Transparency in a globe

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hi.

I’m new to Blender although I’ve worked in Maya for about 4-5 years now. I’ve got a problem that I need to get solved inside blender.

Imagine the planet earth. How can I, for example, be facing europe and seeing in transparency what’s in the other side of the globe, i.e. other countries? Note that I’ve already tried Z Transparency and did some tests with Raytrace but I can’t get a particular aspect to work. For example when I look over Africa and got Australia in the back, the second one color is more darker which is not the effect I pretend. What I want is to be able to see the countries I’m facing almost opaque and the ones in the back in a more soft black or grey.
The problem is that blender is giving me the opposite with Z Transparency for example. I got Africa transparent but Australia shows up a bit more strong in the background. I guess that it’s the way that default transparency work. How can I go around this?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25316926/earth.png

Thank you.

2

Now that I look closer, the zone where the countries overlap is where the black is more instense. Is there anyway to overlap this?

3

Please, anyone?

Thank you.

4

Hmm, how about splitting the globe in two layers, the first with the normals inwards and second with the normals outwards, then compositing the second one on top of the first, controlling transparency through opacity and blendingmodes in comp? That’ll give you way more control than trying to solve it with the textures/materials… :eyebrowlift2:

5

I’m too noob to use the compositor. I now understand, or at least I think, that my problem is only the texture from the back that becomes overlapped with the front one. Like a question of blend modes. The problem is that I’ve already tried every blend mode available for the texture and none of them corrects this aspect.

I guess I’m going to give a try to the compositor.

Thank you.

6

Oh, I’d probably not do it in the compositor myself, that kinda workflow is a bit to ‘destructive’ for my taste - I usually prefer comping outside my 3D apps, like in AE or Photoshop (for stills).

…but it could also be done in the compositor of course, I just say I would probably do it outside Blender myself.

7

Ok, I’ll give it a try. Also, if I want to make lines that go around the globe connecting places, how could I do that easly?

Thank you.

8

I’d use a separate texture. Then I’d make a third copy of the sphere with the texture for the lines and comp it on top of the other layers.

So the lines comped on top of the front side of the globe comped on top of the back side of the globe. That is how I would do it. :slight_smile:

Basically, there’s nothing that gives you control as doing as much as possible in comp - be it in Blenders compositor, in AE or Photoshop.