Appying a UV map

michaelolson

I have an object and want to apply a fire uv map to it. The uv will be of fire. How to I make parts of the uv map transparent ( so also these same areas on the object to be transparent ) ? Do I make the uv map a png file that has transparency and will that work? Asking in advance as I haven't tried anything yet.

Thank you :)

Richard Haseltine

It's better to just refer to them as textures - UV Maps will usually be taken as referring to the template that shows the UV mapping, or to the mapping of the item itself, rather than to an image. You don't say which application you are using, but often this is done with two images - the flame image, in colour, and an opacity map, usually in greyscale*, with black for the transparent areas, white for fully opaque and shades of grey for semi-opaque (for flames themselves I would think you'd use shades of grey rather than pure white).

* In some applications (such as DS) you can use colour for the opacity map - the strong the red, green or blue the more that colour is blocked out. That allows for coloured shadows by using the inverse of the desired colour as the opacity map (for blue shadows you'd want to block red and green, so the opacity map would be yellow).

michaelolson

Your right of course, texture maps. Perfect thanks for the response, helps a lot.