I'm trying to make a model which will have diffuse, opacity, and bump maps, but I'm having trouble getting them to work together, specifically diffuse and opacity.
The model should have crossing lines which are raised (bump map) and the lines should have color (diffuse map), and in the squares in between the lines I would like to have a translarent blue color (opacity map). However, if I apply the opacity map to the areas in between the lines, I can not get my transparent blue color to show up. I assume this is because the opacity map is making everything in these squares transparent.
Is there a way to do what I am looking for? A zip of the model and the maps I'm using is attached (let me know if there is a problem opening it. Hopefully all the material settings came through.) Sorry for the Dropbox link, it's a zip file that's slightly larger than the max upload size.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s4zug8ckjktzrno/Active%20Matrix%20Gel.zip
Thanks for the reply.
So I'm still slightly confused though. Do I need an opacity map at all? It seems like using a map+mask for each diffuse layer would leave the black areas of the mask completely transparent (which is what I want), but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead, the black areas of the diffuse masks appear gray in the render.
So can I use an opacity layer and only apply it to layers 2-4 but not layer 1?
Or, how can I change this gray layer that appears in the black areas of my diffuse mask to transparent?
Thanks! Unfortunately I have 3DS Max 2013 and I can't open your file. Any chance you could save it as a 2013 version? Also, as to your question about the fine mesh, yes, a ripple modifer is going to be applied to the plane which is why I wanted the fine mesh. It should end up looking something like this when I'm done (bottom view with added boxes): https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjp9vjewvzpa76o/untitled.1.jpg
Thanks for the tips! Baking the layers down helped alot, and also allowed me to import into Keyshot (which I didn't initially think was possible).
This is how it ended up: