Maya - map outColor to transparency

kruxus · Apr 2012

Hello,
I'm trying to create a layered Material in Maya, mapping the RGB channels from a mask to the the transparency channel on each layer (much lika a "splat" texture in Unity). Problem is it seems like only outTransparency can be connected successfully to the transparancy slot. When I export the RGB channels of the mask to separate images it works fine (using luminance as alpha, and connecting from outTransparency).

I could work around this for this project, but I feel like it would be nice to understand how this works, anyone has a clue why this doensn't work with outColor?

Thanks in advance!

Warheart · Apr 2012

There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to connect colour into a transparency slot. The only thing I can think of would be that you can't connect a single colour channel to an attribute which expects 3. e.g. you can't connect "outColorR" to "transparency", but you can connect "outColorR" to "transparencyR", "transparencyG" and "transparencyB" which might do what you're expecting.

Other than that it might be to do with the particulars of the nodes you're using. It might help to post a screenshot of your shader network.

mdeforge · Apr 2012

What type of Material are you using? I'll try recreating the problem here. Layered Shader?

Are you using Mental Ray?

Yeah, a screenshot of your shader network would great.

Maya - map outColor to transparency

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