i’m trying to rework some of the cep ice placeables for use in an area i’m designing. the models i’m modifying to start out with are zlc_fky_b37 and zlc_fky_f20. these use the textures tti01_icefloor and tti01_iceclear.
i want to increase transparency, in order to get them fairly transparent, because they’re a bit too much like white rocks for my taste. i’ve modified the transparency on the textures themselves, but that changes nothing. i’ve also played w/the alphamean values in the .txi files accompanying them, but still nothing changes.
does anyone have any suggestions ?
[NWN 1.69, not using nwmax]
thanks
In the model trimesh node if it doesn’t have the line alpha 1.0, add and alpha line to the node and adjust value from 1 down to zero. I would start alpha 0.5 and adjust accordingly. This should adjust the transparency of the model node.
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brilliant. thanks, cervantes, that’s got it. 
EDIT : wellll… mostly. 
i’m still not entirely satisfied. i’d like the texture to have some sheen to it. i seem to remember reading someplace that ‘shiny’ and ‘transparent’ qualities are mutually exclusive in models. is this true ? if so, how did bioware get the ‘crystal coffins’ at the end of the OC to be both shiny and transparent ? [tile examples : tdm01_v04_01.mdl, tdm01_u07_01.mdl] i see the alpha in these is 1. however, the texture does have an alpha layer, and regardless of the model’s alpha setting, there are parts of the model that are completely transparent.
i tried playing around with the texture to make it look a bit more… ‘icy’… but it just ended up looking like ice-coloured mould on a plastic coffin. 
i also tried changing the model’s ‘shininess’ characteristic, eventually bumping it all the way up to 100 [it’s at 26 in these models, and i’ve most often seen it set to ‘1’] – still no joy. the newer wiki says that shininess requires a .txi to work correctly, but googling around hasn’t gotten me anything specific about what to put there.
so, can i have both translucent and shiny ?
You will have to create a environmental map then add it to your txi which should look like this:
envmaptexture [your environmental texture name]
alphamean 0.365
So in short you have the object should have a texture, your environmental map texture and a txi.
Use the tileset example you gave it has a tdm01_crystal01 texture, a environmental map texture tdm01_ref01, and a tdm01_crystal01.txi.
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sorry for the prolonged silence, @cervantes. real life reared its ugly head for a moment.
many thanks for all your help, i was able to get something i liked.