Lace Test - materials vs. lighting question

[barista]

I am trying to render a lace texture on a plane and have it appear fairly realistic. I have had some success, but I have one problem that is beyond my skill to solve.

At first I was just checking to see waht would happen if I applied the texture using the Alpha transparency, without any raytracing characteristics. You can see the obvious problem with that idea above.

I tried a whole bunch of settings that ended up looking like the first image before I finally added ray transparency (I also tried ZTransp, which looked pterry much the same as the second image). While I was pleased that I solved the problem of seing through the lace, it didn’t take me long to realize that is was still casting a shadow as a plane, and not letting the light through in the ‘open’ areas.

I have tried a bunch of different light settings, such as changing it from a basic lamp, to a spot, and to an area light, but they haven’t made a difference as far as letting the light through the lace - they still read it as a plane.

Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated. I feel like I am overlooking something obvious, but I just can’t figure it out.

Thanks

[Modron]

set the material recieving the shadow to ‘trashad’ in materials buttons is the main thing. for the lace material ray transp or ztransp will both work. looks like you already know how to use those.

[barista]

Gotta love Elysiun

I asked a question and in less than an hour, I had my problem solved. Thanks Modron [!] [!] [!]

It could still use some tweaking, but it is only a test so I am not going to worry about it too much.

[Modron]

cool. looks good.

[DragonFyre]

Bah…
you know ive been trying to get a similiar effect with a pattern i have and making it into icy surface… its a white poofy pattern with darker blue spots similiar to your lace but without the hard edges… and i was “trying” to get blender to render the white part as a textured white solid… and have the blue tones be transparent… reflective and smooth… turning on the transparency either makes it ALL transparent… or all solid… wiping out the white parts… i had given up on it completly… thinking it impossible as i am used to photoshop… where textured and color tones were seperate and had so much customization but in blender they are as one and seems so limited… but with your getting the lace thing to work… i am again wondering if my task is at all possible.

[Modron]

i am not totally clear on what you are trying to do, but i think you just need an alpha map. blender reads black as transparent, and white as solid. so gray is in between. if you make a gray scale image with these values, load it into the texture channel above the one you want to affect, click off the ‘col’ button, and click on the ‘alpha’ button, then turn the alpha slider all the way down, you should be able to achieve the effect you described. if you have any problems come back and ask again.
<edit> oh and of course you have to have raytransp or ztranp clicked on.
<edit. also for anyone who is not aware, you can make a very nice render WITH and alpha channel by clicking RGBA(the A is for Alpha), and premul, and setting image type to png. then when you want to use the image with the alpha channel, when you load it in tehe texture buttons, click ‘use alpha’.

[Kansas_15]

had no idea you needed the trashed button on to do proper shadows with transparent materials with opaque regions, no worry’s for me though, there was only one scene that used textures like that and wouldn’t have an effect either way.

[DragonFyre]

Sounds like what your saying is that i need to apply more then one image to a single texture setting… then coordinate the settings according to each image… if so… that would explain ALOT on how i couldent get any decent effects… if not… then i have NO idea what your talking about… gods i hate being new lol.