Maya: alpha channel question

Hm... Okay I have a TGA. It's basically some white labels for buttons. It has an alpha channel, but unlike my other buttons that had a black texture... these ones with a white texture don't show up.
From the image File I added File.outAlpha > Projection.Image.R/G/B and that made it show up. BUT now it only shows up as black. =P
The big question in my mind, is that this works with other buttons where the button decal is black, but when the button decal is white it frick'n pukes.
So I'm assuming that it's just using the Alpha channel at this point for the color

Maybe its related to the transparency
But actually you have to see something
I think that you are plugin the alpha into the colors
Does the projection have no alphaSlot?
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Poly Guru

Not really, it just hooks up File.outColor > Projection.Image by default

But i would think there is an outAlpha also
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Poly Guru

File.outAlpha doesn't have any logical place to hookup that I saw

I mostly only use projectionMapping for gradients
I see an alphaGain here in the projectionNode
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Poly Guru

AlphaGain? lemmie hook up that one and I'll tell you what spits out

And i see an outAlpha from that projectionNode
Thats what you have to use
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Poly Guru

Just to clarify, in the alpha channel what's WHITE is visible, and BLACK is masked...

In the alphaChannel that is
For transparency, its what white is transparent, and black is opaque
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Poly Guru

Ah, I had it right the first time
Okay, I hooked File.outAlpha > Projection.Alpha Gain... lets render and see =]

And you have to hook up outAlpha aswell
I mean to the transparency
Of the actual shader
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Poly Guru

okay now it seems to say "fuck you" and ignores the projection. =P
And tiles across the geometry

Does it tile around the area or within ?
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Poly Guru

Within
Each button
Instead of within the projection
I've deleted the 2DProjection node and I'm going to try that =]

Hmm thats unexpected
It doesnt ignore the projection, it would have to use uv then
So you see the complete texture within every button ?
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Poly Guru

Not the whole thing

First of all if you don't need tiling, turn it off
WrapU wrapV
Then everything else get the default color so make it black
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Poly Guru