I am using a alpha keyed image of a butterfly.s wing on a simple plane (saves reshaping the mesh) but I find that the spec is still applied to the plane surface even where the alpha should make it transparent.
I am not using raytrace to save time, but can I eleiminate the darned spec flare?
The first one shows a distinct square surface around the wing, while the second image doesnt. as the surface flare moves off.
Answer is below!
I can’t tell what kind of lighting you have. But with many of Lamps, there is button called No Specular. Try rendering with that button set on.
Yeah I wanted the spec to give shine to the surface of the wing just not the matted out area… I have some nor map on the surface too fort some interest. Maybe I will have to get rid of the spec as you say. After all who will notice as the wing beats and hidden behind leaves?
Oops, I found a spec setting in the transparency panel of the wing material. I turned that down but left the other spec setting as I want it.
You could set your wing’s material’s specularity to 0. Then add another texture to the material and have it set to effect only the specularity. Only the areas of the material where the new texture aren’t black will have specularity and you can have fine control of it’s amount for different areas of the wing.
JDep, good point. Other than the matted areas are white and I hate GIMP. Why is it soooo hard to work on alpha areas in GIMP? The Photoshop model seems so easy by comparison. It took me hours to cut a simple alpha key and save it out as a 32bit image. In Photosshop you just delete from the alpha key the matte shape. Not so in Gimp where the alpha channel is just there to look at, not work on.
Maybe I just don’t get it, is there any really good Gimp Video tuts around?
I’ve never used Photoshop but I think that layer masks in Gimp are what you want. Right click on a layer thumbnail in the layers window and select “Add Layer Mask”. You will get a second thumbnail for the layer to the right of the layer’s thumbnail. If you select this icon with your mouse you will now be able to draw directly on the alpha channel of the image. Black is transparent. White is opaque.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for that, getting more help since I solved my problem!
I never really got the quick mask idea (seems to temporary) so are they embeded into the 32bit image file as an alpha?
The layer mask can be kept if you save the image in Gimp’s native xcf format. Layer masks are not the same thing as quick masks (quick masks are used for selections). Gimp will convert the layer mask for other image formats. For png images the layer mask will be converted to the image’s alpha channel.
