Can I use a texture map to create transparency?

[chippwalters]

I notice in the General material, there seems to be some settings for Alpha, but I don't seem to be able to generate transparency based on a black/white map. Is there some way to do this? TIA, Chipp

[chippwalters]

It appears I can do this by using a General map, and loading a PNG with an alpha channel. General will take the alpha from the PNG to create the transparency.

Is there any good documentation on how the General Material settings work? Or, any good tutorials?

[guest84672]

It is documented in the manual. We don't have any tutorials. The general material will be phased out shortly, as soon as we add transparency, alpha and specular maps to all other materials.

[rkulshrestha]

Hi Thomas,

All said and done I got hooked to Hypershot after going through the bunch of video Tutorials they had out. Keyshot may be easily understood by pro's, but as it gets more complex, newbies will have difficulty embracing it. All of us don't understand Alpha channels, bloom etc.

Video Tutorials is the stickiest form of marketing for Keyshot.

[Robert V.]

I don't think that will be a problem. If the really difficult settings come along, perhaps Keyshot will include 2 mode's: Quick-mode and Advanced Mode.

[guest84672]

I am talking about the general material. We have plenty of tutorials for KeyShot, and more coming:

http://www.keyshot.com/keyshot/training.html

[Ikiri]

I'm having problems achieving transparency. I'm trying to render a 3d globe. I've got a sphere in Keyshot and am trying to project an alpha-map (JPG or PNG?) onto it. In my image file, landmasses are black and oceans are white. (Of course, I could invert this if necessary).

But when I select the "general" material & load the JPG into the specular or texture channel, both the black & the white parts appear in the render.

How can I get the black (or white) parts to become transparent?

[guest84672]

Did you check "modulate texture"?

[Brian Townsend]

Also, here is an approach that uses the advanced material.  If you apply a texture with alpha and make the specular transmission all the way white with an IOR of 1, that will work like an alpha map. The IOR of 1 is to control the amount of light distortion as light passes through the material.  The value of 1 is equal to air, which will result in no distortion. Then, you can go to the 'labels' tab and apply the same texture with the same mapping coordinates and scale to work as your color map.  Here is an example scene and image.  Hope this helps!



Brian