Hair Texture Problem

M3anBONE_sj_

Hello, everyone.
I need some texture mapping help with my model. If you look at my model's hair, you'll notice the white blocks at the ends of the hair polygons -- how do you remove this or make it transparent? I tried looking at a few sites on how to texture map hair but none of the sources I looked at fully explains the actual process for Adobe Photoshop and Maya - was more generalized than anything. Some help with this problem would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Rwolf

Depending on the file type, and rendering systems there are those diffrent techniques.

One would to make a Alpha channel in the RGB layers, Another is to create a new layer in photoshop, Delete the background layer, and paint on the transparent layer. (You should have a checkerdboard background indicating transparency)

IceWolve

Find some tut that tells you how to load alpha maps into the program you are using.. best i can do for ya

Ramucho

poops got one on his website, don't really remember if it covers the alpha mapping basics.
well Check yourself:
www.poopinmymouth.com

Steve Schulze

The easiest way with Maya (and probably most other apps) is to go into the channels panel (theres a tab to access it on the layers one)in Photoshop and add a layer. This is your alpha channel. Now simply colour in the bits of the hair you want to disappear black and leave the rest white and you're good to go. Save the file as a Targa and load the texture into a colour shader in Maya. It should automatically load the alpha channel into transpareny and all will be good. Except that it'll probably look horrible in your viewport, due to an alpha mapping issue in Maya that Alias never seem to get around to fixing.

Daz

Photoshop

1) right click one of your colour channels>duplicate channel>name it something like 'alpha'. This is now your transparency channel.
2) edit it as you see fit
3) save the file as a 32bit .tga

Maya

Slot the texture into your material. It should display the alpha just fine. If you look at the material properties you will notice it automatically slotted the same material into the transparency channel.

M3anBONE_sj_

Thank you everyone for responding. I managed to get the effect i'm looking for to occur, so now i'm in the process of refining my model. Thanks everyone for your help. Much appreciated.

I'll be using this new technique on my previous model. It was a problem i never addressed before but will due justice to hopefully improve it.