Odd transparency with a Layered Shader

[dberry]

Ok I'm worrking on basically putting decals on top of a basic blinn shader with some noise put in the ambient color field to give it some variation. The decal is a tif file with an alpha channel layred on top of the base. The wierd thing is that even though it has a fully white and black alpha it still doesn't go transparent all the way. You can still se some of the white BG on the lettering that i'm trying to get rid of useing that alpha channel. So my question is how do i make that white bar go away completly instead of just somewhat transparent. the lettering is opaque but the BG is not fully transparent. Help is greatly appreciated.

[NitroLiq]

Not quite sure if this will solve your problem or not but I helped someone awhile back get a decal w/transparent bkgnd onto a coffee mug and posted a step-by-step in this thread:

http://www.forum.simplymaya.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9073&highlight=label

Mike also has a tut on layered shaders at his site, http://www.mtmckinley.net/ in the "other" section.

[dberry]

Hey, Thanks for the link and i followed the step by step exactly, but it's still giving me that semi transparent white bar. I'm not sure what i can to to fix it. Any ideas?

[NitroLiq]

In you original decal image, the letters/numbers should be totally white and the background completely black. That's the only thing I can think of offhand.

[dberry]

I found a tutorial online also about layered textures instead of layered shaders and It's given me a little more promise but still there's a discoloration between where the image projection stops and the normal texture begins. I've attached the basic file and the image i've been using so you can see how my shading network is set up. If you can figure anything out it would be wonderful.

[NitroLiq]

Not sure. Here's another tut that may help you:

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/layeredtexture/

[dberry]

that's the one i followed yet still i get that weird discoloration. Did you get the same effect nitro? Hopefully we can figure this out.

[NitroLiq]

Yeah, I looked at the file but to be honest, it's been quite awhile since I've worked with Maya so I'm not positive if it might be something missing on our both out parts.

[NightPhantom]

Sorry, I tried, but you are using polygons, and I only know how to texture NURBS... I'm not very familiar with the whole UV mapping deal.

[dberry]

it's not a matter of Uv's is it? I mean I sized the projection to fit in the area where I want it but I think it's the transparency that's the problem. though i could be wrong.

[NightPhantom]

Well, I noticed that most of the UVs are ouf of the image, so that makes me wonder what color are they? I mean, black is transparent and white is opaque, when texturing with NURBS I use the 2DPlacement note to center the image, but that leaves a gray border around it (assuming that I had to resize it down). so then I can go to the file node and change the offset color to black (or to white depending of what I'm trying to do).
But with the UVs in polygons I don't know how that works. I mean, is the area outside the image gray? Why don't you try changing to NURBS and doing it like I do, or try creating a black square (512x512) in photoshop and put the image that you want right in the middle of it and then have all the UVs within the picture. Also, I would separate the alpha and then actual picture. Create two files, one for the color and one for transparency. I usually do that because in the past I've had some truble getting the alpha channel to work right (or I don't have much control over it).

[dberry]

Well, I figured it out. Thanks for all the help guys. If anyone is interested in how i did it i'll give the answer here. It turns out that in the file node you have to go to color balance and change the default color from gray to black.

[NitroLiq]

Glad to hear you figured it out. Congrats!

[macleodgrant]

i spent ages trying to figure this out now and eventually managed to sort it.
why maya has default colour to grey is anyone's guess - took hours to resolve