Forum: Carrara


Subject: Texture map with alpha.... how?

Nate opened this issue on May 24, 2007 · 5 posts


Nate posted Thu, 24 May 2007 at 7:26 PM

This is pretty basic, but the kind of thing I haven't done in Carrara... have done it often in Rhino...

I need to take a logo and place it on the side of a helmet (helmet is red or whatever) and have just the logo (no square background) appear against the red of the helmet.

I know it involves using a texture map with an alpha channel, but just can't quite get it right.

I'm stuck with using Carrara 4 pro for this series. Carrara 4 pro apparently will not open the newer Photoshop PSD files.... I have tried png files, but I'm obviously missing something... I don't want to get into uv mapping, unwrapping, etc... not necessary for this.

Any simple 1-2-3 steps that may help get this moving?

Thanks

Here's an example (Helmet made in Rhino... rendered in Carrara)


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Miss Nancy posted Thu, 24 May 2007 at 7:49 PM

tiff files also carry alpha (mask) info.



Nate posted Thu, 24 May 2007 at 8:48 PM

Thanks... i was going to delete my message.... which is apparently not allowed.

Found some of Mark Bremmer's great tutorials... just what I was looking for

http://www.markbremmer.com/pages/TutMain.html


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AndyCLon posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 1:27 AM

You can also draw an oval (or square or polygon) on your object in the shader designer and then fill that with any image you want without needing to have a transparent source.

Nate posted Fri, 25 May 2007 at 8:23 AM

Maybe the Georgia logo example was a poor one.
Most of the logos are free-form shapes (not ovals, squares or polygons) that need to loose their background and appear against the helmet color. There are a bunch of these to do for ACC, SEC, and the pros too, so I am looking for the quickest way to get them done.

My problem (basically was either not reading the manual or it isn't there) is that I was trying to put my mask in the "alpha" channel when it should be going in the "opacity mask" layer... duuhhh...  anyway Mark's superb tutorials got my head straight on this. I gotta spend more time with his tuts!

Thanks for the help
Nate


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