Ability to have a material visible underneath a surface apperance that is set to overlay

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to customize my meshes without uploading a lot of textures, I want to have the ability to customize the underlaying texture under the surface apperance.

the problem when i try to change the material of the parts of the mesh that is is actually transparent :

when i set it to transperency the mesh becomes transparent, and when i set it to overlay it only gets the color and not the material

what i want to achieve:

the surface aperance with on the transparant background an aplied material and color without using a new mesh
I sometimes ask what the point is of overlay if you cant see the material underneath it?

Here is a better example of what i meant by Ability to customize a mesh texture under a transparent Surface apperance ,

Mesh with transparent surface apperance:

The changable texture example:

like you can see, i cant seperate the mesh in 2 because its too complicated for this mesh, and its consuming to keep using 2 meshes on each others, with the one with transparent surface appeance and the other one visible with the texture i want

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my experience using the forum because Without the feature the textures in my game will reduce dramaticly, and its not practial at all to keep oploading for each background and collor another surface apperance.

With the feature you will need to just make one surface apperances and 2 materials that you can use everywhere, instead of making for every material and color i want for that mesh a new surface apperance

the points
  • reduces amount of materials

  • faster workflow, time saver

  • no need to upload for every material that is laying underneath a new surface apperance

  • praticly easier to use

EDIT:
new point that should be added for material service:

  • rotatable texture per part

  • sizable texture per part

21 Likes

ah yes, very clever solution,
so we dont stick with uploading textures for each materials we want, you can only shoose between transperency or overlay, but whats the point of overlay if it just keeps the places that are actually transparent just white without the ability to see the material under the color?

4 Likes

yes youre right i really need them to add it his feauture,
i am making something on blender and already textured it on substance painter
i have a barrel with rust texture
but i want to be able to change its color and texture

1 Like

but is this the right place to post it?
but anyways, I agree wih you, roblox needs a feature like this one

1 Like

sorry, i couldnt find a better place to post it, because studio features is only for regulars sadly, and no one can become regular this time

Here some examples of what I was working on:
the surface apperance,

the differend material and colors,

i want to be able to combine surface apperance with the custom materials
so i dont waste time making a texture for every color.

6 Likes

how could we get the atention of the roblox staff for this?

You can try messaging post approval (I think) or really any staff. Sucks that nobody can become a regular because ideas like this need attention.

This needs to be added so I don’t have to hog down my games loading speeds just to add dozens of underneath textures for separate colors and materials.

5 Likes

i tried messaging, but they dont read it, and if they read it, they give me some solutions that arent helpfull

4 Likes

it just frustrates me how we just cant ask for a roblox studio feature,
i am happy there are some people out here who needs this feature to be added to , so roblox can more likely add it

5 Likes

No yeah, this would be useful. Well I personally don’t have any use cases for it right now (not making much super complicated stuff yet, though would probably be super useful)
But in all reality, this and the option to specify non-changing colors in the texture, would be amazing. Support.

2 Likes

just wanted to add, seams like there is a bug with material service, when i set a material to organic it shows other textures or even glitches to a dvd surface like texture,

This is already possible, albeit a bit convoluted if you don’t have the requisite experience with using alpha masks in Substance or Photoshop.


These mecha all share the same set of PBR textures and are recolored using the underlying part color. The diffuse texture is semi-transparent on the main recolorable part of the texture with some dark and discolored splotches for aesthetic variation, while the edge wear, rust and decals are opaque. The SurfaceAppearance is set to Overlay, which preserves the underlying color and opaqueness of the part. This method works when each SurfaceAppearance is dedicated to a single primary color, but obviously won’t work with multiple recolorable parts (you just split each color into a different mesh and texture map, as I did for the 4 colors on each robot).

It’s a bit of a clumsy solution, but it fully works for the purposes you need it for.

4 Likes

The problem is that if you have a texture in the materialservice, you cant apply it underneath the surface apperance.
because like you said i can do this :disappointed:
image
but if i wanted to change the texture from that even palsticlooking matertial to for example stone, i need to make another surface apperance
thats what is annoying me

(or maybe i didnt understand youre post)

1 Like