Working with Opacity

Steel Rat

Hello All,

I'm trying to use the Shipwreck Survivor set I purchased a little while ago, and have found a serious flaw with the model. The windows on the cargo containers aren't actually openings. The vendor put square objects on them and made them black, to appear as a window from a distance. The problem is that you can't put people up in the windows look out (or shooting or mooning, whatever), and you can't put a camera inside looking out on the scene below.

So, I need to cutout those windows somehow.

I tried the geometry editor, but the polygons on the sides of the containers go from top to bottom. I understand why, to save system resources. Ok.

So I'm trying a cutout in the texture using an opacity map. The problem is it's all trial and error (mostly error), in getting the position right. To compound the problem, DS isn't picking up changes to the opacity map in the viewport, either in texture shaded or Iray. I have to do a render to see if anything changed. VERY frustrating.

Is there a way I can force the viewport to see the material changes without reloading the entire scene each time?

 

chris-2599934

You might find this script useful in drawing up custom opacity maps: https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjtailorschalk

felis

You haven't listed whether you are using Iray or 3DL.

But if the windows are colored black that should be able to use that as mask in cut-out oppacity (for Iray).

Steel Rat

Chris, that looks like it might be very helpful. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

Felis, the windows aren't really windows. They are separate objects stuck to the side of the shipping container with a black area where one would expect an opening. Otherwise, yes, I could certainly use it as a cutout. Using Iray, by the way.

Thanks for the replies!

Steel Rat

So the Tailor's Chalk script won't work because it won't load when the object is selected. I'm not familiar with the meanings of all the icons in the scene tab, but the shipping containers in the scene are grouped into different objects, so that several shipping containers are one object. But the icon for the object is a cube with inset panels. I don't know what that means, but I'm guessing it doesn't have the right geometry for Chalk to work with. Pity, since it looked like exactly what I needed.

lilweep

omg trying to imagine what people are describing is difficult when they could just post a picture...

Steel Rat

Well, i didn't really need to load a picture for the issue, which was how do I get DS to refresh the cutout map whenever I change the image. so far no answer to that one :)

SimonJM

In theory it is Ctrl-I (Cmd-I on a MAC) to refresh images, but I have found the results sporadic and the refresh does not always happen, and have ended up using a new fiel name to force the issue.

Steel Rat

Thank you Simon! Ctrl-I did the trick! So far it's worked every time I tried it. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

So does anyone know what the icons mean for each item in the scene tab? I know what some are, lights, cameras and such. But not a lot of the others. I've attached a pic of what I'm talking about. You'll also see the cutout issue I've been dealing with.

fixmypcmike

The icons that are a single box mean an object with just one node/bone.  The icons that are three blocks stacked together mean  rigged figure with multiple bones.

Steel Rat

Thanks Mike.

Upthread there was talk about the Tailor's Chalk thread script, which wouldn't work on the single box opbjects. I guess it's only for rigged objects.

chris-2599934

I just tried running Tailor's on a non-rigged object, and it worked fine. Are you sure you ran it properly? Here's what I think you need to do, to do one window...

• Create four plane primitives (Create > New Primitives...). By default they'll be called Plane, Plane 2, etc... Leave them like that.
• Size and position them so they frame the window, passing through the wall of the container behind.
• Select the container object and all four plane objects simultaneously (hold down CTRL when clicking them in the scene tab).
• Run the script, make the choices you want in the dialog, and click "Do It". It should create the template for you.
• Although it says it only works with sphere and plane primitives, it seems to work with other types too - cubes would be useful in your case - provided they have "sphere" or "plane" in their names, so you might want to experiment with that if you get it working.

Steel Rat

Thanks Chris, your explanation is better than Jacques' ;). 

I tried cubes, since that was going to be the easiest. Setting up four planes for each window would be an amazingly cumbersome thing.

I renamed each cube to sphere, sphere1, sphere2 (there are three "windows" on the container I'm currently working on). I used the surface selection tool and selected the face of the container, and each cube.

The dialog comes up, I choose 2048 to match the existing material. White background, opposite for chalk.  I clicked "only selected materials.

It asked for a filename and location, done. Then it started doing its thing......

It keeps cycling through processing 676961 facets, over and over again. I know there aren't that many facets in the selected materials (though some of the materials are applied to multiple shipping containers). so it seems like it's processing the entire object (which is a collection of about 10 containers and oither things). So I don't know if it's stuck, or if I have to be patient. But if that's what it's going tom be for each face of a container, it's faster the way I was doing it. But now that I know that Ctrl-I will refresh the cutout map, it's a lot quicker and easier during the trial and error.

I have most of the "windows" done, over several hours yesterday. I'm going to let the script run for a bit to see if it finishes, but even if it does, I don't think it's going to work for this particular application.

Thanks very much for you help.

Steel Rat

Well, it finished right after I typed my last reply, and the template was just a solid white image, no outlines. So it's not going to work in this particular situation.

Steel Rat

So I've finshed making the cutout maps for most of the windows. Here's a dusk render with some lights in a few of the windows. It's a much better product when you're able to do things like that.