Ablility to see vert alpha in max for levels

kamiliyon

Is there an option to see vertex alpha in max (not the vert colors it shows but it actually alphaing out, like haveing a dirt poly over a grass poly and having it transition) for texturing levels either in the viewport or when rendered.
Any scripts or soemthing out there rather than seeing it in an editor? Much appreciated.

peace
Kamiliyon

Slum

I'm pretty sure this is impossible natively in Max, but with Ben Cloward's ShaderFX, you can do just this.

CrazyButcher

http://luxinia.de/index.php/ArtTools/3dsmaxFX

I made a shader for max that allows blending with vertexcolor/alpha

mikebart

sweet, ive been looking for something like this too
cheers

kamiliyon

Cool thanks Slum, apparantly its not free but were looking into it.
Thanks CrazyButcher but it only does one texture it seems and i could not get it to do both textures in Max 7 or 9. And the render just shows up grey. Lot closer this time but so far no luck.

Slum

If this is for your own personal portfolio work, you can use the demo version, as it allows enough nodes to get this working.

But, if you're working in a commercial studio, afaik you can't use the demo legally.

CrazyButcher

kamiliyon, are you sure you set the texcoord channels and so on correct. It is a very simple operation, and the shader is very short and so on as well, so not to "down" ShaderFX but getting it for something like that is a bit much (then again if company can just buy who cares hehe)

also directx shaders will never work in the scanline renderer, only in viewport

CrazyButcher

As by request I updated the .fx file, it now contains more code comments, in case anyone wants to do changes himself.

And especially added a second technique. Which blends two materials. Each material consists of 3 textures base,overlay,multiply. All uv mapping channels can be set individually

Eric Chadwick

CB, you're awesome.

Rhinokey

you are definately gettin a donation from me butchers., i havent tested the new one but i gave it to a co worker who says its awesome, i'm going to try it out in about an hour!

thanks again

CrazyButcher

you're welcome,
btw in case you need other "photoshop" blendmodes

http://www.pegtop.net/delphi/articles/blendmodes/

found a very good overview on all of them + code formula for each (however use the mathematical formula for reference, not the "code" in those sites)

as regular arithmetics in HLSL like * + - / are component-wise, you can pretty much straight use the formulas as code.

only if there is a "if" you need to do the componentwise "if" as I did in that "overlay" function in the shader