AlphaMapper

AlphaMapper is used to create an alpha map based on a high-poly mesh with the specified accuracy and bake it into the diffuse map in just a few clicks. When alpha test will be performed for a mesh material, the generated alpha map will define which areas are visible and which are invisible and not drawn. It can be used to improveme appearance of grids, latices, thin bars, etc.

Usage

To create an alpha map do the following:

Load a low-poly mesh for which alpha map will be created by clicking Load Low.
Load a high-poly mesh used as a reference for created alpha map by clicking Load High.
If necessary, load a diffuse texture into which an alpha map will be baked using Diffuse Map option.
Set alpha map options at the right side of the ResourceEditor window.
Click Run to start the process. After the alpha map is created, it can be seen at the Alpha Map viewing pane.
Click Save to save the alpha map. If a diffuse texture was loaded, the alpha map will be baked into its alpha channel.

NoticeAlphaMapper is designed to work only within the first UV tile region (texture coordinates [0;1]). Multiple UV tiles are ignored.

Display Modes

AlphaMapper has two viewing panes. The display mode can be switched in the drop-down list in the upper left corner of each pane.

Mesh to display a low-poly mesh.
Alpha Map to display the created alpha map and the loaded diffuse map (if any) applied to the low-poly mesh. In the beginning an empty one-channel (red) map will be displayed.
TexCoord 0 to display the first UV set of the low-poly mesh.
TexCoord 1 to display the second UV set of the low-poly mesh.
High Mesh to display a high-poly mesh.

File Options

Load Low	Load a low-poly mesh for which alpha map will be created (for example, a simple plane). Low-poly mesh Notice You can also load the low-poly mesh by pressing Ctrl+O.
Load High	Load a high-poly mesh based on which an alpha map will be baked. High-poly mesh Notice You can also load the high-poly mesh by pressing Ctrl+H.
Diffuse Map	Load a diffuse texture into alpha channel of which the created alpha map will be saved. Diffuse texture Notice You can also load the diffuse map by pressing Ctrl+D.
Reload	Reload a mesh or a diffuse texture.
Clear	Remove a mesh or a diffuse texture.
Reload All	Reload meshes along with a diffuse texture, if any, and clear the alpha map. Notice You can also reload resources by pressing Ctrl+R.
Run	Create an alpha map that specifies visible and invisible areas for alpha-tested materials. The result applied to the model can be seen in the Alpha Map mode.
Save	Save the calculated alpha map into the texture. See supported formats into which the texture can be saved. There are some options present while saving: DXT5 compression - if a texture is saved into .dds file, it can be compressed into DXT5 format for lower bandwith usage. Notice You can also save the alpha map by pressing Ctrl+S.

Visualization Options

The set of visualization options:

Info	Display information about the mesh that is currently in the viewport. Such data is shown as a number of surfaces, vertices and triangles. Notice You can also enable the option by pressing I.
Compass	Toggle an XYZ compass in the upper right corner of the viewport. Notice You can also enable the option by pressing C.
Triangles	Toggles showing a base grid plane. Notice You can also enable the option by pressing T.

Alpha Map Options

Size

Size of the output alpha map.

Anti-aliasing mode for the output alpha map.

The higher the value, the better thin bars would look. The thinner the geometry and the lower the texture size are, the higher AA should be.


AO without anti-aliasing	AO with anti-aliasing

Supported File Formats

Supported formats of geometry data:

Unigine mesh (.mesh)
Unigine skinned mesh (.smesh)
Wavefront (.obj)
COLLADA (.dae)
FBX (.fbx)

Supported formats of textures:

Targa (.tga)
Portable Network Graphics (.png)
JPEG (.jpg)
Photoshop Document (.psd)
Direct Draw Surface (.dds)
Portable Pixmap (.ppm)
Portable Graymap (.pgm)
High Dynamic Range (.hdr)
Silicon Graphics Image (.sgi)
Tagged Image File (.tif)

Hot Keys

Ctrl+O — load a low-poly mesh.
Ctrl+H — load a high-poly mesh.
Ctrl+D — load a diffuse texture.
Ctrl+R — reload all resources.
Ctrl+S — save the alpha map or bake it into the loaded diffuse texture, if any.
I — toggle mesh info.
C — toggle a XYZ compass.
T — toggle base grid.
G — reset pivot from the mesh to the camera.

Last update: 2018-08-10

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