Controlling a material's Opacity using a B/W Bitmap

[mikeking]

Hello,

I am trying to figure out how I can control a material's opacity using a pixel of an animated bitmap sequence. Is it possible to wire the RGB value of a specific pixel to another parameter? I have been trying to figure this out forever but have no luck. I do not want to use a projection map because I will be applying the map across many small objects that I want to control using the texture.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks very much,
Mike

[dan]

Hello mikeking! First let me welcome you to the DT community! What you’re going to want to look into is using an animated transparency map. Here’s a quick video that runs through how to set that up. Hope it helps!


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Here's a link to the Utilizing Shading Networks in 3ds Max (http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?pid=254) course that was referenced in the video.

[mikeking]

Hi Dan! Wow thank you very much for this in-depth response! I really appreciate it. I didn't phrase my question very well, but what I am trying to do is a little different. I was hoping to find out how to control the entire object's opacity using just one pixel from the opacity map. Let's say there were hundreds of leaves like in your example, and I wanted to animate their opacity in a specific pattern using just one map.

Here is an example of what I am trying to achieve, except with the opacity animating rather than the color:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34yvi8peFhU

Also I believe he did this with PFlow, but I would really like to know how to achieve an effect similar to this without using a projection map.

Thank you again Dan!
Mike

[mikeking]

Hey Dan, just wondering if you know of any way I could achieve an effect like the one I linked above? Thanks very much!