Whithers Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Hello all, Once again, thanks in advance for everyone's help in taking me from a crawl to walk in the wonderful Houdini. I have a very simple question that's virtually identical to this one. However: 1) I've been having some trouble following all the resources online that were almost entirely done in release 9 (I'm rather disappointed in the Digital Tutors subscription I got ), and 2) I'm wondering how to add an alpha channel (or just a b&w opacity map) to a Mantra Surface material from the Material Palette. I made a bunch of textures I didn't think would need one at the time, though I wouldn't mind much remaking them... To clarify: -How does one best utilize alpha channels from Photoshop in Houdini r. 11? -Alternatively, how do you use a black and white opacity map with the Mantra Surface material from the material palette (I tried Base Color Map in the opacityColor node within the material, but I'm missing something...) Thanks again! ~Whithers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whithers Posted March 16, 2012 Author Share Posted March 16, 2012 Well, I finally managed the opacity map by looking at the material shader builder... seems really simple and dumb of me, now that I look back xD Still curious about the photoshop to Houdini workflow, though... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
masstapro Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 Well, I finally managed the opacity map by looking at the material shader builder... seems really simple and dumb of me, now that I look back xD Still curious about the photoshop to Houdini workflow, though... Can you post an example? I was trying this with the decal shader and it's not automatically reading the transparency from a .til image. ~Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zarti Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 ..To clarify: -How does one best utilize alpha channels from Photoshop in Houdini r. 11? -Alternatively, how do you use a black and white opacity map with the Mantra Surface material from the material palette (I tried Base Color Map in the opacityColor node within the material, but I'm missing something...) .. ( im not in front of Hou and this is not specifically linked with photoshop files , but afair ) 1- any texture vop node by default is set as RGB . you can choose RGBA from that menu and the output of texture becomes a vector4 type . connect it into a vector4-to-float vop and the 4th float is the Alpha channel you can use as a 'mask' for the texture itself or other purposes .. 2- if you cannot find it in the material's UI , you can dive inside the material network and add a texture vop for your self . add a mix vop and put the output of that texture node into the 'blend' input of mix vop . white values make first input of mix vop dominant , while black ones the second input . .cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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