Shader/Alpha Texture Help

[legacy-WiseMissioN]

I have a working shader that has colored alpha dots to give the illusion of a glow.

In the DIFFUSE slot is a normal solid texture.

The OPACITY slot is blank.

The SPECULAR slot has the alpha texture which is a DXT5.

Is it possible to have the alpha texture fade in and out so basically you only see whats in the DIFFUSE slot, then both the DIFFUSE and SPECULAR, then back to just the DIFFUSE slot/solid texture, and keep repeating in this way?

[legacy-WiseMissioN]

Maybe the post was a bit confusing, but another way I believe would be to switch between two alpha layers, have one visible and one invisible, and switch off between the two every second.

[ShredPrince]

Elaborate please, and are you doing this in photoshop, or the Unreal Editor Texture browser?

[legacy-DOOMHAT]

materialsequence!

(or whatever the sequence thing used for level previews is called, im not on a win box atm)

[legacy-WiseMissioN]

The problem with a materialsequence is it cannot keep one solid material to always display. It cycles through so I made two shaders to get the "background" to always be displayed. I added the background in as the first sequenceitem slot as MSA_ShowMaterial to get it to stay. If I ignore this and try and make one or both of the shaders MSA_FadeToMaterial there is brief moments of a completely white fill. That was the workaround.

I want to have 3 sequence item slots. The first is just a simple texture with no alpha. I want this image to hold as the first alpha texture is displayed over it, then fade to the second alpha texture as the background image in sequenceitem slot 0 remains.
I tried working with the Fallback Material and even making a new MaterialSwitch texture instead of a MaterialSequence.

(Using photoshop and Unreal editor)

[Angel_Mapper]

Material Sequences aren't very well supported as far as alphas etc.

[legacy-WiseMissioN]

Yes I agree with you AngelMapper. I had to make the shaders as a workaround, what should I look into instead of MaterialSequences?

[Angel_Mapper]

I haven't really experimented with fading alphas, so I have no clue.

[legacy-chavez]

Have you tried it with an animated texture?

[legacy-WiseMissioN]

No chavez, what I did not understand about animating textures is for instance on a fluid surface, how the water is seen on top above the water. Then when you go underneath and look up towards the water surface... sometimes no water layer is shown and sometimes there is a varied layer from the top surface with different opaque levels. Not just a simple tick of two-sided, but a completely different look.

[legacy-Apophis3d]

Most of the water and textures like your wanting to do for unreal are a series of more than one texture layer combined within unreal ed to give the illusion of moving or fading in and out.

Check this link out on UDN not sure if you have or not I know alot of people over look this site for help.

Texturing Topics (http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/TexturingTopics)

[legacy-chavez]

Combiners with TexPan or TexOscillators is not what I mean by Animated texture:
Take a look here
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Animated_Texture