Alpha channel not showing in engine

[Aba]

I've made a model with 8bit alpha TGA texture and compiled both.

VMT is:

"VertexLitGeneric"
{
"$baseTexture" "colonyship/topdomesheet"
"$model" 1
"$translucent" 1
"$nocull" 1
}

QC is:

$modelname "topdome.mdl"

$cdmaterials "ColonyShip\"

$staticprop
$surfaceprop "metal"
$scale 10.0

$body studio "ColonyShip\TopDome"

$sequence idle "ColonyShip\idle" loop fps 1

$collisionmodel "ColonyShip\TopDomePhys.smd"
{
$concave
}


The entire texture looks 100% opaque in Hammer, Model Viewer and the Source engine itself. I also placed an existing model in the map(one of the pine trees) to see if it's a hardware problem but the alpha on those works perfectly on that tree.

Plz help. I think there was a way to use a seperate vtf for the alpha but I can't find a tutorial.

 

[Aba]

Ok I've been playing around and it looks like "$alphatest" 1 works, but that's only 1 bit transparency. Am i to understand that 8 bit transparency doesn't work on models? Jagginess is the suck.

 

[Dodo]

what about "$alpha" 1 ?

-dodo