1
$\begingroup$

I'm finding it very difficult to set up a basic material with diffuse, alpha and normal maps. Although I've managed to create a material with diffuse and normal maps, I can't manage to get the alpha channel working correctly. I would like to use three separate maps as shown below:

DIFFUSE

NORMAL

ALPHA

Below is the desired result of combining the maps with a single spotlight shining from above.

DESIRED RESULT

Although I found a few examples of setting up materials with transparency online, I couldn't get anything to work correctly. Instead of me posting lots of pictures of my failed setup, could someone explain the correct way to combine these maps? I would really like to see both how to do it in the standard material/texture panels, and also in the node editor. I would like the result to appear in the real-time textured viewport mode.

In order to help explain what I am trying to set up, here is a picture of the current result of the material as it looks with lighting in my scene. I'm viewing using GLSL, but if I switch to multitexture, it's entirely black. I tried rendering it, but I just get the result shown here.

CURRENT RESULT

UPDATE: Partial Answer

Thanks to this tutorial, I managed to achieve the result I want if I'm rendering in cycles. The problem with this is that I want a clean real-time render that works in the viewport, so I'm still only half-way to a real answer. Here's my node setup for cycles:

Cycles node setup

However, as I said, I would like to see this kind of bump mapping working with alpha in the standard real-time view:

enter image description here

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
4
  • $\begingroup$ blender internal or cycles? $\endgroup$
    – David
    Aug 19, 2014 at 12:43
  • $\begingroup$ Multitexture illuminates per-vertex, so it will be entirely black where there are no vertices to illuminate (as is the case on a single quad). $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Aug 19, 2014 at 19:42
  • $\begingroup$ David: I'm really looking for an answer that will allow me to see it working in real-time in the viewport, since rendering is not the goal. Is the setup different for the different renderers too? $\endgroup$
    – MrFlamey
    Aug 19, 2014 at 22:33
  • $\begingroup$ I just updated the question with information about doing it in cycles. However, a weird thing I noticed in cycles is that the light does not appear to be hitting the object at the right angle; The illuminated area is off to one side, rather than perfectly centered, and I've no idea why this is. $\endgroup$
    – MrFlamey
    Aug 20, 2014 at 0:10

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3
$\begingroup$

The only problem I see in the node setup is that the normal map image texture should be put through a normal map node to convert the color output data of the image texture to the required normal input of the shader.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
-2
$\begingroup$

If you are working in Cycles, it isn't currently possible to view the alpha channel in the textured view. The rendered view is the only current workaround.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for your answer, but what about if I'm not using cycles? The game engine presumably supports rendering alpha cutout textures with normal maps, so I guess there is a way to set it up somehow. $\endgroup$
    – MrFlamey
    Aug 27, 2014 at 6:51
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Material view supports transparency. $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Sep 22, 2014 at 19:11
  • $\begingroup$ @MrFlamey Are you using Blender internal render, Blender game render or cycles? Your question didn't make it clear. $\endgroup$
    – dragonite44
    Sep 28, 2014 at 12:14

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .