Trying to do a cinematic "fade in" in a mod

Creating new content for Trespasser!

Moderators: TresCom Support Team, TresCom Board Managers, TresCom Developers

Post Reply
User avatar
TrespasserGuy
Parasaurolophus
Parasaurolophus
Posts: 359
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:54 pm
Location: North America

Trying to do a cinematic "fade in" in a mod

Post by TrespasserGuy »

I've been trying to create something that creates a fade in effect when you start a level. I think that placing an object in front of the player and animating the object so that it goes from an opaque black screen to increasingly transparent screens until its completely hidden would do the trick. However, I've been having trouble with it. I've done the opacities in 3ds max, then imported the anim strip into TresEd only to see that the transparencies don't work. The screens are either black or see-through, with no transition in-between. If any one knows how to fix this let me know. Btw, I'm going to implement this effect into both "Dark Jungle", and the newer level I've been working on called "InGen Compound"
User avatar
TheIdiot
T-Rex
T-Rex
Posts: 4345
Joined: Thu Feb 20, 2014 9:13 pm
Location: Canada, eh?

Re: Trying to do a cinematic "fade in" in a mod

Post by TheIdiot »

TrespasserGuy wrote:I've been trying to create something that creates a fade in effect when you start a level. I think that placing an object in front of the player and animating the object so that it goes from an opaque black screen to increasingly transparent screens until its completely hidden would do the trick. However, I've been having trouble with it. I've done the opacities in 3ds max, then imported the anim strip into TresEd only to see that the transparencies don't work. The screens are either black or see-through, with no transition in-between. If any one knows how to fix this let me know. Btw, I'm going to implement this effect into both "Dark Jungle", and the newer level I've been working on called "InGen Compound"
I have this effect working in CloningFacility using a black sphere that surrounds the player (you can use a CEntityAttached to the player as well if you want to do it while the player is moving, or have other effects attached to the camera). The transparency issue has to do with one of the CE settings, I believe it might be:

Code: Select all

[Render]
ForceNoBlendTrans=False
Should make all transparent textures look a lot better.
User avatar
Nick3069
Albertosaurus
Albertosaurus
Posts: 2361
Joined: Wed May 16, 2007 10:32 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada

Re: Trying to do a cinematic "fade in" in a mod

Post by Nick3069 »

Sounds to me like you're using 8bit textures, which have binary opacity/transparency. You have to use 24bit textures to get a translucent effect.
User avatar
TheIdiot
T-Rex
T-Rex
Posts: 4345
Joined: Thu Feb 20, 2014 9:13 pm
Location: Canada, eh?

Re: Trying to do a cinematic "fade in" in a mod

Post by TheIdiot »

Nick3069 wrote:Sounds to me like you're using 8bit textures, which have binary opacity/transparency. You have to use 24bit textures to get a translucent effect.
I assumed TresGuy knew that but that could also be the culprit. Make sure both your colour and opacity maps are 24-bit. Alternatively, you can use regular 256-colour textures with opacity maps and use CE's override feature to create the partial transparency - the solid transparency maps that show up in TresEd will be overridden by the partially transparent textures. I recommend this for all CE levels as GeomAdd and Trespasser itself don't really like 24-bit .bmps in the first place (I believe GeomAdd shifts the bottom row of pixels in your texture 6 or so pixels to the right when it is imported?).
Post Reply