Is there any way to set a material semitransparent/translucent? What shader would I have to use to combine cube, bump and color maps with transparency and how do I set it? Is it controlled by a specific alpha layer?
I'd be curious about that as well, because I thought I saw in a relatively early screenshot that the awning on the grandstands in Malaysia seemed to be translucent. If you can have a map that controls the transmission color, it would be interesting to use this with foliage as well. Here are the screenshots I was thinking of--you can clearly see the scaffolding through the awning, and the translucent 'glow'.
Do you mean like just having a material 50% transparent? Can't you just do that with alpha transparency where you set the material's blend options to InvSrcAlpha/SrcAlpha and use a 50% grey alpha channel in the texture?
Ethone's method should work. This is one example where you HAVE to use alpha transparency and can't consider chroma. I'm guessing there is no alpha channel present (or white). That would explain it disappearing when you use an Inv Src Alpha/Src Alpha Source/Dest blend. I would use Src Alpha/Inv Src Alpha instead, but that's just personal preference in most cases.
Oddly the latter works but the former doesn't. It does have the undesirable result, however, of making the object exceptionally pale, though that can be tweaked I guess.
Hmm, I've noticed that paleness too recently, and opted for Inv Src Alpha/Src Alpha without thinking at the time. Thanks for sharing that bit of info .
