Hello people I'm having the same problem that Brent had a couple of days ago. I'm trying to get some transparency in my texture map. I read litst's answer but I couldn't make it work. I'm including a picture to ilustrate my problem. If I put "white is invisible" I get a white halo around the letters. (I'm using a Mac)

Here's another picture. The transparecy map is not aligning. They measure the same. Any help would be appreciated... (Infini-d's textures were a LOT more easier to manage, I don't know why they used Ray-Dream's method) Thanks

verlarde, When using layers, the Shader conforms to a UV space that spans the size of your layer (Top = .247, etc). However the opacity mask uses the original UV coordinates that that is why they don't match up. You'll need to make your layer the full size of the object Top = 0, Height = 1, etc. or tweak the texture you are using for a Opacity Mask. Good Luck, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Thanks Eric: What I'm trying to achieve is a decal in the hull of a spaceship. Since I was having problem with my original object (the hull) I thought of simplifying my problem by trying it first on a simple plane. I don't want the decal to be the the full size of the object. I want it to be small (in a corner) but It's really very difficult to place it correctly, no to mention making the transparency to work... I now there must be an easy way of achieveing this... Here I go again comparing it with Infini-D but I remember that it was as simple as saving the texture as a Pict file with an alpha mask. Infini-D 3.5 automaticaly placed the texture and used the alpha channel as the trasparency, anyone remembers...? They lost the funcionality on 4.5 (don't know why) And now Carrara uses RayDream's texture method... Which I know is great for procedural shaders (much more powerful than Infini-D's ever was) but I rarely use them, I prefer Image maps as textures. They also limit the tile option to about 25 and in Infini-D I could tile an image map indefinitely by typing the infinity sybol (the figure eight lying down) any way just wanted to rant..... Could someone pleae show me a picture of how my shader tree should be?.... I'd really apreciate it. To sum it all up like I said: I'm tring to achieve a decal effect on a spaceship (some numbers and spacehip name) in a corner of the hull. I want this texture to have transparency because I want it to be reflective on the rest of the spacehip Thanks again for your time

I can't address your shader tree since I use RayDream, but I might be able to shed some light on your white line around the "white is invisible" issue. A while ago I was playing with transparency maps and had the same problem. It turned out that it arose because I'd made my maps as JPEG's, and the compression scheme caused the white around the decal to be a little off white. My solution was to save the image as a BMP, but if you're on the Mac, select your favorite uncompressed format. I put the decal on the object and woo hoo! it worked perfectly. I hope this helps. Does Carrara have the paint shapes that RDS has?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=288127

Check this link out to see a thread from last May that discussed this very issue....

I just looked at that thread and I dont think thats what velarde was looking for. It took me forever to come up with a solution but I think I finally found it. I say think b/c sometimes in the render room it shows a little white but it never shows up in my renders or preview renders so go figure.

To me this is the most frustrating part of carrara and I am really hoping that UVMapper pro will fix this for me.

Thanks every body I tried a combination of the answers you gave me to find an answer. I tried a BMP as Azchip suggested (I can save it in Photoshop) but Carrara won't acept it because I'm in a Mac. I've tried PSDs, Picts anf Gifs (no Jpgs) and I still get the same result (the white halo) because of the antialising. And The solution of rendering to a higher resultion and then resizing is no good because I'm doing an animation... and you know it's going to take forever to process

The answer is what Eric said ( use the same image as an opacity mask (brent beat me to it...) but don't mess with the settings on the rectangular layer, so I get the same coordinates. I''ll have to mess a little with my texture in photoshop (to get the exact size an position for my model) but i think it's doable. Thanks everybody for the help. Great forum!

Actually Brent's solution is better... That's EXACTLY what I needed. Thanks I just copied the gif.