OpenGL & transparency

[Petri]

I know little about rendering and textures. Today I, however, showed a brand new user (as from today) how to do 3D models of simple furniture.

Everything went well until I wanted to show how to make glass doors to an "entertainment unit" (whatever that is... I thought something like Sly & the Family Stone is an entertainment unit...)

Created an extrusion. Applied Glass. No transparency. Applied Glass Blue 2. No transparency. Edited textures. No transparency. Redid the whole shebang. No transparency. (I tried this successfully at home, so I've busted the myth!)

What could be the problem?

Fundamentalist + RenderWorker. Mac Mini, OS X 10.4.11.

[mike m oz]

Petri, did you by any chance use a floor object rather than an extrude? Floor objects won't completely render transparent - the top and bottom accept the transparency texture, but the four sides don't.

I have had the odd problem with extrudes as well. Try reapplying the fill and see if that fixes it.

[Petri]

Extrude: showed how to "do this" in front view.

Just draw a rectangle, the in Object Info, change the size by minus 4 mm by the center - uhhuh, minus 4 there - and Extrude. Now in Top view Align Bottoms. Yeah, that's right. Now, let's see what've got. Right. Apply a glass texture and it'll be transparent. What? Apply another glass texture and it'll be transparent. What? Apply yet another glass texture and it'll be transparent. What?

Reapplied (both fill & texture; also texture & fill.)

[Dave Donley]

Hi Petri:

Can you send me a file?

[Petri]

Dave,

I'll try to find out if it's still there in the client's machine. I think it was saved at some point; I just have to muster all my courage to contact the person.

[mike m oz]

Clarification

Floor objects won't completely render transparent - the top and bottom accept the transparency texture, but the four sides don't.

With floor objects it is only the top surface that accepts the texture and therefore renders transparent. The sides and bottom surface don't.

Apologies for getting it wrong in my post above.

[Charlie_P]

I've also had this; managed to reproduce Petri's experience exactly just now. Changing the fill colour to something (anything) else cures it - you can change the fill colour back again afterwards and the transparency of the applied texture still shows. It only seems to occur the first time VW is run after a restart and only with GL, not RW. Once cured once everything is OK until the next restart. I have no idea why...

Charlie