Total Max Noob Questions

JVaughan

Too many years of Maya, what can I say? I am trying to get a couple of things displaying in Max 9 properly, but I seem to be stuck. First, I want see my .tga's alpha inside the Max viewport, so far when I change the settings in the bitmap it doesn't seem to display correctly. Second I want to see the combined effects of vertex alpha and vertex color, I haven't bee able to get that to work right either. A little help would be highly appreciated! Thanks.

Ruz

this little tutorial should help for the tga alpha
http://www.cglearn.com/tutorials/max3/13_mapping_coords_still_life_part_3.html
not sure about displaying vertex alpha, not even sure if you can.

To display vertex colours, you have to go the display rollout and check vertex colours and shaded
if needed

Sage

to display your alphas you have to do the following

Step one load your diffuse I'ma assuming you have your alpha in your texture.

go under bitmap in your diffuse slot, turn off alpha

make a copy of this to your opacity slot, yes make sure it's a copy and not an instance. go to your opacity turn on alpha, to either straight, that's usually what I set it to. Next set mono output channel to alpha. Back out of the bitmap options and turn on the show in viewport button (blue button with checkers on it). Hope that works for you, that's what I do and it works fine.

JVaughan

It isn't that dissimilar to Maya after all, the advice is a big help, thanks Sage and Ruz. If I get clearance from the potential employer I'll post up the results. Thanks again.