Adding clarity to your shinny transparent materials!
When making materials with shininess that are also transparent and use either Composite or Additive Blend modes you may sometimes notice areas that look like there is a halo or ghost effect where you would expect it to be 100% transparent. This can be controlled by using the transparency Opacity Masking setting.
Shinny materials that are also transparent using one of the two blending modes, Composite or Additive, are considered reflective across the entire mesh surface that the material is assigned to even if the opacity map is 100% black (transparent). This is, in effect, how glass works. Glass can be 100% transparent and still reflect light. And this is exactly how you can make glass like materials!
There are, however, times you don’t want this behavior and would like to have the opacity map mask reflectivity. This is where the Opacity Masking setting comes into action. Here is how it works:
Here we have a box with a solid blue diffuse texture.
Using an opacity map with a number image, the materials are set to Composite Blend.
NOTE: The opacity map is black and white. The image area surrounding the number is 100% black.
By adding either a Normal or Shininess map enables reflectivity on the material. By default Opacity Masking is disabled and we see the areas around the number effected by reflection.
By enabling Opacity Masking the 100% black areas of the opacity map now mask the reflectivity.
Here is what the material looks like from the inspector panel. Notice that there is both a Normal and a Shininess map, but the presence of either map will enable reflectivity and the Opacity Masking setting.
