Open Trenchcoat
 

ATTN: 1337 Modellers:
This is an idea i had for a model. I wanted to give the illusion of a trenchcoat being open. To do this, i figure all you'd have to do would be to cut out the shaded section of the following picture:
[img]http://www.dodstudios.net/uploads/uploads/editedskel.jpg[/img]
(Yes, yes, I am aware of the crudity of the picture biggrin: )
If the shaded bit was removed, it would be exactly what i'm after. I can't use the SDK editor, or whatever program is required, but i expect it wouldn't be too taxing for someone who knew what they were doing.

Thanks muchly to anyone willing to take on the job cool:

It could possibly be treated like a masked texture. Edit the alpha channel to block out the visibilty of the section in question. Might work.

I have PS 5.5. How do you do that?

First of all make sure you have the channels window open (click windows, then show channels) There should be a channel called alpha. (or alpha 1 I'm not sure. something with alpha in it anyway) You should now have a black and white image, showing a silhuette of the normal image. White is visible, black is invisible. Greytones are semitransparent. (I've never edited a skin myself, only scopes and compasses, but I suppose skins are pretty similar.)

As far as I understand, what you need to do is make the part you want to cut out black. A good way of doing that might be to first view the skin in normal mode. Then mark up the part you wan't to cut out. Switch to viewing the alpha channel and use the paint bucket to make the selection black.

How this will look in the game, I have no idea. But I think it's worth giving it a go, who knows, it just might work.

it wont work right unless you can edit the model and put new legs on him, because for that model and all trenchcoat models, they cut the legs off 3 quarters of the way.....so there will be a big gap there

Thats what I feared about editing the alpha channel. Thanks for clearing that up G.

True.

If you have a solid model face you can make it transparent by image editing/scripting. So id suggest combining these two tips: new legs using merge tool and making a new image for the coat. That way you dont need to edit the coat which is timeconsuming when you assign all the verts back to bones...

He's right. That type of configuration with the Alpha Channels won't suit what you are trying to do.