Transparency Maps

Transparency Map: Geometry you can see through

Color or Image maps determine how a polygon is colored, but it is possible to use a texture map to declare what parts of a texture are transparent as well. This is the role of a transparency map.

In the image at right there are three rectangular polygons. The human figure is composed of an image map (shown below, left). To keep the rest of the rectangle from showing, a transparency map is also defined, using the image shown below (right). The gray-scale value of this image will determine how see-through the associated texture pixels are.

Image Map

Transparency Map

Related Video Tutorials

• CBE tutorial: Defining Transparency Maps

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