Alpha Transparency and Diffuse Colored Translucent Look Material Preparation for LE2 and LE3
Firstly I would like to thank Padme, ThaliaGrace, Munchfly, and Khaar for helping me on this material madness of a journey. Also special thanks to Padme for giving me permission to use her Padme's Cabin Additions and Memorials (LE3) mod to show example pics of how alpha transparency and translucency materials work with static meshes.
If you’re someone who ported Sims stuff, then chances are you’ve come across meshes that are actually painted on, then you either had to do uv editing or gave up because it was too much work. Or perhaps you have a mesh with perfect lace diffuse but you don’t know how to make it work in the game. Or maybe you just wanna take advantage of the alpha layers’ powers to turn the mesh into your wished shape. Like making leaves from a rectangle. Maybe you just wanna do a see through outfit, a colored transparent pic frame. There are a lot of things one can do using alpha layers or just diffuse/colored translucency. In this guide I'll be showing you how to use the materials so that you can make it happen. There will also be preparation of 4 pccs, 2 for each game, that contains the prepared materials. So that you can just clone it from the pccs and maybe change some settings to your liking if it’s needed. For anyone who wants to just get the templates i prepare in this guide, you can download them from here then skip the creating the pcc sections in the guide and read the parts for scalar and vector parameter values to understand what the properties do.
Let’s start with the Alpha transparency for le3.
Let’s first open Legendary Explorer Nightly from ME3Tweaks.
Then open Package Editor from the Core Editors section, then once it’s opened click File-> Create new -> New empty package from it like in the pic:
Make sure you choose LE3 and click ok. It will ask you a name. I would suggest calling it something like BIOG_ALPHA_ or just something that contains ALPHA in it so that you’ll know what it does. Then save it to a proper folder for it so that you don’t lose it later on. Now that we have an empty package file we’re gonna start cloning stuff into it. For that let’s go back to Legendary Explorer and open Asset Database from the Utilities section.
Firstly let’s make sure you’re in the LE3 section from the database menu.
If this is the first time you’ve opened the Asset Database, then it will need to create a database. That might take 10-20 minutes depending of your installed mods and your pc speed. Once that is done we can finally start searching for the stuff we need to clone to our new pcc. Now let’s go to the Materials section at the top and search "sushi" on the search bar at the top right and click to Placeable_Trans_MM that comes out.
You would see a list of stuff coming up in the usages section on the right when you do that. We want something that is in the base game and not related to any other mod file so we’re gonna right click on pcc that is shown in the pic and choose open usage.
When you do that, this will open up:
What we need is the Sushi01_MAT that is below the one selected. So we’re gonna put our new pcc and this one that is opened up side by side and drag the Sushi01_MAT to our pcc. Make sure you drag it on top of the BIOG_ALPHA.pcc that is at the top. The name could change depending of what you gave it. It will ask us how to clone it, we need to choose Clone all references.
This is how our pcc should look like now:
While we need the material, we actually won’t use its own diffuse, spec, and normal files so we’re gonna clone them from elsewhere. The reason we’ll do that is because Sushi material has a tendency to show the diff in very low quality unless it uses a diff file with bc_7 format which is a much better compression type. We also want spec and normal files in proper quality so that alpha doesn't show weird artifacts and such. High quality of the actual file we’ll import and the format of the place we’ll import into is one of the most important parts of making an alpha material work right. So I would also suggest up-scaling your diffuse file along with its alpha layer if it’s not at least 2k, though 4k is much more preferable in this case as well.
So since we’ll clone other files into it we’ll make our empty folder inside the pcc. For that let’s right click BioApl_Dec_Sushi01 and choose clone.
This will make a new empty folder for us.
Now let’s fix its object index and rename it. First let’s choose 1 on the object index and change it with 0 then choose the Object Name and rename it to something like “ALPHA_” this way when you clone it from this file to another, you can add the name of your mesh and such to the end of the name and make it unique. Once you write the new name click enter, then a new pop up will come out.
