and transparent windows. I know that one can only use a .tga for transparency but how do I create only a specifc are to be transparent, leaving the other solid?



And on other note, is it possible to have the windows tintable on touch or a remote object?

Thanks in advance

Just a guess but try grey instead of just black or white on the texture's alpha channel?

you just trying to make the window panes transparent? then you need an alpha channel, yes. Lotsa posts on it in the forums, try searching and you'll find stuff for both PSP and PS. If you have a more complicated question, please clarify.

and yes, you should be able to add a script to the window that changes the tint color of the prim based on the touch event. I don't have the ability to play with the actual code here tho...

if you script the window prim/object to change 'tint' it will most likely be one that changes the opacity of the prim and could pose problems for the window - basically, it will change the opacity of the *entire* texture, not just the glass panes.

One trick would be to use two prims: one that is textures with your window pane and another, blank texture prim that is scripted to change opacity. A switch on the wall that is touch activated could call to all of the windows and change thier 'tint'.

There is probably a script for it on the forums somewhere.

Thanks juro,

That made sense, because if I tried to tint that texture, then both the frame and the window texture will be transparent. You made the solution sound so easy, lol. To just have two prims one for the frames and the other for the glass. I'll do that later when I reach home. Thank you

Does grey really help for the creation of frosted glass? Well, I dont want to fill the alpha with complete white and make it completely transparent. Marina, I'll have to try to use that method later

rinaz,

make sure to make the thickness of the glass prim slight less than the thickness of the 'frame' prim - this will help avoid those jumping textures.

grey will give you a moderate tint - but if you're going to do the glass/frame trick i mentioned, make the 'pane' area of your frame texture *completely* clear and let the tinting 'glass' prim take care of the rest.

hope that helps

If you're looking for tinting of any sort, having an area be 100% alpha won't work because they don't take on any color.

Personaly, I've never figured out how to edit the alpha chanel directly...I use layers and the opacity sliders in the image editor (GIMP in my case). Opaque part goes on one layer, transparent/translucent part on another, they retain their transparency when flattened togeather. Or, making sure that you actualy have an alpha channel, select the areas you want transparent and delete/erase them (you can use the fill tool and change the opacity setting on the brush if you want semitransparent windows.)

If you want to change the tint of the glass in SL without changing the tint of the frame, then you will need two prims and two textures, one for the glass and one for the frame. But beware: putting two textures with transparency in front of each other can result in frustration caused by an annoying rendering bug that makes alpha textures disapear.

not in world to experiment with this but could you solve this by making the frame texture use alpha channel but making the window texture no alpha channel and using in world transparency settings instead?

or you can just cut and hollow the window frame and not use alphas at all.

sorry for the confusion before -- when i meant "tint" I meant color, not transparency levels.

One more Idea...

If you really want to save on prims, you could make several textures with varying transparency on the window panes.

Drop copies of the textures and a script into the wall panel to swap out the textures when you touch the wall or whatever you do to control it.

I havn't tried this so I don't know how much flickering this might cause as the textures change but it might do the trick.

Racer P

yeah racer, putting several different textures into the contents folder and then a script to do a texture swap upon touch or "say" would work well