I've been trying to make a tractor as an accessory that sims can wear in the sims 2. i needed it for a violent death scenes from my upcoming sims 2 slasher film.
I figured out how to make tiled-animated objects, BUT i've ran into a major issue. There's a problem with the transparency as seen below:



I know i need to edit the TXMT files to fix this, but what specifically should i edit to make it look right? does anyone know?

i can't change the CmaterialDefinition type to "SimStandardMaterial" or else it won't animate.

Does anyone know what i can do to fix the transparency and still have it be able to move?

if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Please help ♥

Just taking a shot in the dark, here, since I'm not too familiar with animation and can't see your existing txmt and txtr: If you have stdMatAlphaBlendMode set to blend, you can try setting it back to none, and changing stdMatAlphaTestEnabled to 1. That would make it more EITHER(invisible)/OR(visible), without giving transparency in relation to rest of object. Also might help to make the moving part its own subset with a txmt separate from the rest of the object.

i tried that but it still didnt fix it though
is there anything else i can do?

and it's a tile-animation texture. the image is a transparent png (i needed it to be otherwise it wouldnt have worked).

well here's the texture file for it if that's more help.

You have the rim and frame TXMTs with diferent settings. Frame = SimStandardMaterial, Rim = StandardMaterial
Also, 2048x2048 for both textures is quite a lot. Is one of the textures actually animated? I can't see much of a difference in the texture itself.

One thing I recently learned is that the [no-blend, test=1] works a lot better if you import/build the texture as DXT5 instead of DXT3. For some reason, that makes the invisible part less likely to blend with other parts of your mesh. Wish I knew why, but that's trial-and error for ya. That is how I finally solved a similar bleedover of transparency in some stair rails I wanted to hide. That's all I have for now. Will look at this txtr when I get home today and see if I can figure it out.

i think i do have it set to DXT5 actually but i'll have to double check

i had to set the texture for the frame in SimStandardMaterial otherwise it would have had the transparency glitch too. the rim is the animated part with the wheels and blade spinning. i had to set it to standardmaterial otherwise i couldnt get it to animate.

is there really no way of fixing this?

http://www.modthesims.info/article.php?t=202520

Here's an article on accessory bleed through. It seems like one of the later EPs broke the StandardMaterial for accessories and Maxis never fixed it.

Thanks. I know about the SimStandardMaterial fix, but it doesn't let the accessory be animated when I set it to that option

I was trying to use this tractor for a scene in my sims 2 horror movie. But i really don't want the tires to bleed through it like that. I guess the only way i can kinda fix it is to make the wheels part of the SimStandardMaterial option so they don't bleed through the spinning blade, but then they won't be able to move/animate at all because it needs to be set to StandardMaterial for it to animate

either way, I don't think it matters because only the blade needs to be spinning anyway i guess... I don't think my viewers will complain.

thanks for everyone to responded though ♥
But if anyone else has any ideas on how else i can fix it so it doesn't bleed, Please let me know ♥

I wasn't telling you to switch to the SimStandardMaterial, just that the StandardMaterial is broken in accessories, and there is no fix for that. Does the tractor have to be an accessory? Maybe you could make a buyable object then snap it into a Sim's slot?

it was just that that was the only idea i had. I was using the tractor for a scary scene in my sims 2 horror movie and I had to make a sim be able to ride it. What i was planning on doing was making the tractor an animated accessory with the wheels and blade spinning with an animated texture but the texture only animates if it's set to 'standardMaterial' but that causes it to bleed through.

I don't really know how to make animated objects honestly. I tried following the tutorial but they were quite complex. I also wasn't sure how to make an animated object that has the wheels and blade spinning and having sims be able to ride it in a certain direction.

But as to making it a buyable object instead, what tutorial would you recommend me for something like that?
I have experience with making objects in the sims 2 but just never something animated that sims sit down on and ride on.

Hm, I don't think there is a tutorial specifically for animation. There's this
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=239160 but it's probably more than you want, since it's about custom animations. There has to be a spinning animation that's already in the game that you could borrow. But the tutorial will tell you how to edit the BHAVs to make the animation play. Can you use AGS? If so, and if you don't need all the packs for your movie, it might be easier to temporarily remove the EPs that introduced the glitch.

