Wassup with alabaster

[grayman]

Why does this stone texture:

 

textures/darkmod/stone/flat/smooth/alabaster

 

behave like glass?

 

Don't say, "Because that's how it's defined".

 

I expect the answer is more on the order of, "Ooops!".

 

The texture description uses the words "translucent" and "opaque". Can't be both.

 

@Tels, this material has your name on it, so perhaps you know.

[Tels]

Do you mean because the material is tagged as "stone", but looks like milky glass?

 

The material is supposed to be translucent on the surface, but not really see through, due to subsurface scattering https://en.wikipedia...face_scattering

 

We can have this with D3, it is either fully opaque, or 50% translucent (and the thickness of the material block does not affect translucency, as only the front and backface are rendered and "air" is between). So I tried to make it like its that way, and was the best I could come up with back then.

 

See here:

 

https://en.wikipedia.../wiki/Alabaster

 

In thin sheets it is translucent, in thick variations it's opaque.

 

Don't know if we can fix the material, either its translucent (which isn't correct entirely), or its opaque, which isn't, either. Maybe making it opaque, but giving it a lot of shinyness would be better?

 

Or maybe we need two versions, one to be used for thin objects (lamp shade, keys, plates) and one for thick materials like statues? The first one would be tagged glass and be translucent, the second one stone and be opaque.

 

Edit: The version we currently have is used for a key and should be translucent. I think I also made some alabaster skins for statues, these might then use the opaque variant.

[grayman]

Thanks for the details. I used it on a thin statue platform because of its whiteness, and was surprised when it looked like glass. I'll switch to another material, and keep alabaster in mind for elsewhere. I checked existing maps and didn't find any use of it in brushes, so I didn't have any previous uses for reference.

[Tels]

You could try textures/darkmod/stone/flat/smooth_marble_white_shiny

 

Do you want me to make an opaque version of alabaster?

[grayman]

No, that's okay.