Transparent layered texture
 

Ok, I have a yellow ball, with a bright yellow blinn shader. I want to add "DrKnow" to the ball, but I want to use an image. How can I put the image on the ball without having a white square behind the text???

i know how to make the background transparent, but does maya allow transparent gifs as textures???

save as targa (.tga)
it saves the transparency,too

ok, but how do i go about putting it on the ball

probably just make a texture for the ball with Dr. Know on it. Seems like the most straight forward way.

Yes, that is a good Idea, but if i just make a yellow background and put it on a blinn shader, will I still have the blinn effect??? Here is the ball btw.

On A|W site, there is a tutorial for "Putting a Lable on a Bottle"

That's the tut for this situation:)

ok, thanks rage. Ill go chack it out

Look in the online maya docs
 

There is an even easier place to find a tutorial for this, in the online documentation of Maya:

Help -> Tutorials

Instant Maya->Tutorials->Rendering->Lesson 2 Shading surfaces

It has a tutorial that takes a sphere and textures it to look like an orange with the text written on it, and then goes on showing you how to adjust the bump map, spec map, etc.

Thanks man, that helps a lot