MSFS20 Transparency for Windscreen textures

[OzWookiee]

Hey folks,
Anyone got any ideas on how I can fix this issue with the windscreens not rendering properly in the sim?

I've set the Material in Blender to "windscreen" and the texture has Alpha set to completly transparent.

Have the same issue with instrument glass in the cockpit.

 

[evilnando]

Im guessing you need to use the blend mask for this one

 

[Vitus]

Not quite - a mask acts like a bit-mask in the sim, meaning that it's either on or off - so it's more like masking tape
The way it works is that you pass a greyscale alpha channel to the blend mask and set a threshold. Everything above that threshold will be opaque, everything under the threshold is transparent.

For your windows however, this will not do! You want to blend the window to make is semi-transparent, and for that you need to change the blend mode to "Blend". Notice that you will really need some low, low alpha values in your PNG for the window to look right.

 

[OzWookiee]

Hmmmm

Not quite - a mask acts like a bit-mask in the sim, meaning that it's either on or off - so it's more like masking tape
The way it works is that you pass a greyscale alpha channel to the blend mask and set a threshold. Everything above that threshold will be opaque, everything under the threshold is transparent.

For your windows however, this will not do! You want to blend the window to make is semi-transparent, and for that you need to change the blend mode to "Blend". Notice that you will really need some low, low alpha values in your PNG for the window to look right.

Thanks @Vitus that was my original assumption but there is no blend settings on the Windscreen material.

 

[Vitus]

Good point. When I put the materials together, I took the settings from the current 3dsmax settings for the material. I.e. at that time the windshield material didn't have a blend setting. The big question now is whether or not it should be there (or if Asobo changed that in the meantime). If so, I'll unlock the function in the next update round!

 

[OzWookiee]

Good point. When I put the materials together, I took the settings from the current 3dsmax settings for the material. I.e. at that time the windshield material didn't have a blend setting. The big question now is whether or not it should be there (or if Asobo changed that in the meantime). If so, I'll unlock the function in the next update round!

It certainly does. Just checked the glTF file for a model exported from 3DS:

{
            "name": "J170_4_T",
            "alphaMode": "BLEND",
            "occlusionTexture": {
                "index": 18
            },
            "pbrMetallicRoughness": {
                "baseColorFactor": [
                    1.0,
                    1.0,
                    1.0,
                    0.01
                ],
                "metallicFactor": 0.0,
                "baseColorTexture": {
                    "index": 17
                },
                "metallicRoughnessTexture": {
                    "index": 18
                }
            },
            "extras": {
                "ASOBO_material_code": "Windshield"
            }
        },

Compared to the one I exported from blender:

{
            "name": "vc_glass_t",
            "alphaMode": "BLEND",
            "pbrMetallicRoughness": {
                "metallicFactor": 0.0,
                "roughnessFactor": 0.5,
                "baseColorTexture": {
                    "index": 20
                }
            },
            "extras": {
                "ASOBO_material_code": "Windshield"
            }
        },

Of interest is it looks like the `baseColorFactor` is missing from the `pbrMetallicRoughness`

 

[OzWookiee]

OK Now we have another problem. I made some quite and dirty COMP and Normal maps for the glass and the exporter is ignoring all textures:

        {
            "name": "vc_glass_t",
            "alphaMode": "BLEND",
            "doubleSided": true,
            "extras": {
                "ASOBO_material_code": "Windshield"
            }
        },

 

[OzWookiee]

Created a new material and removed the old one worked (somewhat). The
baseColorTexture field though is not exporting correctly:

{
            "alphaMode" : "BLEND",
            "doubleSided" : true,
            "emissiveFactor" : [
                0,
                0,
                0
            ],
            "extras" : {
                "ASOBO_material_code" : "Windshield"
            },
            "name" : "vc_glass",
            "normalTexture" : {
                "index" : 17,
                "texCoord" : 0
            },
            "occlusionTexture" : {
                "index" : 18,
                "texCoord" : 0
            },
            "pbrMetallicRoughness" : {
                "baseColorTexture" : {
                    "index" : 19,
                    "texCoord" : 0
                },
                "metallicRoughnessTexture" : {
                    "index" : 18,
                    "texCoord" : 0
                }
            }
        },

These are index 17,18,19:

 {
            "mimeType" : "image/png",
            "name" : "vc_glass_t_normal",
            "uri" : "vc_glass_t_normal.png"
        },
        {
            "mimeType" : "image/png",
            "name" : "vc_glass_COMP",
            "uri" : "vc_glass_COMP.png"
        },
        {
            "mimeType" : "image/png",
            "name" : "prop_slow_back",
            "uri" : "prop_slow_back.png"
        },

So it's setting prop_slow_back.png as the baseColour and there is no reference to vc_glass_t.png