alpha maps in maya

Nizza_waaarg

hey dudes, was just reading through a thread from here and didn't wanna necropost it.

I've got my regular diff, nrml and spec maps setup and i just added an alpha channel for a little bit of hair on this dude. It makes the proper alpha area transparent but it also makes everything else kinda see through

does anyone have a straightforward method of getting tranparency/alpha maps working in maya?

edit: just thought i'd mention the maps work fine in marmo (and im guessing unreal) its just hard to place my geo in maya when i can't tell what's going on

r4ptur3

I had this same problem -- here's the solution:

first, make sure polygon transparency sorting is turned on. This makes it so every object's transparency is based off it's pivot. The closer the object's pivot is to the camera the higher it's rendering priority is. If two objects with transparency intersect each other it will attempt to render the transparency a little more like you would expect it to (instead of doing a quick multiply).

If you are working with hair I would recommend centering each card's pivot and making sure every card is a separate object. If you combine all your cards into one object it will try to render the alpha based off one pivot and it will not work.

The drawback to this method is having many objects on the screen with alpha that needs to be calculated. If you are using large maps for your hair it will need to load that texture for every card and quickly suck up your RAM (especially if you are in HQ rendering mode).

It'll tax your computer, but you will be able to place your cards a little easier. Hope this helps!

Nizza_waaarg

cool, thanks for teh help r4ptur3. At least i can get these polys laid in

MikeF

thanks for bringing this up, i was just having the same problem this moring