Blend Material Question

MAX2010_64

I am using a Blend material and I'm getting muddy looking results and I'm not sure why.

Here's an example.

Material1 is a PNG of a blue logo with alpha channel.
Material2 is a PNG of gray rivets on a white background.
Mask is an instance of Material1 set to use the alpha.

You would expect that if you were using the Mix Amount spinner, you would get muddy results since the two materials are blended together. But if you are using the Mask option (and the alpha is perfect B/W)... you would expect more of a compositing effect where the blue logo is vibrant and the white rivets are vibrant. Yet what I am getting is that the whole combination is muddy... not vibrant.

If I uncheck using the Mask... only Material1 is shown and it's vibrant. Yet when using the Mask, things get muddy. The alpha is perfect... I checked. The blacks are pure black, whites pure whites, etc. I have tried ticking every combination of Premultiplied, Alpha as Gray, etc.

Does the Blend material just not work when trying to use it in a compositing mode with the Mask?

Thanks!

OK, I found the solution.

The Mask needed to be a Copy... not an instance of Material1.
Material1 and Material2 both need to have alpha OFF.
The Mask needed to have alpha ON and Mono Channel Output set to Alpha.
The Mask needed to have the Output Inverted (not sure exactly why this is).

Once these settings were in place, the composited result looks vibrant as desired... not muddy.

Thanks!

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