Mesh-part textures should support alpha channels

[Player1unknown]

Um what…

[MapleMarvel]

This would be such a useful feature.

Dear Roblox staff, why not just add a checkbox in the mesh properties that will allow developers to toggle on alpha transparency. That way, this can be done on a per mesh basis, and won’t bog down your system. How do other game engines solve this problem?

[glurbman (Don)]

The year comes slowly to an end and yet I still have to put a decal into a special mesh just to get a simple customizeable color gradient for my Hair meshes ?

All we need is simple Alpha channel support for meshpart textures, that’s it.
Even if it probably isn’t that simple to implement, it’s still one of the most basic features of most common Game development engines.

Even the PS1 game “Soul Reaver 1” supports alpha values for its simple ancient textures.

[TheRings0fSaturn (SaturianNightmare)]

Even Quake 2 had alpha-channel support.

It can’t be that hard to implement, but then again, I haven’t done very much in visual languages other than drawing a cube.

[Player1unknown]

Idk roblox is really behind on some features sadly, which can be quiet annoying and set developers back.

[TheRings0fSaturn (SaturianNightmare)]

I mean, normal maps, alpha maps, all of that is possible for most computers built after 2010.

Not developing features because of a specific platform can’t run it is kind of silly in my opinion.

I mean, come on. You can run Doom 3 on ultra on a potato.

[Player1unknown]

I know. It sets so many people back but they won’t do it.

[Yozoh]

It’ll be nice if Roblox could support alpha channels. Please!

[MapleMarvel]

@zeuxcg

This feature request is on our radar but the issue is that there are several different requests that people usually bundle into one. Case in point, the original request here is for something very distinct from what Ripull mentioned in this topic (there’s also a third type of request, to have materials show through transparent textures on mesh parts, and a fourth type of request, to use Texture objects to be able to have multiple layers, and have all of them UV mapped using the base mesh part UVs).

So we’re aware of this and are tracking this but this is not as simple because everybody wants something different. We need to figure out what exactly we want to ship and how - the request in the original post in this thread can be satisfied in two ways for example (supporting base UV map in Texture objects or showing part color for transparent MeshPart regions when Transparency == 0). Additionally there are some performance implications, the alpha cutout feature Ripull mentions is very much not free on mobile unfortunately, so that’d have to be enabled explicitly somehow.

Would you be able to update us on the status of this feature?
It is such a useful feature, and has been requested many times, and so I am hoping it is still in your roadmap.

[MapleMarvel]

My use case for this is that I would like to apply textures to a character’s body parts and allow the body part color to show through the transparent areas of the texture.

[MapleMarvel]

As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to use textures with transparency on character parts or MeshParts.

This has been requested in the past, but in a more general way to apply to all MeshParts. This request is more specific in that the request is for MeshParts that make up a character model. My use case is that I would like the body part colors to show through the texture areas that are transparent.

For example. I have a custom character model consisting of MeshParts. A short sleeve shirt mesh is part of the mesh, and has an image texture applied. My goal is to have the body part color show through, such as the arm color, where the shirt does not cover the arm. The shirt texture is transparent where the arms are, and has a color where the shirt is.

If Roblox is able to address your issue, how would it improve your game and/or your development experience?

This would allow developers (and Roblox itself) to build character models in which the body part colors show through the transparent areas of the texture. That would make it so much easier to support character models with different skin colors.

Reference:
This is a really good answer of how things are currently done, and how difficult it is to work around the current limitations.

Any Way To Have Body Colors Show Through MeshPart Texture?

There’s no way to do it that’s not an expensive hack. It’s done on regular avatars by pre-compositing the clothing graphics on top of the skin color, and then applying that to the character Meshparts as a single opaque texture. To use that pipeline, you of course have to make your body parts use the default Shirt uv mapping, usually only an option when your character parts are similar to regular Roblox avatar parts, and with of course you lose texture resolution when it makes the character compo…