Animating transparency in a particular direction
 

Anyone know how?
Thanks

use a black and white ramp

In the transparency map node?

something about facing ratio too

what do you mean by 'in a particular direction', that could means lots of things

vague questions get vaque responses ;)

Like from left to right on a cylinder. Like a lightsaber switching on.

yeah plug the ramp into the transparency and key the set position.

Nothing happens, when I mess around with the ramp and render it shows the flow of transparency. But in the actual scene nothing happens, nor does anything happen in a playblast.

umm... so it works then.


word

Only when rendered and not in the actual scene though.

Some things will only show up (or be transparent) in the render, but I'm not sure if this is one of those situations. Have you tried hitting 6 and 7 to see if the texture/lighting helps?

I don't think Maya likes to display transparency if done through a gradient, or any other type of texture, in the viewports.

As long as it works in the render you don't have anything to worry about..

cheers,
Chris

i'm pretty sure there is a setting somewhere that you can enable the alpha in hardware texturing, which makes it show up in the viewports
i just dont remember where such setting is.
i think i saw it on the gnomonology eyeball tutorial how you do it