I have several components in sketchup that are 2d PNG transparent clipmaps for people, trees etc. Is it possible to use these as a material as-is or do I need to create an alpha map for each component and add that to the transparency map area? I’ve tried the latter in the past and for some reason my texture gets messed up with blocks showing up rather than the transparent background.
As an aside, I’ve found the most successful and easiest way to create an alpha clipmap in Photoshop is simply to reduce the image exposure to zero and then save as jpg. The exposure step makes all opaque pixels 0,0,0 black (without affecting pixel opacity) and saving as jpg automatically gives it a white background. Some other methods (desaturate, flatten, etc) can create unwanted clipping results, especially halos or aliased edges.
i need to use a PNG textured material to obtain transparency but also if i put the black and white alpha map as bitmap in the transparency (in the diffuse section) the material does not render right. the transparent parts are white.