1. Here's how
You will need a special Color Map texture with an Alpha Channel in order to make some parts of a Standard Material more transparent than others.
A Color Map (Diffuse) texture has normally got 3 channels: red, green and blue.
In addition to the red, green and blue channel, you can add a so-called Alpha Channel to the texture if you've got Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or a similar image editor.
The Alpha Channel can be used for 3 different purposes in Lumion:
- Making some parts of a material more or less transparent.
- Making some parts of a material more or less reflective.
- Making some parts of a material more or less emissive.
In this article we will focus on the first option, i.e. making some parts of a material more or less transparent than others.
1.1: If you are using Adobe Photoshop, please click on the link below to see how to add an Alpha Channel to an image:
External Link: Adobe Photoshop Help: Create and edit alpha channel masks
1.2: Then paint the Alpha Channel with grayscale tones. A pure white color will not be transparent at all in Lumion and a pure black color will be fully transparent. Grayscale tones will be more or less transparent depending on how close they are to pure black and pure white:
1.3: Once you've added the Transparency mask to the Alpha Channel of the texture, please click on the link below to see how to save it to a 32-bit Color Map texture in TGA, BMP or TIFF format.
External Link: Adobe Photoshop Help: Save files in graphics formats
1.4: Then open Lumion and add a Standard Material to the surface:
1.5: Assign your Color Map texture with the Alpha Channel to the Color Map slot in the Standard Material:
1.6: If the full settings are not shown, then click on the Show Extended Settings button:
1.7: Click on the Settings tab and then the second Texture Alpha button:
1.8: Please note that the Alpha Channel is converted from 256 levels (ranging from black through gray to white) to various levels of transparency based on what star quality you render your images/movies in.
- 16 levels of transparency in 5-star render quality.
- 8 levels of transparency in 4-star render quality
- 4 levels of transparency in 3-star render quality.
For that reason, please render a Photo or Clip to see the corresponding transparency.
Note: This method only applies to static image textures, and not to .MP4 files used as Video Textures.
Knowledge Base: What do the properties of the Standard Material mean?