Glad to be back, but begging for help!

[mrhowdoimodClassic]

Hey guys, I'm pretty excited to be back after a long time. Some of you might remember me back from old SSM.com and granted... I did have a few slip ups and immaturity issues that frankly made me sort of an ass. But I hope you all here can forgive and forget those past things. I'd really appreciate to join the community again, if there's community left here.

Now I know that many old SSMer's have moved on, especially with the increase in gaming technology and it's sad to think of the old days of SSM where there was a strong, *mostly* friendly community. (with the expection of one little green fellow.. Urglub I believe was the name? ) But hopefully that old spirit has not gone from the bf modding community!

Also, a shout out to Fo0k and others for saving the SSM Archive. It's a tremendous feat and I hope that plethora of information is not soon lost.

All in all.. here is my story. I just got a new rig, it's not the best but I love it. you know.. i7 870, 8gb RAM, Radeon HD5570 1024mb, 1TB Hard drive. anyways, because of it I decided to start modding bf2, because.. just diffuse texture materials get old after awhile...

but I've recently been working on adding a holographic scope to the "RURIF_GP30"... what ever that is. I'm just calling it an AK47 because I'm not very gun literate. but I've added the scope to the main mesh, redid the LOD's, and reimported. Now I don't know how many of you work with materials in bf2, but the texture, normal, and specular map for the scope are perfectly fine.. however the material for the glass part of the sight (this is set to the "alpha" Technique, and a type of "1") only shows if you're looking at the gun from the front. Here's a video of it: http://screencast.com/t/8oysmjIEb don't worry you wont have to download it or anything.

what I show in the video is how once I make the two sight textures (which are just dirty glass placeholders by the way) set to the "alpha" Technique, the whole thing goes wack. it only shows the the alpha from a weird angle, and in one case appears to stretch the mesh. how can just an alpha setting do that?? I also show the model in 3ds max. I started with the sight mesh as a plane, but when this happened I changed it to a box thinking that was the problem. but now I realize that it just doesn't want to show anything from the normal angle.

Is it a mesh issue? a Texture issue? Material issue? any ideas? I mean any idea at all might help. maybe I'm exporting it wrong? should I use different settings for exporting from max? I just used the default ones.

This kind of thing is a huge set back to me as I'm planning on a small "Spec Ops" mod for bf2 with special assassination missions and things like that. and because mostly I'm planning on custom weapons more than anything I need to be able to figure out and work out these kinks. I mean I could always find ways around the transparency, but that would be frustrating and time consuming. Also if anyone's interested in playing around on this small sp mod with me I'd be unbelievably glad to have some help. I'm definitely willing to give it to anyone who's interested in SP mods

anyways, if anyone has any ideas please let me know, Thanks so much and I'm glad to be back

John P. Harrell

[fo0k]

Welcome back sir!

This isn't a simple 'twosided' type setting in the shader file is it?

(I don't mod bf2 so no idea if there is a shader file like 42..)

[mrhowdoimodClassic]

Thank you! But sadly no, bf2 doesn't have SM and RS files like 42 and BFV. It stores all of the material(or shader, if you will) information in a single "mesh". It's odd. you can't edit by text but there are programs for editing it. It's all pretty confusing. there seems to be little documentation on custom weapons in bf2, but plenty for custom vehicles.. So we'll see, but thanks for the idea! I really appreciate it. I'm going to be messing around with it. If I figure it out I'll post my results and my testing results. I'd still appreciate if anyone has any thoughts on the issue.

Maybe it's another OS issue, or maybe it's something I'm specifically doing wrong.

If anyone here has experience and has been successful with something as simple as transparent materials in bf2, I'd owe you huge if you could slip me some insight.

thanks, John

[Apache Thunder]

I've been learning more and more BF2 modding now that I am porting BFheroes into BF2. Like today, I just learned that in-order to export collision meshes that have multiple material IDs, you must set up new materials in the materials dialog like you would for texturing lod meshes. Then giving them unique material names (usually the name of the materials each will eventually use) and matching them to the mat IDs used on the collision meshes then applying them.

Long story short I was racking my brain as to why my tank with re-exported collision meshes was suddenly driving like a brick on ice. The exporter script decided to nuke all the material IDs from the collision meshes and they are all set to mat ID 1, which was the material used for the body of the tank.

As for your issue, what are the material names used for the textures assigned to your weapon? I assume you exported the weapon as a bundled mesh (since staticMeshes can't have semi_transparency in them. Yeah stupid limitation. Blame EA/Dice on that one). BF2 also takes the format of the DDS files more serously. Typically for things like wire fences and stuff that has full on or full off alpha in places, DXT1 format DDS files are used. For things like adding shiny effect via alpha channel or when adding simi-alpha to something (like a dirty window or your scope glass), then DXT5 is used. If you have the DDS files in the wrong format then it could be causing your problem. I don't see how it would distort your mesh though. I have never had that occur to me (yet). Usually if I use a bad shader combo on my mesh on export, BF2 just crashes at 62% on map load.

Also I've heard that BF2Editor can sometimes mis-render things. Have you tried the gun ingame yet? Perhaps it's just the editor having a fit over something and the game might not have any issue from it.

You can also import an existing weapon that has a scope on the mesh as a reference point. I think shader configuration wise, weapons use the same material layout as vehicles.

So you may need to have your scope texture on it's own material. Use Alpha as the material name. This should enable alpha for bundledMesh materials. So be sure to have the scope texture use DXT5 as the compression format. If your scope texture is part of the same file as the texture for the rest of your gun, I highly recommend separating it into it's own texture and assigning it to your gun via new material and material ID.

[mrhowdoimodClassic]

Oh my goodness!! Thank you so much man! hahaha it worked!! All I had to do was name the material Alpha. I cannot believe it was that simple. I seriously cannot thank you enough! Thanks for the plethora of information as well, lots of good info there!

Now, naturally, since we're dealing with bf modding, another problem has arisen. For some reason the exporter is now turning the mesh onto it's side no matter what I do. basically it's exported upright, but if I re-import it, it's on it's side. and I've attempted to correct this by rotating the pivot points, but it's always the same rotation on import. has anyone else had this issue? hopefully this one I'll find a fix for!

But once again, thank you so much. I had completely given up on transparency for me in bf2 altogether, thanks so much for taking the time to reply, means so much!

Edit: Never mind with the import issue, all is well! Thanks again Tanker!

[Apache Thunder]

Glad I could help. Happy BF2 modding.