This is kind of hard to articulate, so I think the screencap below is probably better than my typing. But basically, when you have a .PNG with some Alpha=0 area, how can you “extrude” that image and have it result in the same stretched out look as when you extrude a Plane with a regular image texture?
(I know there are some work-arounds, such as generating a Curve or Mesh in the shape of the image, applying the image as texture on that, and then extruding it…but I am thinking there might be some simple settings in the Textures Panel to save the effort that that would require.)
If I understand you correctly you try to add geometry with the texture? For this the gray value of the image is used, so you might convert your image for that purposes into a gray scale image and even out the color balance, so you can expect a smooth surface.
Further more this works on the faces and normals so your cube should have enough.
What you probably want is to use a displace modifier, as you want to affect the faces and not the normals.
No, that’s a little bit different than what I meant. See, in the image on the left, the geometry is already applied: it’s just a simple Cube with an Image as Texture on it. But that Image is a .PNG, and its alpha area does not appear to “extrude” as it does when there is no alpha area (such as the cube on the right).
So the goal - in this one example - would be able to have the Cube appear to be stretched out as an oval.
(Yeah, the Displacement Modifier and also a Curve are both viable work-arounds. But if this is possible with the Texture options somehow, that would be much faster and better.)
