Mental Ray / Transparency
 

Okay, what I'm looking to do is create a black mesh waste basket. My problem is, the color black makes things transparent so the black mesh texture I'm using wont be seen.

If I wanted a white basket or a red basket, no problem works fine, but because the texture I want to use is black, against the black background it doesnt work. I'm sure there is a workaround, any ideas?

I'm using targas. Maya 2008 and I want to render it in Mental Ray.

If that's the case then you may need to adjust the colors to make a separate texture for transparency.

Thanks for the reply GecT. That was one of the things I tried doing. I tried inverting the colors and plugging that into the transparency and I did not have any luck. I think I tried every combination possible, but maybe I'm missing something.

Worked fine for me. Personally, I would just use the mia_material and plug my transparency map into the cutout opacity channel (its in the advanced section).

You don't need to create another texture. Use the reverse utility node. Connect the out color of the texture to the input of the reverse node. Then the output to the transparency.
I don't think an mia material would be necessary for this application. The added complexity and features would probably go unnoticed.

GecT, wow, thank you for that! I will try it first thing tomorrow!

Didn't even think of the reverse node as I don't use it a lot. But I have to disagree about the mia_mat comment. I consider it to be a general shader so I use it for pretty much everything, hence the "personally" preceding my statement, whether jjmacky88 was familiar with that shader or not, it was to let him know the option was there.



No problem. Let me know if it works out.:blush:

Personally I agree.

That's my swiss army knife woot! Ok seriously, I have pies to bake.

I stay away from them as I pretty much stick with software, and do a whole lot of tricks. I find it easier to control it that way. I can also submit it to a render farm without worrying about MR licenses. I also the find mia material more confusing, as well as slower to render.

If you submitting to a farm why would you be bothered about MR licences, surely its up to the company to provide the licences for you to use, IF they want you to use MR, if the company dosent want you to do the bulk of the work with MR then thats up to them, softwares your only option.

It's not that confusing, just spend a little time with it, the results IMO make it worth the little extra render time it takes.

Then again if you use software most of the time it wont really bother you with MR materials anyway.

I prefer to use MR over software, not that I cant use software I just find MR a lot more versatile, without needeing to resort to tricks.

On a side note if its not a mia I generally use blinn's for everything.