transparent canopy???

[chrisprevost]

hello

I managed to convert FS9 aircraft into P3D V4 with Modelconvertx and rather successfully. The only problem that remains is the canopy which is not transparent but opaque (black or gray). I would like to know the procedure to make the cockpit transparent.

Thank you

[hschuit]

Depends on a couple of things:
- Are the canopy modelparts separate from the rest of the parts? If not you first need to un-weld them with MCX or if that does not work use a 3D modeling tool like Blender.

- Are the canopy modelparts textured and does the texture have an alpha for transparency (1) or is it just old school unmapped material (2) ?

1. If textured and alpha channel is included in the texture (example: NMAI F-4 Phantoms), use these MCX material settings:
Diffuse color: 50, 175, 175, 175 or 45,192,192,192 (not sure this has impact)
Specular color: No impact

Destination Blend: InvSrcAlpha
Source Blend: SrcColor or SrcAlpha

Special Functionality:
Blend env by inv diff alpha: true or false
Reflection Scale: 0.5
Use global environment map as reflection: true
Specular level: 64 - 128
Specular texture is not needed unless you want colored glass, fresnel ramp is not needed for AI.

Note: Best results are obtained with the following texture RGB colors:
Texture Diffuse 33 - 50 (higher value gives more milky hue, lower values makes glass darker)
Texture Alpha 45 - 68 (higher is less transparent)


2. If old school unmapped material (Example: HTAI F-16s), use these MCX material settings:
Diffuse color controls color hue, alpha value controls transparency
Gold tinted F-16 canopy : 65, 95, 75, 70
Green tinted HUD : 128, 180, 205, 190
Specular color controls specularity, e.g 192,192,192

Destination Blend: InvSrcAlpha
Source Blend: SrcColor

Special Functionality:
Reflection Scale: 0.25
Use global environment map as reflection: true
Specular level: 64

All this might be a bit overwhelming, it helps a lot to study how it is done in other AI models like the examples I mentioned.

Henk.

[chrisprevost]

Thank you very much it seems difficult to set up

[gavinc]

Thank you very much it seems difficult to set up

Only the first time

It is actually fairly simple if you walk thru the parameters Henk suggested. If you don't like how it looks then tweak one parameter at a time until you find the effect you like.

Like anything it gets easier with practice (although there are always new tricks, there are things in Henks suggestions that I didn't know).

Gavin

[chrisprevost]

Hello

I must be silly but can you tell me where to find these famous settings in MCX?

thank you in advance

[gsnde]

You load the model, then you select the Material Editor, there in the listbox in the top row you select "Set default Transparent" if I remember correctly by heart (done that only yesterday while validating the Hind).

[shaggy22]

It is also possible to use dxtbmp as well, that's what I use. It's very simple, firstly load the texture, click Image & flip it, then click Alpha & select Create Alpha Template & click yes when asked to override the current alpha. Save as a DDS (DXT3) job done.

I then use MCX to check if it looks right before loading the sim up

[chrisprevost]

thank you friends thanks to your indications it works .. the pleasure of being able to share my convertions .... (1st test on Mirage 2000 based in Dijon)

[Muckinator2005]

I'm also working on the Mirage 2000, but I can't get the canopy right. Even so I managed to get it transparent it either shows totally transparent like there's no glas at all or I can see the glas but it appears like x-ray vision as all aircraft interior (like ejection seats) disappears when looking through the canopy. Pilots are still there. Strange enough when looking through the windshield from the front it shows ok.

Jean Claude

[hschuit]

The FMAI Mirages are a special case... The cockpit glass is welded with the fuselage, this means that assigning FSX/P3D glass specs to the material with MCX also impacts the opaque parts. I solved it by splitting the glass polygons from the fuselage in Blender and then import it back in MCX as separate parts so I could assign the different material specs I wanted.

Henk.

[hschuit]

BTW, no need anymore to separate the welded parts in Blender, the latest development version of MCX has an importer settings option to assign a visiblity tag to each part (Use Conditions= VsibilityCondition). With this option you can extract the glass parts from the rest, export them and assign glass material properties to them. Do not forget to remove the generated visibility tags when you are done.