Press OK then save all the changes by clicking the button at the bottom.
There is one other setting you need to change on the new folder and that's the forcedexport on the ExportFlags. So make sure to untick that like this:
Now that we have a new clean folder, let’s carry our sushi material into it and rename that one as well. To carry the Sushi01_Mat, choose it then click on the Link on the right side and choose the new folder we made. Then save it like before and you’ll see that it is carried over.
Let’s change the name of the material like we did before so it will be more unique. I would suggest calling it something like ALPHA__MAT. That way you can put a more unique name between the _ _ later on. I would suggest carrying the Placeable_Trans_MM file from inside the BioApl_Dec_Sushi01 folder. No need to change the name of that one since we won’t be doing any changes to it. So in the end this is how your pcc should look like:
As you can see from the BioApl_Dec_Sushi01 folder we need a norm, spec(msk3), and a diff file. So let’s go back to the Asset Database. This time we’ll go to the textures tab. Let’s write Detail_Norm_01 to the search bar. Only two textures will come out. We need the one with the 2048x2048 one.
So let’s click that one, if it’s not already clicked and you’ll see there are two SFXGame.pcc files come up in the usages side. Let’s right click to the first one like before and choose open usage.
This is how it will look:
Now let’s clone the Detail_Norm_01 into our pcc, inside the new folder we made. Choose clone all references when it asks. Let’s do this cloning again. Because we’re gonna need two of them. So this is how our folder in the pcc should look like afterwards:
Let’s choose the first one. We’re gonna convert this into a diff file. Let’s first change its name to something like ALPHA__Diff, so that you could add your unique name into the middle like before and save it. Then let’s go to the properties section.
Since this is originally a normal file we need to change some settings to make it a diff file. First let’s choose the SRGB file and make it True from the top. So choose True and press Set.
Then we need to change the CompressionSettings. So we’re gonna select it and change it to TC_BC7.
Afterwards we need to change the LODGroup to TEXTUREGROUP_Character_1024.
Ok our diff file is ready. Now we’re gonna check the other normal file. We’re gonna use that as our new normal file so only thing we need to do is to change its name. So let’s call that something like ALPHA__Norm and save it. Only thing we need right now is a spec file. So we’re gonna go back to the Asset Database. While we went with BC_7 format for both diff and normal files, we’ll go with DXT5 for our spec file. This is because the spec file might have some issues with BC_7 format.(Thank you to Khaar for this info.) For this spec file we’re gonna use the Spec file of N7 dress. So in Asset Database, first we’re gonna make sure we’re in the Textures section then search “cthk” in the search-bar. A lot of stuff will potentially come out in the textures section. So make sure to scroll down to the selected one in the pic:
In the usages section make sure to right click BIOG_HMF_ARM_CTH_R.pcc. Then choose open usage like before.
You’re gonna see something like this. Then drag it to our newly made folder in our new pcc like before and clone all references.
Make sure to rename it to something like ALPHA__Spec afterwards. Your pcc should look something like this now:
Now that we cloned everything that is needed we’re gonna start changing the settings of the alpha material so that we can use it properly. First thing we’re gonna do is to link our new textures to our material. So select the Alpha material and make sure to choose the Properties section on the right. We’re gonna start modifying the TextureParameterValues section first.
We need to make sure our new texture files are referenced here. Click the arrow next to the NormalMap which will expand the section. You can see the ParameterValue which points to the old Norm file. That is the section we’re gonna change. Click on it and you’ll see section come up at the top with a Set button.
Click on the drop-down and choose our new Norm file from the list. Then make sure you set it. Do the same for spec and diff files. For the reflection cubemap, we’re gonna set it to class so it doesn’t affect anything. This is because we don’t need a cubemap for our material. Cubemap would make it unnecessarily shiny. This is how your TextureParameterValue section should look like right now.
Before we move to the ScalarParameterValues section let’s go to the Binary Interpreter section from the top sections.
