I can't work this out... ... Why are the tyre walls perfectly visible through a smoke cloud? I can't think as to why this is... Any help would be appreciated...
I've never done a car (and barely done a track, for the sake of context), so at the risk of sounding facetious, the tread looks fine, so whatever you've done to that, do it to the walls. A few suggestions for where to start: If the walls and tread are in separate textures, compare them to see if one of them has an alpha channel. E.g. if the tread texture has an alpha channel, the walls should probably have one too. The tyre wall texture may come with several frames (to make the writing blur with speed), so make sure all frames have the same features. If they're all part of the same texture, make sure the alpha channel is doing the same things to the walls that it's doing for the tread. Next, look at the materials. If the wall faces are using a different material to the tread faces, see if there's a difference in material settings.
I've done many cars but have never had this before. You're right in what you say, but alpha channels tend to dictate things like overall transparency and reflections. I will examine it more closely and see what I can establish... :/
I have never seen this before but the first thing I would check is the "offset" in the material. As that is used to render things in a certain order. It should be 0.
Good work Toebee. It was the offset. For some reason it was set to 9, which of course is completely wrong. Changed it back to 0, and all is well. Thanks chaps!