CGTalk - Question about alpha map in maya... *urgent*

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tims3d

08-04-2005, 02:13 AM

hi guys right now I'm at process of creating the alpha map for my character texture, I run into one problem. For the alpha map it is going to be mainly for the hair, I placed my hair texture together with face, hands, shoes and some other things all in one texture map. I go in PS and create the alpha, save as 32bit .tga and load it into maya. Though I only alpha the hair area, some of the other parts on the texture map appears to be transparency too, okay so I save the texture again as 24bit .tga and load it into another shader, load the shader into the model again and everything seems okay, the hair with alpha 32bit shader and the rest with 24bit shader. But now this is where the problem is, my model is a girl with pony tail, I have the pony tail with the alpha blinn shader and the rest of the head with the 24bit tga lamber shader, however part of the face texture I want it to have the blinn shinny effect too, and if I use the blinn shader, since it is alphaed, the part of the face will appear to be transparency and look weird, I'm just wondering, what do I do now in this kind of situation? do I just use lamer and create a specular map?

any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks a lot

tims3d

08-04-2005, 02:28 AM

oh btw I suppose I can loader another shader for it but then I will have 4 shaders for one character I suppose that's too many for a game character?

kheemo

08-04-2005, 05:24 AM

tims3d

08-04-2005, 07:06 AM

Hi!

First theres is many way to solve this.. 1 is to create another shader...
but if you want only one shader its also possible .. if the game engine suport it.. (thats another story) You have to do a specular map .. were pure white is 100% shiny and pure black is not .. like lambert shader.. just plug that black and white map into the specular color .. and if your uvs ire unfold properlly I cant see why you would need more then one shader for the whole character..

btw I find .tiff format more reliable in maya

good luck :)

thanks for the reply, I always thought generally people use specular map with blinn shader for the shinny look, didn't know it would work with lamber shader? another thing is that part of the texture that I want it to look shinny is actually the hair on the character's head. Since the hair UV on the character's head is connected with the face UVs. I don't really want to seperate them so I will have no noticeable seams between the face and the hair line because the hair on top of the head is basiclly just exturede faces. So I guess under this situation, the best thing I should do is create a specular map for the 24 bit .tga. Correct?

again thanks for the reply, much appreciated.

kheemo

08-04-2005, 01:48 PM

hey!

sry .. I didnt meant to say that you need to use a lambert.. use a Blinn ..but with a specular map you can control the area where you want it shinny or not .. where your specular map will be black ..the blinn will look like a lambert ...

I work in film industry I alway use .tiff

24 bit should work tho .. altho u dont realy need an alpha chanel within the same image.. I usually take 2 different map .. 8bit should work ..one for color ..one black and with that will be your alpha..(in transparency) another black n white for the specular (plug into the spec color) if u want bump same thing ..

I had a few problems whit the .tga format thats why I switch to .tif

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