Graphics

Hey All,

Can someone give me a walkthrough of how per-object masking works in version 4? The manual is a little skimpy on details and I'm having a hard time figuring it out. Much appreciated!

Thanks,

Ryan

Ryan,

to create a mask you must first create a mask material. to do that set the blend mode of the material layer to "Alpha Mask" you will see this option at the very bottom of the material editor with the layer element selected. Next, apply the material to an object.

Now for the new stuff...

In the object library you will see an object called the "Layer Object" create one, then make all of the objects you want to apply the mask to as well as the mask object itself children of the layer object. The Layer Object uses manual depth sorting by default so you will have to arrange the objects in the order they need to be rendered going from top to bottom.

The object tree should look something like this

-Layer Object

- object to be masked

- object to be masked

- mask object

Andrew

#XPression

Andrew,

Thanks for the Reply, much appreciated! Is there a way to invert the masks?

-Ryan

#XPression

Yes...

However you will have to have a shader of some sort applied to the material like a texture, video, gradient etc. Once you apply the shader navigate to the alpha blending options for the shader inside the material editor. you will see a dropdown labeled "current stage modifier" select the option "invert".

that should do it.

Andrew

#XPression

Any tutorial on this subject would be greatly appreciated. I know there are 3 ways of dealing with transparency but I don't understand any of them. My teacher thought you need images with alpha but that is not true. Black and white PNG will do.

#XPression

Geoff,

You may find this project helpful:

XPression Mask Examples

#XPression