Jan 2014
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Jan 2014
Jan 2014

Hi,

I need to reveal an object using an animated transparency map. Unfortunately, the mia_material_x shader that is key to the look and feel of the object, does not seem to support transparency...unless I am being thick/blind. Might anyone have a solution for this?

Thank you kindly

The map should be connected thru the connection editor ...OutColor R to Mia Transparency or the cutout transparency depending on the look you are after...hope it helps

:slight_smile: Thanks Damaggio. As it happens, shortly after I posted I noticed the cutout option. Which worked ok, but following you pointing out that the transparency channel is in fact there in the connection editor, I have since connected to that and found a slightly better result. However, I with both those solutions as well as the two together, I find I have a new issue. My transparency/cutout map is animated. If I render in the maya renderview, it works great. If I render individual frames as a batch, it works. But when I batch render the whole sequence, the map fails and the entire object is visible. Any ideas how to get around that ?

I'm sorry, but I do very little animation, my work is mostly concept, I have no idea why it fails on the entire batch, my only suggestion would be trying different file formats for the transparency, a Tiff ,Targa or even a .map mental ray file.
Best of luck.

Thanks Damaggio. I tried a few formats. I think the issue is that the map is being camera-projected, and the renderer doesn't like it. I'm baking it out and hopefully that will solve it.