Bad Texturing Issue

[Travis]

Okay, I have a terrible issue with the texturing on my new project.  No matter what I seem to do, I get the translucent look at dusk/dawn and no textures whatsoever at night.

I first tried using "texture_T" in the Diffuse Color and Specular Color sections of the Material Editor in Gmax, and "texture_L" in the Self-Illumination section.

Then I tried using just "texture_T" in the Diffuse Color section, and left all the others blank.  But no matter what, I still get the same issue.

What am I doing wrong?

I know I've done this before, but I guess it's been so long that I just can't remember what I did to make it work right the last time.

[Boikat]

Isn't that where the  little black "testure_lm" comes in?

[Fr. Bill]

[quote]Isn't that where the

[Alejandro Rhodes]

I don't know Bill, I'm pretty sure I must be wrong ,but in FSX seems like the suffix wouldn't matter ,the only thing ive seen is the preffix $ witch is need it,

XX_T XX_L XX_C don't make any difference as long as I keep the right DX setting properly,With and without suffix is the same for me ,...am I right? :-/

[Alejandro Rhodes]

[quote] Okay, I have a terrible issue with the texturing on my new project.

[Travis]

Okay, I knew I remembered something like that!

I am using the FS9 SDK.  So for a texture "Fuselage1_T.bmp" in the Diffuse Color slot, I can have a completely black, 256x256 BMP that would be named "Fuselage1_L.bmp" and entered into the Self-Illumination slot, right?

For the in-game textures, "Fuselage1_T" would have an alpha channel, but "Fuselage_L" would not, correct?

[Alejandro Rhodes]

That is correct , Fuselage1_L doesn't need an alpha ,the Fuselage1_T has its alpha according to the shine part and chrome parts you want ,but It can also be without alpha channel ,the proble seems to be the suffix..

Ok I will ask you some questions to review and see if we can find this issue>:

[Travis]

Is there a way to remove a certain texture from being assigned in one of those slots?  I assigned the Specular Color spot with "Fuselage1_T" but I think that might be screwing me up, because even after doing everything Alrot suggested, I still get transparency at dusk and no textures at night.  I tried simply unchecking the box, but that didn't help any.

And is it possible that something is wrong with my MakeMDL setup?  I ahve both Middleman and MDLCommander installed (correctly) but I'm wondering if one of those progs is set up wrong.

[Alejandro Rhodes]

I'm not sure If you can use the FSX-SDK fetures neither DX dialogs for FSX in a makemdl9 ,and I'm almost sure that's what causing the issue,it has to be standard ..

Of course Im not 100% sure :-/

[Fr. Bill]

[quote]Is there a way to remove a certain texture from being assigned in one of those slots?

[Travis]

. . . oh . . .

You sure it isn't any easier than that?  I mean, can't any of YOU guys do it for me?

[Travis]

Hooray!  It works!

I just had to do what you said and then in the dialog for Middleman (or is it MDLCommander?) I had to uncheck "Has Night Map".  That seemed to work just fine.

[Fr. Bill]

I don't know Bill, I'm pretty sure I must be wrong ,but in FSX seems like the suffix wouldn't matter ,the only thing ive seen is the preffix $ witch is need it,

XX_T XX_L XX_C don't make any difference as long as I keep the right DX setting properly,With and without suffix is the same for me ,...am I right? :-/

Actually Alex, in FSX what you name any bitmap is completely irrelevant...

...with the sole exception of vc panel textures where the $ prefix is required. The "$" (dollar sign) is a special flag that tells FS to auto-generate a virtual bitmap on which to display gauges.

As an experiment, I named the fuselage texture for Diffuse Color "Fred.bmp" and the Self-Illumination texture "Ginger.bmp"...

"Fred.bmp" displayed the fuse texture just fine, and "Ginger.bmp" supplied the lightmap without problems!

[Travis]

Well, now that I have the nighttime issue's fixed, I'm getting other things going awry.  Whenever I turn on the lights, it goes translucent again.  I'm guessing this has something to do with the _L maps, but what?  I have an alpha channel mapped to each one (255,255,255) and the texture itself is 0,0,0 black.  So what could be causing this?

[Boikat]

I had that same problem with when fooling around with a texture, and I think the little black  "whatever_lm" was what fixed it.