Help with object mesh/texture mismatch(?), please

[Bagfran]

I'm very new to object creation (this is only my third attempt), so please bear with me.

Criquette has very kindly given me permission to convert his neighbourhood deco buses to buy mode objects. I thought it would simply be a case of exporting the mesh and textures, cloning a deco object, replacing the mesh/textures and hey presto, new object! But no, not quite...

On my first attempt, this is what I got:

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t88/Bagfran/Misc/BusGoof1.png


Hmmm, strange black blockiness around the wheels and mirrors (which, incidentally, is part of the mesh) that shouldn't be visible in-game. I concluded after looking at the texture more closely (which consists of various components of the bus on a transparent background) that the mesh needed to have transparency enabled, and through following a helpful tip on another forum I managed to do so, with the following result:

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t88/Bagfran/Misc/BusGoof2.png


Oh...it's, well, a bit too transparent now. Is this a problem with the mesh, or texture, or is there some other SimPE magic I need to do? I've had a closer look at the original object and it doesn't seem to have transparency enabled, so perhaps I'm going about this completely the wrong way?

(I realize it's also floating 2 feet above the ground, but I'm sure I can fix that. Oh, and I know that the wheels aren't exactly round, which is another issue altogether.)

I've been following an object creation tutorial from MTS to get this far, but I'm afraid it just doesn't cover these kinds of issues, so I'm really hoping someone can give me some advice on where I'm going wrong, please.

EDIT: sorry, I now realize that perhaps I should have attached the offending package, but I'm afraid I can't do so at the moment as I'm on a different computer; I'll attach it later today, when I'm back on my faithful home PC.

[HugeLunatic]

I'll give you some ideas on the transparency to look. Typically anything transparent needs to be it's own subset otherwise other parts of it will take on the transparency that shouldn't. So the wheels should probably be a subset on their own. I have found that the bohemian bed from AL is a good example of this because it has transparent parts on the mesh with solid parts, and it uses slavesubsets.

The height you simply need to adjust the mesh based on the height of your cloned object in your 3d program.

[Bagfran]

Ahh, I think I see what you mean - thanks, HugeLunatic. :up:

I'm just really puzzled, as the neighbourhood deco version seems to work fine without any transparent bits, or subsets (I think, although I could just be too noobish to have noticed them...)

I also currently have no idea how to add a subset (and the idea scares me a little, I must be honest) - but I've found a tutorial here on MTS by IgnorantBliss, which I shall attempt to follow!

Oh, and yes, I'm sure I can get the height off the ground correct by doing just as you say - I just wasn't going to bother until I knew that I could fix the other problems. :)