As you can see uniformexpressiontextures sections still shows the other norm, msk, and diff textures. We need to change them as well. To do that click on 4th entry, the one that shows the norm one and you’ll see a number with Set section come out at the top. (If it doesn't come out, then first click uniformexpressiontextures then re-click the norm one.) This is the index number of the original sushi material norm. Check the index of your new norm on the tree view at the left.
As you can see the one we want is 21. So replace 3 with 21 and press set. Do this for all the others. The order does matter so make sure they’re all replaced with the right ones. This is how they should look afterwards:
Now let’s go back to the properties and to the ScalarParameterValues section. There is only WhiteRange in this section. I have tried this in its original value 500 and with 0. I haven’t seen any difference between them. So i would suggest putting something like 50 there as value.
Before we start checking out the vectorparametervalues, make sure that "show color wheel" is enabled like in the pic:
Now let’s start looking into the vectorparametervalues. As you can see there are 3 different items in this.
The colors you will choose in this section depends on what you want your mesh to look like. If you just want to use this material like a regular one and show a matte look that uses your own spec texture to give a different effect then just set them all to black. You can do that by clicking on the color dropdown and selecting black like this:
But maybe you wanna take advantage of sushi material’s reflection effects and want your mesh to look shiny and reflective.
CubeMap_Mixer basically affects the shining aspect of the material. The darker it is the lesser the shine is. So if you were to choose it fully black then it won’t shine at all and it won’t show the reflected color either.
Reflection color changes the color your diff reflects. I would suggest choosing the Simple Specular Color similar to the reflection color you chose to enhance the look a bit.
Example pic of a usage of Alpha material when you choose all three of the colors black:
You can see how the alpha layer works after all the work we’ve done and how it looks matte due to the colors we choose. Now let’s see how it looks when we try some shining/reflection stuff. For this one I chose MediumVioletRed from the standard section of the color selection for both Specular color and Reflection Color. For the cubemap mixer i chose the same color but then i went to advanced section and made it a bit more darker. This is how it looks in the game:
So if you want to use the reflection look i would suggest tinkering with different colors and find the one you like which would change depending of the actual diffuse color. But for the new pcc purposes i would suggest setting them all black so that you can change the colors after you clone the new ALPHA_ folder we prepared. You don’t need to worry about the old sushi texture files in the pcc since we disconnected them from our material. So the next time you wanna use Alpha material look for your mesh you can just clone ALPHA_ from our pcc to your new one and clone all references. The old textures won’t follow you there. Picture of how a lace diffuse works with this material:
Picture of how a static mesh works with this material (Thank you to Padme4000 for giving me permission to post this, mesh belongs to Padme's Cabin Additions and Memorials (LE3) which i highly recommend)
As a final note I would also suggest using tga 32bit to save your diffuse files. Though you should stick with png for spec and normal files.
This is how the LE3 version of the Alpha material works. Now we will start working on the LE2 version of the Alpha material.
Let’s start with creating a new pcc file like before. Make sure to choose LE2 this time when it asks. Let’s call it BIOG_ALPHA_ like before.
Now it’s time for asset database part. We need to switch to LE2 database.
Choose the material section and search DebrisShip01_Girders_mat. Only one material will show up.
On the usages part let’s right click 102Village one and choose open usage.
Now let’s drag the selected material to our new pcc, clone all references, and save it.
Your pcc should look like this:
Now let’s clone BioApl_Ind_DebrisShip01 so that we can create a new folder like we did with le3. Then like before we’ll make the index 0 and change the name to ALPHA_. Don't forget to untick the forcedexport on the ExportFlags like this:
Now that we have a new folder we’ll move our new material to it using the Link and rename it to ALPHA__mat and save it. As you can see from the Materials folder this material only uses Norm and Diff textures which is a disadvantage if you needed a spec texture, not an issue if you just wanted a matte look though. So if you need armory/leathery look a spec would give, then i would suggest to separate the parts that need the alpha layer to another material slot on blender or whichever 3d modeling program you use. That way you can have it both ways. Going back to textures at hand, if you were to check the properties section of the norm and the diffuse you would see that norm has the pf_bc5 format and the diffuse has the pf_dxt5 format. While the format of the norm is good i would still suggest cloning a pf_bc7 format for both of them. So let’s go back to the Asset database, this time for texture cloning. Let’s choose the Textures section at top this time and search AmmoCase. You’ll see three textures come up. We need the norm one since it’s bc7.
