Maya Transparency wont display in viewport
polycounter lvl 6
Hey guys!
Ive been working with maya for over a year now, and I am running into a really stupid problem!
Problem A:
when create a Lambert Material and connect a psd with an Alpha layer, it wont connect it to the transparency by default anymore, I have to go manually connect it my self. Then, when everything is connected I look in the view port and none of the transparency is displayed. It renders fine though! So I looked up this issue on the internet, found that I needed to go into the material, Hardware Texturing tab, and select Combined textures for the textured channel. And I can see my view port display properly! but only until I click on something in my scene. then it reverts back to being opaque...
Problem B:
Also, I am getting a weird issue with my UVs : I create a plane and use its default UV as a base to apply my texture. Right off the bat, I see what I want to see: my entire texture atlas displayed on the plane. Then i use the preserve UV function and Move the vertices to conform to the part of my texture I want to map. But as soon as i move on to mapping other planes to that same material in a similar fashion, things get weird... If I go to a plane I previously mapped, all I see in the UV editor is a tiled image of the part of my atlas that i mapped on that polygon. If I move the uvs it simply tiles trough that specific piece of texture...
Here is a link to a screen Shot of my problems : https://www.dropbox.com/s/jz3pau1o6dyr167/UV_Problemes.jpg
I'm kind off at a lost here...
those are all things i never ran into in the past year of using maya daily!
Ive been working with maya for over a year now, and I am running into a really stupid problem!
Problem A:
when create a Lambert Material and connect a psd with an Alpha layer, it wont connect it to the transparency by default anymore, I have to go manually connect it my self. Then, when everything is connected I look in the view port and none of the transparency is displayed. It renders fine though! So I looked up this issue on the internet, found that I needed to go into the material, Hardware Texturing tab, and select Combined textures for the textured channel. And I can see my view port display properly! but only until I click on something in my scene. then it reverts back to being opaque...
Problem B:
Also, I am getting a weird issue with my UVs : I create a plane and use its default UV as a base to apply my texture. Right off the bat, I see what I want to see: my entire texture atlas displayed on the plane. Then i use the preserve UV function and Move the vertices to conform to the part of my texture I want to map. But as soon as i move on to mapping other planes to that same material in a similar fashion, things get weird... If I go to a plane I previously mapped, all I see in the UV editor is a tiled image of the part of my atlas that i mapped on that polygon. If I move the uvs it simply tiles trough that specific piece of texture...
Here is a link to a screen Shot of my problems : https://www.dropbox.com/s/jz3pau1o6dyr167/UV_Problemes.jpgI'm kind off at a lost here...
those are all things i never ran into in the past year of using maya daily!
Replies
With problem A, I've never had that much of an issue with alpha showing up in the viewport, but my workflow involves using flattened .TGA's. Try using those instead and see how Maya reacts. In my workflow Maya detects whether it's a 24 or 32 bit TGA and sets up the transparency connection automatically.
Problem B is a weird one. I was unable to replicate that issue on my end, and I'm using Maya 2014. This one is highly indicative of a video card driver issue, which is why I'm asking what hardware you're using.
I don't think I mentioned it earlier, but i am using Maya 2012, if that makes a difference!
Would you have an idea whether Maya's function to detect 32 or 34 bit and apply the transparency automatically is something I can toggle on or off? maybe its inactive right now?
Thank you so much for your swift reply! ill try and update the drivers and see if it fixes anything!
Problem A: use a 32bit TGA,maybe aswell switch to "High Quality" in the viewport(Maya is a bit iffy with .psd's)
Problem B:In the uv editor,after selecting an object,go to Texture and switch to the actual texturename,you can set a few different options in here aswell,like using the textures actual dimensions etc etc
As far as an option to auto-detect the alpha channel, if there is one I've never seen it. You can always try renaming your prefs folder and relaunching Maya as a easy way to reset the app to it's installation defaults.
It had to do with the hardware Texturing tab in my material. If i set the Texture resolution to anything else but Default. it will take the coordinate of my meshes UVs and tile it according to the resolution i specify... So that explains that!
But this raises an other question, How can i have a nice looking resolution in my view port while i work. I'm not to fond of the inch wide pixels!