Transparent Textures

Introduction

Here’s how to make a transparent texture actually be transparent — handy for paper cutouts, puppets, and much more. We’re assuming you’ve already prepared your texture images. PNG is a good format.

Step 1

Create a plane for your object. In Material, add a new material and click the checkbox for the Transparency group. Set Alpha (under Transparency) to 0.000. You probably also want to turn off specular highlights for the texture. Just sayin’.

Step 2

In Texture, add a new texture. Under Type, choose Image or Movie. Go down to the Image group and click on the Open button. Load your image.

Step 3

In Texture->Image, check the Anti-alias and Premultiply boxes. This smooths the edges and gets rid of the ugly white jaggies.

Step 4

In Texture->Image Mapping, change the Extension setting to Clip instead of Repeat. Unless you want your texture to repeat, that is.

Step 5

In Texture->Influence, check the Alpha box under the Diffuse subgroup. Leave it at 1.000.

Step 6

If your newly transparent object is casting shadows on any other objects, those objects will need to have the Receive Transparent setting on. It’s in Material->Shadow.

The End.

Comments

james on Mar 7, 2011 at 11:52 pm

Is there any way to allow light to go through the transparent material?

samuel on Mar 8, 2011 at 3:10 pm

The problem I have is importing an image sequence with green screen footage, then use the compositor to create the alpha channel, now my green screen is black, but not transparent, and all my settings are like you have them here except there is no antialias setting, because there’s no alpha channel in the video/image sequence

Mariusz on Mar 11, 2011 at 8:13 am

Thank you! That’s what is was looking for, great simple tutorial!

Miguel on Mar 25, 2011 at 2:22 am

Great stuff, thank you for such clear instructions, worked very well even in blender 2.5. Thanks a lot

Miguel

Przemo on Mar 25, 2011 at 4:27 pm

THANK YOU! :D:D:D

Caroparo on May 20, 2011 at 11:34 pm

Fantastic! Seldom do I see such clear instructions for Blender! :-)

Joel on Jul 6, 2011 at 9:39 pm

Thanks for the tutorial man, exactly what i needed.

Carlos Saltos on Jul 31, 2011 at 8:56 pm

Thank you great tut… :)

legato on Sep 20, 2011 at 1:02 pm

man you save the day thanks a lot…

nope on Sep 29, 2011 at 4:19 pm

when i set my object to have material of transparency it doesn’t go invisible at all, it stays solid and when I press render it renders solid. I don’t get it. I think it’s broke.

John D. on Nov 2, 2011 at 10:06 am

I’m not even a noob at Blender and I can’t get this to work. Using 2.57.

John D. on Nov 2, 2011 at 10:18 am

Never mind, I got it to work. This will be useful, thanks!

Nikos on Jan 8, 2012 at 4:03 pm

Hallo!
New in blender, following these instructions, i managed to create a transparent texture and understand some things.. But the problem i have is that the object i create is not totally transparent.. If i create f.e., a circle and trying then to import as a scene in my VSE, i get the circle but in a semitransparent surrounding rectangle (at the same size of my video clip).

Nikos on Jan 8, 2012 at 4:08 pm

OK, i found it, i had to change the “alpha” on the render properties tab, in the shading group, from “sky” to premultiplied or straight Alpha. Thanks for the tutorial…

Mathew on Jan 20, 2012 at 7:15 am

Thank you for the tutorial, helped a lot.
But it doesn’t work right with the turbidity-settings on the sun-panel.
Every time I use the atmosphere effect, it doesnt influence the alpha textures and a transparent frame appears around the object. Any Idea how to fix it?

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