"reusing" projection nodes among different "maps"

[JasonA]

Ok I think I got it figured out, although it took a bit of fiddling and I might have cheated a bit (in the way I made use of the in/out connections in the projection node). Gas, btw the "grey" I was talking about was actually just specular highlight cause I used a blinn. When I turned those down, it worked like a charm :) kinda glad you asked this cause I learned something new in the process (now I'll have to go back and simplify a few of my own models).

If anyone can suggest a better way to pull this off, I hope they post. While this works, it was a slight pain in the butt to set up.

What I did was setup a scene with a plane and a random cube below/behind it (simply to show the transparency). I went and created a blinn, and applied it to the plane. Then I created a 3d projection for both the color and transparency slot. Also in photoshop I created a goofy color and transparency map for the sake of the example.

http://home.attbi.com/~prwsjl/setup.jpg

Ok I went into hypershade and deleted one of the projection nodes and opened the connection editor. Then I basically investigated what in/outs I could use going through the projection node. You have to use the connection editor to do this, no cntrl-MMB dragging here... anyways, here's what I came up with:

http://home.attbi.com/~prwsjl/hypershade.jpg

note that I ran the color map through the projection1.image in/out and I ran the transparency map through the projection1.alphaGain in/out. The wierd part was that for the alpha output connection from the projection1 node, I had to connect them individually to the transparency R,G, and B of the blinn transpaency input... I dunno why Maya makes me do that but whatever... Also, I only used the on 2d placement node for both maps. Anyways, did a test render and got this:

http://home.attbi.com/~prwsjl/render.jpg

So, I think this will work for you. Oh and I almost forgot... dont forget to parent your place3dtexture1 node to the part you're projecting on (in the outliner) or else your projection will slide off your model when you animate it. Anyways, I zipped up the mb file and you can download it if you wanna check it out yourself. Good luck!
gas_test.zip (http://home.attbi.com/~prwsjl/GAS_test.zip)


:arteest:

[gas]

man, you really went into this. Glad you learned something couse you just SAVE MY NIGHT and tomorrow at least, works like a charm and my 70 files will go down to about 15 after a figured out a way to cheat/bake them but EXELLENT... the zip was nice, allways great to have reference...
Im not that good a friend with maya textureing yet but I see enormous potential for those clever/hardheaded enough to take a big bite from it..
Again, THX Jason A......hope to repay the forum tenfold in the near future...

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