Maya 2016 Transparent Shader Issue

[Anonymous]

Hi, I've recently upgraded to Maya 2016 from 2015 and am having issues with my transparent shaders. I am either getting the result below or the whole object is becoming transparent.

Whereas, if I go back into Maya 2015 and do exactly the same thing I get the correct result.

This is my object with just a base lambert on so you can see the full shape.

I have fully laid out the UVS for the object and taken them into photoshop to create my texture. The texture is only meant to be on a select part of the object while the rest of the object should be transparent when only this shader is applied so I can make a layered shader. I have tried both .PNG with transparency and .TIFF with an alpha channel. Both which have worked for me before. I have not done anything different in Maya 2015 but it works :S However, this is the first time I have tried to do this in Maya 2016 so I wonder if there is a setting I need to change to make it work?

I would really appreciate if anyone knows of a fix for this!

Thank you 🙂

[damaggio]

What is the shader and the Renderer you are using?

[Anonymous]

Hi Damaggio,

The shader is a lambert and I'm rendering in Mental Ray.

[damaggio]

Do you still have the problem with SP1 and new mentalray updates?..if yes can you zip your file and post here.

[Anonymous]

Hi Damaggio,

I downloaded SP1 this morning and tried it but am still having the same issue. I've tried zipping the file but it is still to big to attach 😞

[damaggio]

Hi Foster, take a look at my test, i did not find any issues in my 2016 version, at least not so far....this test is simple a cylinder with a blinn and a Jpeg into transparency and a streched cube behind , here  you can see the viewport transparency and the Mental Ray result.

[Anonymous]

Hi damaggio, thank you for the test. I've now tried using a .jpeg like you did rather than a .png or .tiff however I'm getting the same/similar issue. The settings are all the same as your's too.

[damaggio]

Just remove any other stuff from the scene , even delete some parts of the object to make the file smaller and zip it.... That way I can take a look.

[Anonymous]

Hi damaggio,

I've attached the file for you. Let me know if there's any issues opening it.

[damaggio · Accepted solution]

You had some weird shading network going on there when it should have been so simple, first you created your file texture using a projection, if you middle mouse over the texture when you trying to select the "File" node it gives you that option plus "Stencil"...don't do that , just click on the "File" node once or use the shader color atrribute slot and choose a file node.

Also the projection was going into a node called HypershadePrimary, don't know where you found that, I've never seen it after 11 years of Maya.

Just plug the transparency map into transparency and you shkould be good, and choose a color for the gear, you don't need to pipe the same map to color like you did if the Gear is white.

Also you were trying to use a Power coat shader that does not seem to carry transparency, since your gear is metal should not be a car paint material, should be metal, like a mia_x shader and plug the transparency into Advanced>cutout Opacity.

Well that's  a few notes for you I hope it helps, press on.

[damaggio]

Here's with Mia_X jpeg into Cutout Opacity connect color "R" to Cutout...don't drag and drop into the slot , it has to be manually connected.

I understood you were trying a Layered shader but that might be unnecessary .

[Anonymous]

Hi damaggio,

Thank you so much! I'm actually not trying to use the transparency to cut out but rather to apply a decal/sticker on top of a powder coated metal which is why I needed the layered shader. Plugging both the lambert sticker shader and the metal together. However, the issue you found has fixed what I was trying to do so thank you again! The result is below 🙂

I really don't understand why maya was creating my textures as projections and stencils as well as creating the strange HypershadePrimary node as I didn't actually select them. I just made a lambert and in colour/transparency plugged a file into them. Must be a setting in my maya 2016 that was wrong for this.

I was just wondering with the metal Mia_X shader you show in your example, does it have a slight texture to it? If so how did you do that because I think that would really help me for a textured metal I'm making 🙂

Thank you so much for your help!

[damaggio]

I used a very subtle metal texture, sometimes just putting a color just looks too perfect , too computer like.

Since you have the UV made already you really don't have to go thru all this trouble, just take the UVs to photoshop ,lay your stencil design over a subtle metal color texture and save the file and apply back into the model, that's the very basic and simplest way, now if you want that design to be more or less reflective just create a specular file from the color one and apply to the spec color, there's absolutely no need for transparency here the..

[Anonymous]

Oh ok I wil give that a go then! Thanks again 🙂