In Sims 2 alphas seemed to make portions of a single thing visible or invisible. In Sims 3 they seem to make portions of a single thing colorable or not-recolorable with patterns.

I'm trying to make an object that goes on walls that has a hole in it. I've made the mesh and the alpha for it but I can't find a clone that doesn't want to make my alpha mean colorable or not-recolorable. This would cause the hole to become a recolorable area which I don't want. I want it to be invisible.

Does anyone know of a way to do this or do I have to just remesh/remap so that the solid parts of my object surround the space I want to be empty? I've looked for an EA item with the characteristics I want and haven't found one.

Thanks for any help or commiseration.

*bump*

I don't know how to do this other than making an object with the right alpha setup and changing it to a wall object. There's a clock I wanted to make that needed this and meshing the holes would be impractical.

Ok, if I understand what you're asking correctly, which I might not be, it's totally possible. I think what you need to do is make sure that *every* dds you're using has the part you want to be invisible (a hole in other words) blacked out in the alpha for every dds IMG.

Including the alpha for the RGB dds that controls the recolorable channels. Parts masked by the alpha in the RGB should end up not recolorable-- that's why I'm not sure I've understood right.

What you cloned it from shouldn't matter, you can add images and edit the OBJD as needed, AFAIK.

I don't have time to explain further right this second-- I'm going to be away from my computer for a few hours-- but I've attached an object I'll be releasing soon that should illustrate what I mean.

If I've understood correctly, that is. I'm rushed and unsure. Hope it helps though.

I do know it is not yet possible with bodymeshes, tried everything.
All bodymeshes and accesoires have seperate meshes for recoloring and transparancy.
To combine the 2 seems impossible, for now...
Hairfiles however do support a texture file and transparancy but you lose one or the other the moment you put it in another category....

Thanks y'all.

cmo, when you say, "other than making an object with the right alpha setup and changing it to a wall object..." are you saying I should clone a non-wall object and change it to a wall object? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean but I don't know how to change a non-wall item into something that has the properties of hanging on a wall. Is it possible to do that?

BabaYaga you *are* understanding me. And your answer is very helpful. I've just recently learned how to change an alpha so there's a lot about using them that I just don't know because I've never had reason to investigate.

This part of what you said I don't understand and if you can find time to explain I would really appreciate the help, "What you cloned it from shouldn't matter, you can add images and edit the OBJD as needed, AFAIK." I don't know what AFAIK means either...I'm finding myself to be pretty much outta the loop as far as acronyms go lately...lol. Thanks for the download...I'm gonna check it out.

Base, this is how the object IMG's seem to me to be also. Perhaps the answer BabaYaga gave can help with the bodymeshes too?

Yeah that's what I was saying, but I don't think it's worth the trouble, especially if there's an easier way. I just haven't experimented with it yet. AFAIK= "as far as I know"

That's another neat trick. Does it work in the opposite direction? That is, can you clone a wall item and change its properties so that it will be a table item? And when you change one property does the clone lose any of its other characteristics? Thanks for answering...and letting me in on the acronym.

ETA: were you referencing the cute clock you recently posted in Buy? I am probably going to have to patch up to have that clock you know...it's super cute.

OM, sorry to confuse you by using archaic internet acronyms.

I'm glad what I said was relevant. I'll be curious to find out how it works for you.

I guess it would work both ways, haven't tried either. In theory it would just be a matter of changing the placement properties.

And no, not that clock. The one I was trying to make was iron. Why would you have to patch up? It's cloned from that ugly work/school looking clock.

BY...what did you clone this from? It has a lot of IMG's. Going through them now.

cmo, I would have to patch up because things cloned past about October require the downloader to have the same patch as the creator did when cloning. And I was talking about your retro clock. It's a must-have imo. I have a patch-free base game right now on the comp I generally use. So that clock will require a patch I'm guessing.

I'm pretty sure I was patch free when I made that clock. I only patched up last week.

