Smooth Texturing

[e-anima]

Hi,

i have a scene wih a grass ground. now i want to add some dirty areas around stones etc. how can i make the edges of my textures transparent so that it does not look like i have a lot of cubic fields on my grass?

thank you for your help

[fortner_mike]

Use alpha channel.

[e-anima]

you mean in photoshop? png transparency?
some mate told me that in 3dsmax, it is possible to mix materials with masks.
this is a simple idea. is this so hard to make?

1.) first i have a plane with a grass shader
2.) i select some faces on the plane and assign a lambert shader to them.
3.) then i put an transparant png on it

this does not work.
is it caused by worng uvs ?

here some test render

[fortner_mike]

No, it can be any format of image, maybe except gif, not sure about that. Do you know how to make alpha channel in psd? Do you know how they work? When you have it done, you have to do some shading stuff with hypershade and thats it.

Example:

this is a grass texture.

this is it's alpha a.k.a transparency channel.

Both combined and making a shader in maya and applying the shader to a simple poly plane, you would get to see only the parts of the image that are white in alpha.

But i assume that you want to put one texture on top of another and make one of these a bit transparent for better blending. One guy has already asked this question and you will find answers here http://www.highend3d.com/boards/index.php?showtopic=232605 . The only difference is that he is using a bit different object and different image.

If you have any questions, post again.

[e-anima]

"But i assume that you want to put one texture on top of another"

yes i am trying to put a stone texture on the grass shader from the download section.
never thought that such an easy think is so complex. i

[fortner_mike]

O yeah it must have been deleted by the host. And i don't have it in my pc no more .

Its simple, it seems to me you have some exp so here how it goes:

Make alpha channel for your image in photoshop. Then in maya create two shaders. One with the dirt texture. Other (use hypershade) should have other images alpha connected to its transparency R G and B channels and images color should be connected to the shader's color. Now create a layered shader and drag the shaders into layered shader (you must drag the one with transparency first). And thats about it.

If you need more detailed explanations ...

[joojaa]

QUOTE(e-anima @ 01/01/07, 06:11 PM) [snapback]256136[/snapback]
yes i am trying to put a stone texture on the grass shader from the download section.
never thought that such an easy think is so complex. i

[e-anima]

i got it after reading the complete thread. but its strange that the texture is only correct showed if i use mental ray.

thank you very much

[e-anima]

hmm i got another question. i made a planar projection of the sea ground (marked the faces an planar projected them). then i made an uv snapshot and painted my texture in photoshop and put it in my layered shader. the problem is that he stretches the texture and the black area is goin over the sea ground. (image down)
if i planar map the whole area (sea ground and grass area) make an uv snapshot and paint in this map it works but this results in a mega high resolution map (because i need details in the texture).
isn

[joojaa]

Sounds like you relay want to use a different format then

QUOTE(e-anima @ 01/03/07, 03:51 AM) [snapback]256213[/snapback]
isn

[e-anima]

you mean resolution? or file format?

[joojaa]

fileformat

[e-anima]

and how should that help me to place the texture?