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Transparency on a plane with transparent PNG

his.royal.ducknesshis.royal.duckness Posts: 38
in New Users

I'm wondering if it's possible to create a plane primitive, assign a PNG with a transparent background and have the plane itself become transparent to match the transparency of the surface image? I tried just a basic render of this and the background took the white color from the Diffuse Color settings and I couldn't figure out how to turn that off. Oddly enough, when I rendered the image, the original background that was set to transparent in Photoshop came though in the render... Maybe I didn't prepare my PNG correctly? Or maybe I need to apply some B&W mask on a different surface setting on my plane?

Comments

  • SofaCitizenSofaCitizen Posts: 1,918

    You can't do that directly with a PNG but if you use that to make a black/white version and add this to the cutout map then it will work

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,302

    you can use layered image editor to do it

     same image in cutout opacity

    invert in LIE and add a layer additive blend inverted

  • his.royal.ducknesshis.royal.duckness Posts: 38

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    you can use layered image editor to do it

     same image in cutout opacity

    invert in LIE and add a layer additive blend inverted

    Thanks for the response! Sorry, just now getting around to trying it out. Took a bit of tinkering, but I looks great! 

    For anyone else attempting this, here's what I ended up doing.

    • For Base Color, I added the png with the transparent background
    • For Opacity Cutout, I opened the LIE and added the following:
      • Layer 1 (from the top) - the png with transparency, Blend Mode is set to Additive Blend and Invert (Negate) is checked
      • Layer 2 - png with transparency, Blend Mode is set to Source Over, Invert is not checked
  • Matt_CastleMatt_Castle Posts: 2,594
    Use the (non-Layered) Image Editor, and instead set that to take the Greyscale from the image Alpha. Won't look right in texture preview mode, but will use the transparency channel once you're in Iray.
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,380
    Matt_Castle said:
    Use the (non-Layered) Image Editor, and instead set that to take the Greyscale from the image Alpha. Won't look right in texture preview mode, but will use the transparency channel once you're in Iray.
    That's an interesting new tip I've never heard of. Thanks for sharing it.
  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 7,270

    Matt_Castle said:

    Use the (non-Layered) Image Editor, and instead set that to take the Greyscale from the image Alpha. Won't look right in texture preview mode, but will use the transparency channel once you're in Iray.

     Ditto~  A neat trick indeed ! Thank you !

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,889

    Just shows how little people know about the systems in DS4, that trick with the Image Editor was used on Vicky 8's eyebrows, as they are alpha channeled PNG.

    Studio has always had an issue with alpha channels, it took until the launch of DS3 and the Shader Mixer before we could directly access them for 3Delight, but we still can't directly access them with Iray, not even through the Shader Mixer.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,302

    Bejaymac said:

    Just shows how little people know about the systems in DS4, that trick with the Image Editor was used on Vicky 8's eyebrows, as they are alpha channeled PNG.

    Studio has always had an issue with alpha channels, it took until the launch of DS3 and the Shader Mixer before we could directly access them for 3Delight, but we still can't directly access them with Iray, not even through the Shader Mixer.

    maybe if it had a manual? 

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