Let’s click on the Norm one and right click on BioD_Arrvlvl3_00.pcc that is at top and choose open usage.
This should open up:
Now we’re just gonna drag the norm file to our new ALPHA_ folder. Choose clone all references when it asks. Drag it twice so we’ll have a file for both normal and the diffuse. This is basically how it should look now:
Let’s start with the first one. First we’ll change its name to ALPHA__Diff from the metadata section and save. Then we’ll go back to the properties part.
We need to change the compressionsettings and the lodgroup like we did for le3 stuff. So click on the TC_NormalmapBC7 and choose TC_BC7 then set. Then click on the lodgroup and change it to TEXTUREGROUP_Character_1024 one. Now we’ll change the SRGB to true. Our diff file is ready. For the normal texture, all we’re gonna do is to change the name to ALPHA__Normal then save it. All that is left now to link our new texture files to our material. As you can see there is no section to do that from properties that’s because this material uses only the Binary Interpreter section to do that.
We only need to change the Norm and Diff indexes here with our new ones from here:
This is how it should look like afterwards:
And that’s it. You can now use this material for Alpha stuff. Here is pic of how the material works in the game:
This concludes the ALPHA material guides for le2 and le3. Now it’s time for the translucency stuff.
While the alpha material for both games work quite well for the visibility aspect of the alpha layer, it does not work for the translucent part. So you cannot use it to give low opacity to some parts of the diffuse through the alpha layers. The materials i will be talking about also does not use that aspect of the alpha layer. But it gives us a way to handle the opacity value of the whole texture through the material.
Let’s start by creating a new pcc like always. Make sure you choose LE3 when it asks. Let’s call it BIOG_TRANSLUCENT_. Now we’re gonna go to Asset Database for LE3 and search for our material. So make sure you’re in the le3 database, go to material section, and search for “me3_transparent_mm-costics”. Only one material will come up. Right click to the first one like in the pic and choose open usage:
This is gonna come out:
Right click to the material and choose find references:
It should show this:
Double click the material that came up and it should lead you to it.
This is the material we need to drag to our newly made pcc. Make sure to choose clone all references when it asks. The look of our new pcc:
If you check the properties section of the textures this material uses, you’ll see the normal has bc7 format while the other have lower format types. So we’re gonna use this normal and a variant of it as a diffuse with some tweaking and clone the n7 material spec for our new spec. Let’s first rename BioT_Citadel_Int folder into TRANSLUCENCY_. Don't forget to untick the forcedexport on the ExportFlags like this:
Then take the diff file outside through metada, link section. If we choose Class through the link then it will be taken outside. Now let’s go back to our norm file. Before we do anything let’s go to its **properties **section and choose None on the MigGenSettings which is currently TMGS_Sharpen7. This is so that our norm or diff doesn't have unnecessary sharpening.
Now let’s clone our norm file so we’ll have two of them. Just right click it and choose clone tree. Now we’re gonna start renaming them and preparing the diff file. Let’s go back to the first norm on our tree and rename it to TRANSLUCENCY__Norm and save it. Now we’ll go to the second norm file and rename it to TRANSLUCENCY__Diff change its index to 0. Now we’ll go to the properties section to remove any normal settings. There are 3 settings to change:
Let’s change SRGB to true, CompressionSettings to TC_BC7, and the LODGroup to TEXTUREGROUP_Character_1024. Then save it. Our diff file is ready. Now we need our spec file so we’ll go back to the Asset Database for LE3, go to textures section and search for Cthk. Choose this one:
Right click to the one in the pic and choose open usage.
