UT2004, Translucent Actors Problem

[Ulukai]

Ok, so I'm trying to get a player model to display at a particular frame of a particular animation as a translucent mesh.

Two problems here, first I can only get the default pose - i.e. hands outstretched, not good for what I'm doing. Secondly, setting Display -> Style -> STY_Translucent still leaves me with a solid mesh.

I've copied an intro_gorge actor from nvidialogo.ut2, removed the AI script, set my mesh to be one of the malemercs, (which works ok), but I'm stumped as to how to get translucency to work or how to set the frame and animationset.

Any thoughts?

[Dalai]

STY_Translucent no longer works on meshes.

*Pauses to shake fist at whoever was responsible for this.

Instead the translucency works on the texture. You have to build a shader up out of the original mesh texture and assign that to the mesh. Now imagine doing that on every player and player weapon/attachment.. yes, that's what was required to get the lightgem working in 2k3/4 instead of just a simple DrawStyle = STY_Translucent. Couple that with the lack of dynamic lights in 2k3/4 and you'd think someone at Epic didn't like me.

I guess to set the frame, you're going to need an AIScript with the ACTION_PlayAnim with the rate set to 0 and start frame set to whichever frame you want. Check out the wiki for more info on setting up scripted actions on pawns if you haven't played with it before.

[Gingerbread Man]

I spent a while looking around things to see if I could at least offer some horridly naive advice like "look at this and see how they did it" but then I got hung up on the actual requirements...

Am I right to think you're after a regular pawn that, for example, goes translucent if it stays in a still crouch? Or during a frame in a hit anim? Or have I missed the point entirely?

[Ulukai]

Worst case scenario, I want an actor (not necesarily a pawn) displaying a player/pawn mesh at a particular frame of animation, whilst being translucent. (Like the Statue in TH-Grange, except that's solid and using the old engine)

Ideally, I want to script a pawn through some frames of (existing animations) whilst being translucent.

Dalai has given me some food for thought there, I can knock up a translucent shader and use it to create a new texture for the mesh in the materials crasher editor , which should give me translucency. The animation frame is going to be more 'fun'. I shall go play with scripts and things.