OM- I cloned from the Zinc Pot Perennials I think. But I've altered the package quite a bit, and it's gotten pretty complex-- each recolor has it's own multiplier, RGB, and maybe specular images.

It might not be the best example for that reason.

I'll see if I can come up with something clearer.

that's a relief cmo...I wasn't wanting to patch up...but must have cute orange clock...lol.

BY, I'll wait then for the new item to learn from. Thank you for helping me. The simpler the better...I only learned alpha a few weeks ago.

I made a simple edit to the multiplier dds in the Zinc Pot Perennials package and it shows up with a hole though it:



Here's what I did-- I added a black square to the alpha channel for the multiplier dds in a part of the image that's mapped to the side of the pot.

Like this-- this pic shows the multiplier dds with the alpha-masked parts showing in red:



It's been a while since I figured a lot of this stuff out, but it looks like it's not actually necessary to mask out the RGB dds in addition to the multiplier after all. And of course the specular map dds should always have an all-black alpha.

Since this is all done by changes in IMGs, the actual mesh is unaffected and your object's shadow will unfortunately not have a hole in it.

Hope that's clearer...

Thank you for the explanation and the example. The item I want to clone, the EA Towel bar, doesn't seem to have an alpha already on its multiplier. Is that going to matter? Can I just make an alpha for it and that will work? Or do I have to select an item to clone that already has an alpha on the multiplier? And by multiplier we are talking about the greyscale shadow-map IMG right? Or is it that all multipliers have an alpha and since the towel bar doesn't make use of invisibility with it that I'm just not noticing that it's actually there?

And if I can just add an alpha to the multiplier for an item whose multiplier doesn't already have one do I need to add an alpha to the red/green/blue IMG also? The towel bar only has those two IMG's plus the Spec which I'm thinking from what you said above that I should just leave all black.

No, just adding an alpha mask to the multiplier seems not to be sufficient after all, at least with the towel rack. There should be a way to make it work with objects that don't already have that kind of invisibility-- I thought I had done it in the past. But now it's not working the way I remembered, and I can't find the object I thought I made that way.

In terms of objects that will work, the thing to look for is an object that has some alpha-controlled transparency, so yeah, that would be objects that have an alpha channel on the multiplier and yes, you're correct about which image I mean by "multiplier". I think all those objects also have an overlay image.

A few examples would be: all of the decorative plants, the trophy shelf, the wall-mounted fish, the butterfly wall-art.

I don't think you have to do anything to the RGB image, or the specular, though I could be wrong. They should just work like the example with the Zinc Pot Perennials I gave earlier.

I used the Butterflies to clone with. I ended up changing all 4 IMG's to match the way the EA ones seemed to be working. And it worked! I've got a lotta tweaking to do with it but the hard part that I couldn't figure out is over

Thanks so much for helping me with this BabaYaga...you've made my day.

Could it make a difference if there is a setting in the MATD to allow transparency or alpha blend? Maybe objects that didn't have alpha transparency originally don't have this set? Just guessing.

This is the case with all the CAS parts but i dont know anything bout objects.

Thanks for giving this your thought Inge. I would like to check to see if this could be the issue but I'm not sure where the MATD is located. If you have the time could you point me in the right direction? Thanks for any help

Inge gets the prize! I altered the AlphaMaskThreshold values in the .mtlsrc files for the towel rack to match the ones in the butterfly wall art, and now masking the multiplier dds puts a hole in the object.

I KNEW that's what it was! I had tried that before, but I think the one time I tried it my alphas must have been wrong, so I marked it as a FAIL. hits self with idiot hammer

Yeah, I felt kinda dumb too. I had even thought of looking in the MATD at one point, then completely forgotten about about that possibility till Inge mentioned it.

It's in the mtlsrc? Who knew? I was planning on looking in S3PE for it. Thank you Inge and BabaYaga....this is a big help.

I am glad it was possible to do it via Wes tool, as S3PE currently has a bug that makes it not save all these changes in the Grid :D