Now we’re gonna drag the spec file it shows us to our **TRANSLUCENCY_**folder and clone all references and save it. Then we’ll rename our spec file to TRANSLUCENCY__Spec and save it. Our material file is still in the root folder so we’ll carry it in our folder and rename it. We’ll carry it through the link section on the metada like always. Then rename it to TRANSLUCENCY__MAT. This is how our folder should look like now:
Once that is done we’ll start linking our new textures to our material. Let’s go to the properties section of our material and expand the textureparametervalues. It currently looks like this:
Now we’re gonna change the diffuse and spec with our new textures. No need to touch the normal file since that’s already properly linked. For the rest of them we’re basically gonna expand them all and change the parameter values to our stuff. Then we’ll go to the cubemap and make it null by changing its parameter value to 0 Class. This is how it should all look like now:
Now we’ll open the binary interpreter to change the texture values there. This is how it should look like:
We’re gonna change the last entry with our Diff index. How it looks after we change it:
Now there are two other values that need to be changed, those our 1,2, the distortion and the water caustic one. Those two give a water effect to the diffuse which we obviously don’t want. The distortion one can be made null by setting it to 0. Unfortunately the water caustic one becomes a ball of light when we make it null or if we link it to a fully black texture. Thankfully there is a way to trick it. We’re gonna go back to our Tree view on the left and clone our diff. Just right click to it and choose clone tree. Then change its name to SMOOTH_FX and make its index 0. Now we’re gonna open our favorite paint program whether it's Photoshop, Gimp, or Paint.net. What we’re gonna do is to create a new 128x128 black image. Then we’re gonna choose a solid brush type and make its size 1 pixel. For color we’re just gonna choose a grey color. Then we’re gonna go to the top left of our new image and paint one dot there. So it will look something like this:
Then we’re gonna name it something like smooth_fx_drop and save it as png. Now that we have an image to import we’ll go back to our pcc and go to the texture tab of our SMOOTH_FX file. We’ll press import from file and i would also suggest choosing package stored for this one texture since we would always use this one for it.
Press OK and choose our newly made texture from the explorer to import then save it. Now we’re gonna have to link it on the binary interpreter of our material. So we’re gonna change the index of the distortion one to our new image index. This should be the final look of the uniformexpressiontextures section:
Now that we linked everything we can go back to the properties and expand the scalarparameter values.
We’ll leave the base mat tiles as they are, since we don’t wanna change or do any tiling of the texture and this makes it use it as normally. Spec_Pwr doesn't seem to affect much but i would suggest setting to 0 to avoid any unnecessary effects. **Opacity **is the most important parameter of this material. Since it’s basically the reason why we’re using it. The lower the value is more see through your mesh will be. So just try different values and see which one matches your wishes for the mesh best. Now let’s move to the vector parameter values section.
Diff_tint is basically the only value that could change depending on how we want our mesh to look like. We’re gonna set the other ones so that they don’t affect our mesh and make it unnecessarily shiny. For that we’ll set Spec_RGB_Chooser and Spec_Color_Intensity to black color. SpecIMGColor_Intensity could stay as it is. We’ll also change the Cubemap_Color_Intensity to transparent color. Now let’s talk about Diff_tint. Diff_tint as the name suggests basically tints your diffuse with a chosen color. If you wanna tint your diffuse you could choose the color you want from it. But since we’re already using a diffuse we could just make sure our diffuse has the color we need. So if you just wanna use the color your diffuse already have then set it to transparent. This how your values should look like:
An example of a how the mesh looks with opacity at 0.8:
If you just wanna use the material for basic color opacity, then i would suggest importing a fully black image for spec and fully smooth normal for normal. The hash for normal color is 8980ff.
Material allows us to do some pretty cool things with gradients using this material. Tops are done with the alpha material, the skirts are done with the translucency material.
Picture of how a static mesh works with this material (Thank you to Padme4000 for giving me permission to post this, mesh belongs to Padme's Cabin Additions and Memorials (LE3) which i highly recommend)
Now let’s see how we can make colored translucent material work for le2.