Sorry it took me so long to get back - had some computer crashing issues that led to taking my machine apart.

Everything with the TXMT seems to be fine. Anything I could think of to do, you have already done. The only thing that stands out (besides the huge txtr size) is that you have both the wheels and the blade as the rim subset,thus they share the same TXMT. I'm not very familiar with Bodyshop stuff like accessories, so they may work differently than I imagine, but I don't think your wheels should have any transparency at all. It's my belief that the transparency glitch you're seeing is caused by these two things (wheel and blade) overlapping. Think of it like placing a glass vase on a glass tabletop in the game. There will be some weird distortion as the game struggles to determine which object gets more visual weight.

If this were a regular object, I would try fixing it by separating the wheel and blade into separate subsets with the blade TXMT having the blendtest=1 and the wheel just having a normal TXMT. They can still both point to the same TXTR file, just with different transparency settings.

I never thought of that. the only problem is, i don't have an option for the lens texture at all in SimPE, BUT
what i could do is add the wheels as a separate accessory object. it'll be a lot of work, but i know how to do it
i'll let you guys know how it turns out

Everything that requires transparency or the blend setting ingame (be it accessories, hairs, clothes or objects) need to be layered so that the inner layer is at the bottom of the stack, and the outer layer is on the outside. Otherwise they'll bleed through each other.

I think Milkshape layers the mesh (when exported as GMDC) with the inner layer at the top, and the outer layer at the bottom.

Say, if you have flowers in a glass vase with some non-transparent decorations on the outside, you put the flowers at the top of the stack in Milkshape, then the glass vase, and the decorations at the bottom.

You can make several layers use the same texture by giving them the same name, but you need different TXMTs for the different properties.

Example from above:
flowers (TXMT none)
vase (uses another texture, TXMT blend)
flowers (decorations on the outside, uses same texture as the flowers, TXMT none)

You can do this for accessories too. You can use the "Opacity" setting in the comments to make sure you layer correctly, low to high numbers (use odd numbers, -1, 1, 3, 5)

Make sure anything you want to be opaque and not transparent DON'T have the blend setting in the TXMTs. Blend is a messy setting on a good day, and it doesn't like opaque textures... Also, use DXT5 if you're imporing a semi-transparent texture, because import/DXT1/DXT3 don't handle semi-transparent textures well.

You essentially have 4 options for transparency. Recommended settings below:

- Semi-transparent (1-99% visible)
stdMatAlphaBlendMode: Blend
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled: 1
* I recommend having all the parts that need Blend on a separate TXMT from the opaque/invisible parts, so you don't get the bleed-through issues.

- Fully invisible (0% visible)
stdMatAlphaBlendMode: None
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled: 1
(Why you'd need an invisible texture? It's super useful! Lets you hide mesh parts through texture instead of having a ton of mesh clutter)

- Fully opaque (100% visible)
stdMatAlphaBlendMode: None
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled: 0 (but if set to 1, it doesn't cause any significant problems)

- Mix between fully opaque and fully invisible
stdMatAlphaBlendMode: None
stdMatAlphaTestEnabled: 1

Thanks for that. Some very handy information.

You can actually test in MIlkshape if you've layered things properly.
Right-click in the 3D window, choose "Transparency --> Depth buffered with Alpha reference". Then apply the PNGs you plan to use as materials onto the proper layers. If things don't look like they aren't layered right, they probably aren't.

The same layering applies to SimPE, so the top (inner) layer should be at the top, the bottom (outer) layer should be on the bottom in both programs.

For objects, if you can't get OBJ files to layer properly (they'll sometimes replace in alphabetical order), export as GMDC, and replace the GMDC resource (remember to give all the groups proper names according to the file structure, and make sure the filename on the GMDC is the exact same as the original name - you can copy/pasta the name). Temporarily changing the group names to alphabetical order can also sometimes work.

This does not quite apply to Blender, where the group structure is a little confusing at best. It's more trial and failure.

just letting everyone know. I got it to work i just had to make the wheels a separate accessory object. the blending still does look a little weird because i have to leave it as StandardMaterial in order for the animation to work, but at least the tires don't bleed through the blade. Thanks so much to everyone who helped

i'll let you all know when the scary video is done :D