Full use of alpha for animated textures?

[SickAlice]

I think I phrased that right? Anyways for example I'm making use of an animated texture to emulate movement. We'll say it has two steps so two textures. Two parts of the 3d model are mapped to different sides of the texture. On the first texture only one part is alpha'd on, on the second texture it's aplha'd out and the other aplha'd in. Thus the piece appears to be animated even though it's really not. Easy enough. However I want this whole piece to only visible at all for one skin. When you change skins I don't want the piece to visible at all. It seems this would be as simple as just using the alpha channels on those textures so that the model is hidden the whole time yet it isn't. The model is instead fully visible. I'm assuming another value needs to be added to the properties of said mesh/node but do not know what that is?

[Cyber Burn]

Unfortunately, I'm more of a visual person, I comprehend better when I can see what I'm talking about. As such, I apologize if I'm not understanding your question as clearly as I hope I am.

My understanding in regards to Animated Textures has always been that only the "Standard" Skin of a Mesh can use them. Any other Skin attached to that Mesh will still use the "Standard" for the Mesh piece in question. So if you wanted to give, for example, Captain America, an Animated Texture for his Shield, then the "Standard" Skin will have that Animated Texture. However, if you had a second Skin in the "Skins" directory, let's say, USAgent, then I think the Shield for USAgent would automatically use the Animated Textures from the "Standard" Skin, but the "Male_Basic" part of the Mesh would use the USAgent Skin.

I think...

[hoss20]

Cyber is correct regarding the mesh only using the animated texture from the "standard" folder. I have a USAgent skin folder with the mesh I altered. I put the new art files in that folder with a USAgent shield, but the animated Cap shield from the "standard" folder is the one that showed up.

I'm using Cap_Shield01.tga and Cap_Shield02.tga as my animated texture files. I tried to alpha out the shield in the USAgent folder by altering the original Cap_Shield.tga that is still referenced in the original NiTexturingProperty, but the NiFlipController takes precedence and the animated texture from the "standard" folder is still showing.

[SickAlice]

Okay. Yeah your right. I always forget the bit about the standard directory. Sucks that the animated texture variable has to be so rigid considering how many doors it can open. I'm going to scrap it then, luckily it was something as garnish but not essential to the work. I wanted to give Luigi a Propeller Costume alt but that's hardly a defining mark of his character.

[hoss20]

I found a way to make this work. I think it will work for you because you mention a propeller effect. There is also a way to animate a texture by using the NiTextureTransformController. It allows you to make the texture scroll (up/down or left/right) or rotate. This is what I used on my Tempest skope that I had mentioned to you in another thread. In making a skope for my avatar, I wanted to see if I could use an animated texture for a drool effect. When I tried to piece it together, I couldn't get it to work, but when I copied and pasted the node from my successful skope, it worked. I couldn't find the thread that mentioned doing this and I honestly can't remember where I read how to do this.

I was able to get a spinning shield for ol' Cap that I'll send your way. I was able to alpha the shield in the USAgent folder and it doesn't show, so hopefully this might work for you.