I am working on a skin for the MP28 by irfoist and it needs to have transparent holes in the barrel so you can see the internal barrel through the external one.

I know how to make it transparent, but for some reason when I add the transparent color it causes the whole BMP to look as though it is in 128 colors rather than 256, like the whole thing just looks bad.

Has anyone else had this problem? Has anyone else found out how to make it look decient?

Unfortunately, I've seen this problem discussed before. The solution isn't much of a solution, the way I've heard it. You have to make sure the mesh on which you have to put the transparency has as little of the rest of the skin on it as possible.

For example, make it have as little of only the metal as you can. That way, you're messing up as little of the colours as possible. If you've got metal AND wood, ALL of those colours get messed up on the entire model.

To avoid that entirely, I'm afraid the only I know of is to actually model the holes. :\

Or at least just make little squares [to waste as little polies as possible] and dump extra polies inside them that will have a second skin with the transparency. The edges around the square NIGHT be visible [depending on how badly the tones of the metal get messed and the perspective one's looking at them from].

---------------------------------------- <=== Top edge of gun barrel.

[¯¯¯¯¯] <=== (*)

---------------------------------------- <=== Bottom edge of gun barrel.

(*) Put two polies inside that square [if possible] and have the transparent texture only there and not on the rest of the weapon, which uses the exact same texture, but saved without transparencies.

Not sure if I'm explaining that clearly enough...

yes, it makes sense. That sounds like a good workaround. Thanks for the input.

I was just wondering because the skin on the weapon and the one in PhotoShop were not looking the same. I re did that same skin like 5 or 6 times before I realized it wasn't ME messing it up.

:\

Sorry to hear it cost you so much time, man. You tried hard. That counts.

well I had BadKarma re do the mesh to isolate the barrel with the transparency from the rest, and I think it came out pretty good. You can still see the GIF style splotches in it, but as a V_ model it isnt going to be moticed that quick.

Thanks for the help.

Ooouuu. Nice.

Kind of futile to consider putting little squares around each of the holes, though, so you took the right path. Good job.

I had the same problem but it suddenly just went away. I think it had to do with the texture compression setting in display options (control panel --> display --> settings --> advanced --> opengl). Disable it and see how it looks.