I’ve created a pretty nice boat wake for my sim using a couple meshes and uv animated textures (with alpha transparency). Now I need some way of fading the wake when the boat stops. I’ll also need a way of animating it from transparent to visible for when the boat starts.
try switching face properties to obcolor and then adding an ipo with rgba channels(or just alpha), add a curve - which fades from 1 to 0 or reverse, then add logic bricks to play the ipos properly.
Assuming your wake is on an add filter, all you need to do is animate the colors in the IPO window. RGB -> 0 will result in completely invisible. RGB-> will result in white, completely opaque color. RGB is, of course, Red, Green, Blue. The IPO window has them separate, but you only need to animate one of them. Then you can copy the curve into the other two channels, so you don’t need to animate them separately. If you’re not sure how to do this, I suggest you download my Zark game and take it apart. I use this a lot.
Thanks for the tips. I’m a complete noob when it comes to many things in Blender. I’ve never used IPO’s, so I have some homework to do…
Here’s a sneak peak at what the animated wake looks like. I used two meshes and shaped them to what I think a wake would be like. Then I uv-animated 2 seamless textures. For this test, I triggered the uv animation with the same key press that moves the block. It looks -real- good so far.
Next I need to set it up so that the speed of the uv - animation matches the speed of the block. Then I need to create some sort of “wipe” animation that reveals / hides the wake as the block accelerates / decelerates to a stop.
1 - I’m starting to learn about IPO’s and such but have run into a couple of problems. I’m triggering the animation with the same keystroke that moves the box and that is causing a number of problems.
Is there a way to call the RGB / ALPHA values for my object with Python? That way I can have the box’s speed determine it’s transparency, just like I’m using it to set the uv-animation speed.
2 - Right now the trailing edge of the wake is “squared off” and I would like to fix that. Is it possible to add a -second- alpha transparency to the wake object? Or should I just remodel the shape of mesh so that it is more jagged? See below:
UPDATE:
(Still brainstorming, trying to come up with an idea)
1 - I’m starting to learn about IPO’s and such but have run into a couple of problems. I’m triggering the animation with the same keystroke that moves the box and that is causing a number of problems.
Is there a way to call the RGB / ALPHA values for my object with Python? That way I can have the box’s speed determine it’s transparency, just like I’m using it to set the uv-animation speed.
I still haven’t found a way to do this. The calls to “setAlpha” is in the Blender API and I haven’t gotten this to work right. I also tried various ways of doing this with logic bricks and IPO’s, but nothing looks very good. The effects I want are:
when the object accelerates from stop, have the wake fade or wipe into view.
when the object decelerates to stop, have the wake fade or wipe out of view.
when the object is moving, continue to show the wake.
I’m starting to think that maybe the best way of doing the wipes is with uv mapping… gotta think about that…
2 - Right now the trailing edge of the wake is “squared off” and I would like to fix that. Is it possible to add a -second- alpha transparency to the wake object? Or should I just remodel the shape of mesh so that it is more jagged?
I’m starting to think that the best way around this is to modify the trailing edge of the mesh.
Wow looks very nice. :o I’d really like to see a .blend sometime, that waters really cool. I’d like to get some sweet water like that in one of my games eventualy. Keep going with it 8)
Thanks for the compliments, but if you’re referring to the last (3rd) picture, that wasn’t done with Blender. That’s a screen grab from a sim using a proprietary engine (DirectX). The other two pictures were done with Blender. My appologies, I probably should have made my disclaimer at the top of that post a bit more obvious. That is the look / effect that I want to create with Blender.
I’ve learned a bit more about IPO’s and am having more luck with them. My biggest problem was that I didn’t know that IPO’s can be play in forward and reverse and I didn’t know about the “flipper” actuator. Now I am able to fade the wake in and out depending on whether the throttle is engaged or not.
Now I want to create a smooth trailing edge. Thanks for the hint, JRT, I’ve really come to respect your work, you’ve done some very cool stuff. The wake is currently set to “Alpha” because I wasn’t happy with the way “Add” looked. I may have to give that a second look, since it appears vertex painting is the only way to get the effect I want.
Sure would like a peak into your boat sim .blend… it’s a nice little game.
If your texture is set to add you could try vertex painting the trailing edge of the mesh black. I think that’s what I did when I made my boat sim.
Ok, I tried that and it’s not working right, at least not the way I’d like it to. Here’s what I’ve done:
created a material, with an alpha channeled texture.
set up the uv map coordinates
while in uv face mode, set all faces to “ADD”
When I do this the wake becomes very blotchy-looking, as if my full color texture has become a 2 color (clear and white) texture. Is this what “ADD” mode looks like? Can it be smoothed at all?
Then I tried to “smooth” the edges of the mesh by painting the vertices black:
in uv face mode made sure all my vertices were white
in vertex pain mode I set my “spray” to pure black and airbrushed the edges using “mix” mode.
Everything looks right in vertex paint mode, but in “object” mode the airbrushed edges dissappear?
I don’t think you can use ‘add’ with an alpha channel but I just tried it with ‘alpha’ set and it works the same. It was a targa image anyway so didn’t take any changing.
If you want to look at my boat sim you just need to download 2.25, that will open it. Hope it’s some help. May go back to it in a day or two as I now know a way to fix the gun firing in the wrong direction some times.
EDIT: I just realised that I may be using the wrong terminology. When I say that I’m “animating the uv’s” I mean that I am using a python script to “scroll” across an image. I am not using the Blender uv animation tool which jumps from one “frame” to another.
I’m using a .tga texture with alpha.
The “texture face” settings are “Tex” and “Alpha”
and the texture applied to the mesh
I’m animating the uv using python.
in “UV face select” I set the VertCol to white,
then in “Vert Paint” I painted the edges of the mesh with 100% black.
When I view the mesh in “UV Face Select” or “Vert Paint” or “Object” mode, I see my black painted edges. But in GE I don’t see the black vertex paint -and- the black areas are not invisible.
I tried the same thing with “ADD” mode, but nothing happened. I’m using 2.41.
I’m sure I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t know what?
I’m not sure if these things are different in 2.41, as I mentioned to you before I’ve not spent much time with it yet. I just tried it in my old boat game which was made in 2.25, it changed over to alpha and looked just about the seme.
Maybe someone more familiar with 2.41 could shed some light on it.
Sorry, if I have time I’ll try it out again myself in 2.41.