Got really confused by the tutorials. I thought it should be as easier as few clicks, could some body help to clear few questions?
Ok, you could have 8 material for a object, right? I hope that I don’t need that many for the tree alpha texture, my guess is one 32 bit tga should do it, right?
If so, after I put this 32 bit tga on a plane object, what else needs to be clicked in order to see the cookie cut effects?
Also, how do you render a tga image to your own folder please?
Hi xiang,
for best results use either a 32 bit TGA with Alpha channel saved, or 32 bit PNG with alpha channel saved.
In the texture buttons, load your TGA/PNG, then click the Use Alpha button.
In the material buttons, there is a slider for ALPHA which is set to 1.000 by default. 0-0.600 should give you the required amount of transparency, but 0.000 can produce some bizarre fx.
Where ever you have your .Blend file saved, Blender will create a folder called ‘Render’ This is where all animations are saved when you render them. To save a normal rendered image, select the type in the Render buttons, (below size of render) TGA for example, hit F12 to render.
When the render has finished, press Escape Key, to return to Blender’s GUI, then press F3 this will open the save image window, select the directory you want to save to, enter the file name and always add the file extension for the type of file you are saving,
Example, render1.tga — for Targa render1.jpg – for jepg etc.
Hope this helps,
Sonix.
Thanks for the tips.
I got the saving tga part, but not the cookie cut alpha,
In material editor, it looks like there’s something to do with the “alpha” button on the right side. and the DVar settings. , and may be the “UV” button too. I am sure that I need UV button, since I UV map everything,
I am not sure about “Col” and “Alpha”, both need to be clicked?
Try going into the texture editor F6, there are (use alpha and calc alpha) buttons. You can those to put up eight channels of texture on top of each other. Experiment.
Xiang, sorry I completely forgot about the texture buttons on the right hand side of the Material buttons. Yes turn on the Col and ALPHA buttons. The ALPHA button can be used inversly too, just press it again to make it Yellow.
If you are adding the texture as an image to a material, then you don’t need to use the UVbutton, however if you are UV Mapping the image on to the mesh using the Face window, then you need to press the UV Button in the Material buttons.
Sonix.
in F6, by clicking “UseAlpha”, I could see it works the way I want in the thumbnail next “Tex” button, but in the camera view, it looks a textured mesh without alpha information, might be something wrong with mapping?
Also, would blender display correctly the cookie cut after you “alt+z”?
Thanks all for the inputs, it’s been helpful. All the other tuts are going well, just that textures thing might take me some time. It’s just harder than I expexted.
Xiang, sorry I completely forgot about the texture buttons on the right hand side of the Material buttons. Yes turn on the Col and ALPHA buttons. The ALPHA button can be used inversly too, just press it again to make it Yellow.
If you are adding the texture as an image to a material, then you don’t need to use the UVbutton, however if you are UV Mapping the image on to the mesh using the Face window, then you need to press the UV Button in the Material buttons.
Sonix.[/quote]
Don’t forget the Ztransp button in Materials if you want anything to be visible behind the transparent object!
Thanks!!
You’re very right about that, it seems that you have to check ZInvert too.
Tricky, tricky, tricky,
no no no, that’s a completely different thing.
Martin
Thank you for point it out.
I will try more exercises to find out what’s really going on.
At least it is kind of working for me at the moment.
no no no, that’s a completely different thing.
Martin[/quote]
oh, I guess it might have been a good idea to mention what Zinvert really does don’t you think? 
Zinvert tells Blender’s renderer to inverse the Z-buffer value for the specified area (the area covered by the material). Basicly, that means that the area is now in front of those that where hidding it, and behind those that it was hidding.
mainly used for optical illusions and that kind of stuff.
Martin
I recently discovered the Zinvert button and it’s effect on particles
check out this recent anim
http://bellsouthpwp.net/p/h/phrangkk/splash_beach.avi
divx 5.05?
Thank you for pointing it out. Good to know!!
If you want to get the alpha of the texture to affect the material, go to the material, set the alpha slider (on the left) to 0, or some low number, then click the Alpha button on the right, and put the val slider (very bottom right) to 1.0 or some high number
Thanks.
I will open a new question about alpha texture. Have a look if you are interested.