LE2 version of the material is a bit different because it doesn’t work with the diffuse opacity, it only has a normal texture and VSR color values.
Now let’s start with creating a new pcc like always. Make sure you choose LE2 when it asks and let’s call it BIOG_TRANSLUCENT_. Now we’re gonna open asset database and make sure we’re in the LE2 database section. Then we’ll switch to the **Meshes **and search for “ASA_HGR”. Then we’re gonna select this:
And right click to this pcc and choose open usage:
This is the material we need to drag and clone all references to our new pcc:
Let’s right click and clone this so that we can create our own new folder:
Once that is done let’s make its index 0 and rename it to TRANSLUCENCY_. Don't forget to untick the forcedexport on the ExportFlags like this:
Now we’re gonna carry our material and the norm file in to the new folder. Let’s choose our material that is at the root right now and link it to our new folder. Then we’ll need to rename our material. So let’s go to the metadata section and rename our material to **TRANSCLUCENY__MAT_1a **and save it. The norm file we need to move is under here:
So let’s carry that under the new folder like the material and rename it to TRANSLUCENCY__Norm and save it.
Now that, those are set we can start looking to the material properties.
Textureparameter is already set, the reason why we didn’t clone another norm file like before is because the format of this norm file is bc5 which is a high quality one.
So we can start checking the scalarparameter values. Let’s start from the bottom. Fresnel Control Scalar is something that gives a white effect on the mesh corners and such. The difference in pics:
So i would suggest setting it to zero unless you want that kind of effect for your mesh. Cubemap intensity also makes things unnecessarily shiny, so I would suggest setting that to zero too.
VSR_Opacity is one of the main parameters we need to use in this material. Like in the le3 version it changes the opacity of the mesh. The lower the value is, the more see through your mesh will be. So just try different values and see which one matches your wishes for the mesh best. Distortion is also likely give an unnecessary effect on the mesh so let’s set that to 0 as well.
Now let’s move to the vector parameter values:
As you can see there are two different values. Make sure your settings for color wheel is enabled:
If we were to give these colors to vsr_colour items:
The outfit looks like this:
This shows that item1 VSR_Colour_01 which is the bottom one in the vector parameters sections is the primary color giver of the material, while the top one changes the color of the outline of the mesh. If you give the same color to both then you can have a fully smooth colored mesh with opacity, but it’s up to you to choose the colors as the way you want it.
Another thing you need to know that, the colors we choose for the visors items don’t look as exactly the same in the game. They sort of turn into more diluted versions of them. So make sure to make them a bit more darker to get the right results in the game. You can tinker with different values to understand the process a bit better.
Now let’s go back to the Norm file this material uses. Originally this is the norm file the material uses:
Which could be useful for a visor but obviously it’s not useful for us. If you wanna use this material for just color translucency then what you need is a fully smooth normal texture. So basically open your preferred paint program like photoshop etc and make a 1024x1024 new black file. Then on the color wheel make your color to hash 8980ff value. Then choose a paint bucket and drop the color on the texture. Then just save it as a smooth normal texture which can be used for future stuff. But if you wanna use it to give diffuse patterns for it, that’s also possible. What you need is to create a very detailed normal version of your diffuse, like if you’re using the photoshop filter->3d->Generate Normal map to create your normals, then choose the detail value like 100. Here is how it looks with a Dodgerblue standard color selected for both visor color values, and with a detailed normal:
If your normal doesn't look well, you could try upscaling your texture before creating your normal. You could also try different normal values to get the best look you want.
There is also another way to do this, which is to import blue tinted version of your diffuse. Which might be a better way to get the pattern of your diffuse to the mesh. This is how it looks with the blue tinted diffuse imported on the normal file for example:
It doesn't change the mesh but gives the pattern to it which might be what you want. I would suggest tinkering with different patterns and such to get the hang of the material.
This concludes all the materials i wanted to talk about. In the end we have 4 pccs with newly made folders inside to clone to our own pccs. I hope this guide was useful. Have fun trying it all out!