Alpha map problem in maya

movento

Hey guys,i have a question.I've been working on a model i showed a while ago,and i made alpha planes and an alpha/transperency map for it.i first thought it wasn't possible to view alpha maps in the viewport.This is because my videocard doesn't support "High quality rendering"
But today i opened a model that was on Antony Ward his books cd.and there the alpha maps worked in the viewport on the same pc.So my question is,how do you view alpha maps in the viewport without turning on high quality rendering?

Thanks in advance,
Bram

Slipstream

You have to set up the things you want alpha'ed in your channels box in photoshop, then save the file as a tga, and you should be able to get alpha maps.

rebb

Did you try connecting something to the Transparency Attribute of the Material, and then choose "Combined Textures" in the "Hardware Texturing" Tab of said Material ?

Penzer

On your perspective viewport, try going

Shading

---

> Polygon Transparency Sorting

It should still be showing up even if you are set to "object transparency sorting", but this could solve your problem. Also, as Rebb said, try connecting it to your transparency channel instead of just using a color map that has an alpha channel in it. If that doesn't work, just ask and I can post some jpegs for you

movento

It works now,but i needed to set the texture resolution to 256(in the hardware texturing attribute)but my original texture was 512.any idea how i can get it back to the original resolution ? if i set it to default,it look very pixelated.also,while the alpha maps shows up,it looks like the whole model is flipped inside out.this is when the model parts are seperated,without seperating the alpha planes it looks even worse and the eyes are invisible
here's a screenshot of the problem.

Penzer

Two questions:

1.Does it look wrong when it renders, or only in viewport?
2.You've double/triple checked that theres no reversed normals?

I've never adjusted the Hardware Texturing attribute of a shader before, mine is just left to Default. If you can't display the full resolution texture in viewport, that can be changed in Settings---->Display, insider the performance box.

movento

[ QUOTE ]
1.Does it look wrong when it renders, or only in viewport?

[/ QUOTE ]
i just checked that and when i make a render it looks fine.
[ QUOTE ]
2.You've double/triple checked that theres no reversed normals?

[/ QUOTE ]
yeah,i did that too and that's not the problem.
[ QUOTE ]
I've never adjusted the Hardware Texturing attribute of a shader before, mine is just left to Default. If you can't display the full resolution texture in viewport, that can be changed in Settings---->Display, insider the performance box.

[/ QUOTE ]
i got it back to 512,the resolution in "extra attributes" was set to 256.

Steve Schulze

Thats your typical Maya alpha sorting problem. If you're using Maya 8, theres a setting under "Shading" in the viewport menu called "Object Alpha Sorting", or something to that effect that will fix your problems. If you're using an earlier version of Maya you're pretty much stuck with it.