Fixing the transparent textures on some JKA models.

[McGroose]

I've noticed an abnormal trend shared by some of the original game's models, with the first examples coming to my mind being Tavion_new,  the original Tavion, the saboteur, and the merc. Each of these models has a texture that appears normal on one side of their model, but appears invisible or transparent on the other. For Tavion, both new and old, her hair feathers appear normally while looking at her front, but the feathers can't be seen from the backside of her head for whatever reason. For the saboteur and the merc, the back of their lower jackets show normally, but looking at them from the front shows nothing behind their legs. Using Tavion as an example:

 

I was told that a solution to this would be to add the lines "cull twosided" or "cull disable" to the texture's shaders, so I tried to add the twosided line to Tavion's feather textures. I added cull twosided to the Players.shader file found in the Assets1.pk3. Keep in mind, I have no prior knowledge of modifying shader files. Here's what the modified section for Tavion's feather shaders looks like after I added the additional line, which will show is bold:

models/players/tavion_new/feathers_glow

{

cull twosided

    {

        map models/players/tavion_new/feathers

        blendFunc GL_ONE GL_ZERO

        glow

        rgbGen lightingDiffuse

    }

    {

        map models/players/tavion_new/feathers_glow2

        blendFunc GL_ONE GL_ONE

        glow

    }

(The space between cull and twosided matches the spacing the other "cull twosided lines" have in this shader file, it's just that copying and pasting the text from the file to here messed up the spacing).

 

Did I use the wrong file, or do I need to do something else? Was there another file I was supposed to use instead?

I remember a mod that ported the Tavion_new model to JK2 SP actually fixed the issue with her feathers, so it's strange that Raven Software didn't notice and fix the issue.

Any help with fixing these transparency issues, especially for Tavion, would be greatly appreciated.

[McGroose]

Anyone have any ideas whatsoever?

[Omicron]

You've applied the cull twosided to the glow feathers, not the normal ones. Change your first line from "feathers_glow" to feathers and remove the last stage ({ map models/players/tavion_new/feathers_glow2 ... glow)

 

Also, when making shaders, don't override the base assets (players.shader in this case). Save it as a new shader, and if it's something overwriting a base texture (as this is) then make the shader come after players.shader alphabetically.

[Ramikad]

You've applied the cull twosided to the glow feathers, not the normal ones. Change your first line from "feathers_glow" to feathers and remove the last stage ({ map models/players/tavion_new/feathers_glow2 ... glow)

 

Also, when making shaders, don't override the base assets (players.shader in this case). Save it as a new shader, and if it's something overwriting a base texture (as this is) then make the shader come after players.shader alphabetically.

 

Exactly; I believe you modified the feathers that appear on Tavion's head in the "possessed" version of the skin, not the default skin. You may want to check out the possessed skin, to see if it works as intended.

[McGroose]

I've finally fixed the problem thanks to your instructions, Omicron. You and Ramikad were right in that I did change the possessed Tavion, but not the regular version. The problem with her feathers is now fixed for both versions. Thanks to both of you for your help!