Creating and Using Alpha Maps/Channels
In this chapter, we are going to look at the most common methods of creating various forms of vegetation used in the games industry.
As creating foliage and leaves still relies heavily on alpha maps or a texture with an alpha channel, I’ll start off with a brief explanation.
An alpha map is a black-and-white or grayscale image, which controls the transparency of a surface when it’s applied to a mesh using a shader. In the example pictured in Fig. 4.1, the alpha map is on the left, the diffuse texture is in the middle, and the final result applied to the mesh is on the right. ...
Get 3ds Max Modeling for Games, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
