Alpha mask ?

#1

is there a way to paint an alpha channel in mudbox?

like that in BP 3D

#2

all layers in mud are transparent…
or did you mean a transparency in the viewport…?

#3

Or do you mean painting a mask that exists on a layer, like you can in photoshop?

  • Neil
#4

hmmm
I was thinking in layering textures or patterns let say
fill a paint layer1 in mudbox named “metal rust”, add another paint layer2 named “painted metal” and fill it with another texture and create a third paint layer3 “dust” and mask the third and second layer so it shows the textures below
I suppose using the erase tool on layer3 and layer2 will generate transparency in each layer, is that correct?

does MAYA mental ray will respect this transparency or will need a grayscale image to see the transparency on a map

#5

maybe you are overcomplicating this? when you create a new layer it is transparent by default and the layers below are 100% visible. It’s only when you start painting you “cover up” the layer below. If you use the erase brush it will remove the paint in the selected layer and what is in the layers below becomes visible again.
When you load the textures in max / maya it understands and uses any transparency saved with the textures.
Hope this helps.

#6

Yes. The only complicated bit is that once you erase stuff from a layer, it’s gone. You can’t add a greyscale mask like you can in photoshop, and paint in the mask to add or remove stuff from the layer non-destructively. Hopefully this will be added in a future version of the program.

  • Neil
#7

try to save a .fbx file and take a look at the shader in maya…
there should be a layered shader with same look as in mud…

#8

soulburn

yes will be great to add that function inside mud

Oglu
I will try that tonight and see what is coming to maya the situation in mud is this
I have like 8 UV-TILES in MUD among 10 objects and like 3 channels (diffuse,spec,bump) per object and inside each channel I have 2 or 3 layers per channel

I want to see how mud will generate all the maps, I suppose the main starting decition for mud will be to generate the maps based on the UV-TILES and from there genrate maps from difrents channels and even layers

have you guys done this?

thanks

#9

After testing how mud export textures based on layers, channels and UV-TILES

UV-TILES takes precedence

if u export from mud using separate layers per channel maya creates a shading network using
a layered texture node for each layer in a channel, with this method maybe is better to adjust
the shading network because te textures does not look like in mud

if u export from mud using flatten layers, there are no layered texture node of course

maya also generates a material node per each UV-TILE the object have

I saw the TIF files must be re-saved as non compresion to render in MAYA

the only thing that disapointed me is the smoothed shaded geometry back to maya

#10

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