Making a model gradually transparent? (material animation)

[Matarael]

Let's say I want my model to gradually disappear when it dies, so not knowing how to do this I added a Geoset Animation piece and animated the Alpha to the geoset I want disappearing.

But doing so just makes it poof out of existence, and I want it to gradually become more and more transparent in the duration of its death animation.

How do I go about and do this?

Many thanks.

EDIT: Wait, nevermind, it does gradually disappear, you just can't see it in the Model Editor. Mods lock this topic please.

 

[Fingolfin]

Wait, wait... WHAT??!!?! You mean that it WILL gradually dissapear in wc3 if you just animate geoset alpha?!
I tried to solve this in a million different ways - usually i use a double material where one is blend and the above one is transparent, then i hide the transparent material and fade the blend one. Same problem with additive materials, i always end up making them add alpha if i want to fade them out. So stupid and wierd that you would have to do that.

Gotta try this out, i certainly hope you are right.

 

[NhazUl]

Only Blend and Add Alpha support gradual alpha change. Yes, it's fine if you animate the geoset alpha and use a linear interpolation. Note, however, that if it' a geoset with a team-colored material, the team color will show during the animation as a solid semi-transparent block, though it will disappear at the same time as the other layer.

Also, always edit the geoset alpha in .mdl format and use MdlxConv, not Magos or MdlVis to convert afterwards. Otherwise the alpha value screws up.

 

[Fingolfin]

I am assuming, that if you animate geoset alpha, you will need a start-mid-end key to make it fluid? or is it enough with start-end?

Anyhow, this was all good news, thank you very much!
You don't happen to know if there are any ways to animate the emission rate of model emitters without having magos crash when reopening? Or if there are any ways to use fixed gravity points (that for instance would pull linked particles in a certain direction) in wc3?

 

[Infrisios]

Start-End is okay as long as you interpolate (linear is usually good).

 

[Matarael]

Perhaps you could simply alpha out the teamcolour geosets before fading out the others?

My model doesn't use teamcolour so I haven't tried this yet.