Creating holes in clothing.

[VamChic]

I've been trying to research how to add invisible spots on textures using the built in clothing and I just haven't been able to wrap my head around it.

Is the invisible texture called the alpha map?
Is there a specific color that VaM recognizes as invisible or 0 alpha or whatever?

 

[VamChic]

Ah, okay. I figured it out. All I have to do is export the UV texture and paint black on the spots I want invisible.

 

[kemenate]

Yes, exactly.
The Alpha Map is a greyscale image where white = fully visible; black = fully transparent; grey = semi transparent.

Here are some additonal tips and tricks:

• The transparency in VAM is not exactly accurate for performance reasons. So on semi transparent stuff there can be artifacts like faces going missing or darker. I think it tends to happen mostly on back faces ? On a object thats completely 50% transparent you can see the backside and it causes trouble occasionally....
• Semi transparent edges tend to render semi-transparent to the background and not on itself, when parts of it are behind the edge. Which means that it can happen that a bright background peeks through two layers of a dark object dark object. To minimize this it helps to make the alpha map sharp, as much as pure black and white as possible (not pretty...). On some materials there is also the "Alpha Adjust" and "Alpha Cutoff" sliders.
  • Adjust makes the whole map more +white or more -dark. On pure b/w maps this means that everything goes transparent or that the cut-outs turn semi-transparent. On greyscale you can use a tiny offset from 0 in conjunction with "cutoff" to sharpen the edges
  • Alpha Cutoff is a way to increase contrast. It basically takes all grey values below the defined value and interprets them as "pure black".
• In the material settings there is also an option to adjust the Render Queue. It is generally a good idea on transparent objects to just check if changing the slider improves the result. Sometimes it can happen that Reflections get swallowed by a semi transparent object.

 

[svanir]

Hey guys, I'm a bit late to this discussion. Trying to modify some clothing as well, and OK, so this is easier then! I have the UV map and have it edited in GIMP. Now...where do I upload that image/texture? Which section? Is it a Normal map? Also, I want to recolor some items, so can I recolor AND add the alpha layer? In other words, I'm trying to add Black lines to a clothing item...but if it recognizes black as transparent...Not sure what to do unless the colors for the actual texture go in a separate texture map

 

[svanir]

Thanks for any advice!

 

[atani]

Many thanks for this explanation, guys, this "opens" a whole new world for me in VAM ?