Help with Transparent Color selection

This is driving me to drink.  As you can see from the image below, I'm working on a Space Conflict crawl.  ;)  We have a starfield plane in the background and another plane at 45ish degrees with letters on it.  You can see the letters are by themselves and you can't see the plane they're on in the work space.  But when I render the image, it's either the black of the plane with the letters, or the letters are invisible.  I've tried this texture with .png format and JPG format.  I've created black and white masks with the letters white or black.  The image has no background at all.  I've used these black and whites as the cutout opacity guide and turned it up to full or off.  I'm at my wits end.  I can SEE what I want in the work space, it just won't render it!  HELP!

 

Crawl Screen.png
1920 x 1080 - 891K

Comments

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,508

    Are you using Iray?

    If so, make sure that Draw Ground is OFF in the render settings. It's hard to answer because I don't see the black plane visible in your render.

    However, on something of a different note, try putting your mask in the "Emission" channel of the surface and play around with the luminosity setting fro brightness. You'll see those letters lit on their own and won't require a light of any kind.

    The way I would do the crawl is what I think you're trying to achieve - to get them all by themselves as a transparent overlay to add in post? I would just have the plane in the scene and nothing else. Apply the text to the emission channel and put the proper color in the emission color chip. No lights and , and render settings, set to "Scene Only" (aka - no HDRI, no Sun/Sky) and no ground - no shadows of any kind.

  • Thank you SO MUCH!!

    Took some playing around with things, but I finally got a good render.  Turned off IRAY Enviroment to Scene Only, gave the emmisive color the White text version as a guide and had to up the lumanance to 15000 ended up using the original file with the yellow letters for the cut out opascity and FINALLY got a good render!

     

     

    Not sure of the whys or hows, but it works and I still have hair on my head so YOU DA MAN, Dartanbeck!  Thanks again!

     

    Test.png
    2000 x 1000 - 969K
  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 6,831

    Another easy way  - You don't have to make a mask but just use the PNG file with the words. Place the PNG to Base Color and Cutout Opacity slots. Turn on Emission and set the values properly. Then open Image Editor in Cutout Opacity slot, choose Alpha in "Grayscale From". Done ~

    SNAG-2023-11-30 0087.png
    2560 x 1400 - 1M
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,508

    Awesome! Glad it worked!

    corsswind - I had to read it twice... cool. Yopu mean the Image Editor in the Surfaces! At first I was thinking... Eegads! That sounds like a Lot of Work!!! But... that's not your style, so I read it again. Very cool tip!

  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 6,831

    Dartanbeck said:

    Awesome! Glad it worked!

    corsswind - I had to read it twice... cool. Yopu mean the Image Editor in the Surfaces! At first I was thinking... Eegads! That sounds like a Lot of Work!!! But... that's not your style, so I read it again. Very cool tip!

    Hoho ~~ that's great ! I'll make it much much clear next timelaugh

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