I was trying to use a composite material on the map I'm working on, so I compiled a bitmap for the opacity map and created a shader. In Max it renders out fine but when I compiled and lit the map the entire material comes out blue/purple (As though the shader file isn't working [learned that first hand]).

Is there a way I can use composite and blend materials in Max or do I need to unwrap the faces and create a Shader [skin]?

My Procedure
I put a shader (stone) in the base material;
in the second material I put the second shader (grass)
in the second material opacity channel I applied the bitmap/shader mask I created


As always if you guys know of a tutorial feel free just to post a link. In the tutorials I've been watching this was not covered.


*I'll get a pic up for you guys later when I get back on my laptop.*
Edited by YakZSmelk on Apr 1, 2008 at 02:53 AM

Alphas are your friend. The base map is pretty much color. and with alpha areas on the base map it allows another material to show through. detail maps are the detail like grass. blend detail is the detail that will show through the alpha areas of the base map. I don't know exactly what your trying to do so, yeah, pics would be nice and describe where it is going.

I took the epiphany you through my way and applied my mask to the texture's alpha in Photoshop and then created a shader in Guerilla. It sill didn't show up right in Sapien, though it
looked the way I wanted it too in Guerilla's view bitmap. I think this is due to the composite material.

Just in case someone doesn't know how they work, in a composite you make a base material and say you want to put something on the wall like graffiti, you'd put the graffiti material in a map slot 'above' the base material;



Then in the second material (and all after this) you would put the image in the diffuse slot and an alpha or mask in the opacity channel.



From there you can move the material using offsets and turning off the [Tile] button.


Can H2EK work with composites or is there a different way I should do this? I went back and put the new shader file I made in the second slot, without a opacity channel, assuming the shader would take care of that now that it was created with an alpha channel in it. Johnny if you have a technique for this please let me in on your secret! haha Thanks alot everybody.

A much better way to do what you want. Edit and rename a decal tag in the tags/decal folder and use your bitmap instead of the original. You can just slap that anywhere in sapien you want on your map.
There are soooo many 3ds features that are useless in the halo world except for refrence. I say this because it sounds like you are handy with max. Thats one of them along with the alpha channel. If i were to uvw an alpha object it is unneccesary to put the alpha bitmap in 3ds max but it makes it so much easier to look at if it is in.

Edited by johnnyblaz20 on Apr 1, 2008 at 09:46 PM

Thanks man, I'm a computer animation major with about two years of training in Max, so I'm trying to apply things I know in Max to H2EK and needless to say not many things are carrying over as easily as I would hope. I will definitely try the decals, btw are the detail maps in Guerilla the same thing? The shader template I've been working in is the bump_detail_keep.shader but I've recently saw the env_detail_mask.shader is there any where I can read about all the shader templates in depth? I searched the help file and didn't find anything about all of them.

Thats the problem. Its just trial and error with the shaders. You pretty much just have to know what each part of the shader template names mean. like tex_detai_bump would obviously be texture detail and bump. Its a real pain in the neck.