Hi, I have nebulas made from particle clouds and 3D paint brushes. When I render the image looks fine in Maya, I export it as a jpeg and again everything looks as it should be. However I want to include the alpha channel so I can composite in the background starfield. When I export the image from the render view window as an .iff file and import it into photoshop the brush tool effects are really faint. Is there any way to fix this?
Also another question relates to the starfield. When I render with Maya hardware they dont show up which means I have to render from the hardware render buffer where they do appear. How do I get them to appear in the ordinary render window? I'm using Maya 2009
Most probably what's happening is your brush has quite a transparent look, you won't see this in your renderView per se, since it's comped on black (to check this click on the 'display alpha' button, if it appears dark and grey, your brush has a lot of transparency). You can solve this by selecting your stroke from the outliner--> attribute editor --> click on the brush tab ->> shading --> you should see your transparancy there.. most probably it's close to white, just push it back towards the blacks instead.
About the particles, if they are not showing up in the Maya Hardware renderview, I think you'll have to resort to using the Hardware Render Buffer instead. I know at least in later versions of Maya particles do show up in the Maya Hardware renderview. However do check your alpha channel again though, maybe it's rendering them out as black?
Hey thanks for the tip. Yeah that hardware render issue is a problem, I think I remember checking the alpha but to no avail though I'll try it out. I remember the hardware render buffer working but it was more awkward, but whatever works!
Hmm, I tried lowering the transparency on the tube shading and shading channels but the stars are still faint. I noticed that when I render out the stars with rgb and alpha, I'm just getting the alpha channel for the stars.