ghosts

[corthew]

I believe parts of the body and head textures are transparent.

I was wondering if, for the morphable head, it would be possible to add an option for transparency level overall?

This may not be practical considering the problems already experienced with hair but it would be really cool to have a character who died walk around in a ghostly semitransparent condition.

Currently the only way I can think to achieve this is filming the ghost scenes twice, once with and once without the relevant characters then using different software to overlay one on top of the other and adjust transparency there.

[Armanus]

I would think adding transparency to the textures would give the desired result. However, you would have to find and modify the textures for the teeth and eyes as well, if able. The eyes can be retextured, but I don't know about the mouth.

[corthew]

However, you would have to find and modify the textures for the teeth and eyes as well, if able.

Yeah this probably isn't practical.

Those textures are likely universally used for all puppets on set.

Making it transparent would likely work for all.

I hope I'm wrong though.

[rampa]

Its not hard to do. I found its best to simply hide the eyes and mouth completely.

Basically, you need to set up a template with the body and head where you have all the textures set to "transparency". You might want to make the parts "imageable" as well. If you do that, you can load new textures in the runtime. Use a PNG so it can have transparency. Oddly, you cannot load a DDS in the runtime. Save your new template and publish. Its easiest just to change all the settings when you pull up the existing templates, and then save with a new name.

There was another trick I used to use as well. May or may not still work. Set your textures to "transparent" (soft one is best. Then, set "reflective eye". You may also need to remove the paths to the textures (leave them blank). This gave me a cool ghostly effect that had rather soft edges.

Best of luck!

EDIT: The second method no longer seems to work. It was kind of a hack, and probably video card dependent to some degree. Or maybe my MS modding is just to rusty these days.

[corthew]

Its not hard to do. I found its best to simply hide the eyes and mouth completely.

Basically, you need to set up a template with the body and head where you have all the textures set to "transparency". You might want to make the parts "imageable" as well. If you do that, you can load new textures in the runtime. Use a PNG so it can have transparency. Oddly, you cannot load a DDS in the runtime. Save your new template and publish. Its easiest just to change all the settings when you pull up the existing templates, and then save with a new name.

There was another trick I used to use as well. May or may not still work. Set your textures to "transparent" (soft one is best. Then, set "reflective eye". You may also need to remove the paths to the textures (leave them blank). This gave me a cool ghostly effect that had rather soft edges.

Best of luck!

I see a few Greek terms there but I believe you're suggesting creating separate images and giving them transparency?

I can see that working for the body but how do you do that for the Moviestorm modifiable head?

[rampa]

I see a few Greek terms there but I believe you're suggesting creating separate images and giving them transparency?

I can see that working for the body but how do you do that for the Moviestorm modifiable head?

It should work fine for the head because you are using just one texture even though the head can morph. I don't think I have a picture anymore. Been using other software, and have cleared out some old MS stuff. I'll see if I can fire up the Modshop.

[corthew]

It should work fine for the head because you are using just one texture even though the head can morph. I don't think I have a picture anymore. Been using other software, and have cleared out some old MS stuff. I'll see if I can fire up the Modshop.

Cool. Thanks.

[rampa]

Actually, it was me being rusty on the second method. I just got it to work!!

I selected a body part, then selected a material. Then I set the "smooth transparency" and the "reflective (eye)". Then (the trick) I removed the suffix (it was JPG in this case) but left the "." (period) I went ahead and deleted textures from all other channels, checked "use material color" and set the emmisive color to white.

Attached File(s)

 Capture.JPG ( 140.63K ) Number of downloads: 11

 

[corthew]

Actually, it was me being rusty on the second method. I just got it to work!!

I selected a body part, then selected a material. Then I set the "smooth transparency" and the "reflective (eye)". Then (the trick) I removed the suffix (it was JPG in this case) but left the "." (period) I went ahead and deleted textures from all other channels, checked "use material color" and set the emmisive color to white.

It looks good but won't that affect all characters on set who use the same texture?

In other words, how do I have two characters who's only difference is the transparency using the morphable head?

[rampa]

It looks good but won't that affect all characters on set who use the same texture?

In other words, how do I have two characters who's only difference is the transparency using the morphable head?

Each puppet has its own pointer to the textures it uses. This "hack" is only within the Modshop. The texture on my hard drive still has its suffix, and works fine. So, basically, you make a second template of the exact same body part, but remove "JPG" or whatever suffix is listed in the path for the diffuse channel. No other body parts are effected.

[corthew]

Each puppet has its own pointer to the textures it uses. This "hack" is only within the Modshop. The texture on my hard drive still has its suffix, and works fine. So, basically, you make a second template of the exact same body part, but remove "JPG" or whatever suffix is listed in the path for the diffuse channel. No other body parts are effected.

Cool. I'll have to play around with that!