What is the “halo effect?” Here we can see the background colour of a texture appears around the edge of a cut-out. It’s a glow that matches the background color being used. It causes the model to look fake, ruins the overall final image and diminishes your products’ overall quality.
The halo effect is usually due to the mask in the opacity map being larger than the element you are trying to cut out.
The example here shows that the background color used behind the main image is white. Since our opacity map doesn’t fit very well, the white appears around the edge of the Opacity Map cut out creating the halo effect.
In this second example, I’ve used a background colour that blends in with the main image, and then extends the roses outline. This combined with a slightly smaller opacity map removes the halo around the image, thus creating a better overall blend.
You’ll also want to combine this with the transparency mode “alpha test”. and play with the threshold to achieve your ideal result. However please avoid using “composite blend” as sorting issues can potentially occur.
Combining these techniques leaves us with smoother, blended edges. This will hide the fact that the image was built with a flat plane, making it less obvious. Just be sure to check your opacity map and adjust where you see fit. Not having a clean opacity map can leave small, floating particles when reducing your masks, so double check everything is either white or black.
You can also the threshold bar to remove some of these particles by playing with the difference between 0 and 1. Note I used 0.39 Threshold for After.
