A question about transparency

[Coggs]

Is it possible to have an object that is behind a transparent object not be affected by the color of the transparent object?

 

I have a head and a space helmet:

 

[attachmentid=16725]

 

The green helmet is 50% transparent. The helmet and the face are simply flat grids. What I want to do is place the face behind the helmet so it looks like it's inside of it but I don't want the helmet's color to affect the color of the face. I want the original skin color to remain. As it is it looks like this:

 

[attachmentid=16726]

 

Does anyone know how to prevent a transparency's color from affecting a model that's behind it? There must be a simple way to do that. (I know I can put the face in front of the helmet but I really want to find out how to do this.)

[Ganthofer]

If they are both Flat objects, then there is really no reason to put the head behind the helmet. put it in front and the color of the helmet will not affect it.

 

Is there a reason to make the helmet 50% transparent?

[Coggs]

I want the helmet to have transparency so that everything behind the helmet shows through. Otherwise it won't be much of a space helmet. What I want to do is make a cartoon with that South Park like flat, construction paper look. So I'm exploring the multi-plane possiblities of Choreography Mode with it's layering feature.

[luckbat]

Well, the helmet can be transparent if you like, but if you want the face to retain its color, like Ganthofer said, you might as well stack it on top of the helmet instead of beneath it.

[KenH]

I wonder if you made the helmet fully transparent but with a high specularity, would you get a better effect for a space helmet? You might need to make it 1% transparent.

[Ganthofer]

I think Ken's approach might work, but the surface would have to have some curvature to it or at the angle that the specularity shows up, it would be across the entire helmet since it is a flat surface.

[Coggs]

Thanks everyone. At Ken's suggestion I tried using specularity but that didn't do anything with flat layers.

 

I think the best way to do it is to put the face in front of the helmet. Using Choreography as a multi-plane camera has a lot of exciting possibilities and I'm looking forward to working with this. All you've got to do is scan things in to photoshop, use rotoscope to make a grid that's the same shape, bone it up and shazam! you're good to go. But, you know, it would be nice to be able to prevent the color of a front layer from affecting layers that are behind it.

[luckbat]

But, you know, it would be nice to be able to prevent the color of a front layer from affecting layers that are behind it.

I don't see how that's possible. If a green object is 60% transparent, then anything behind it should be 40% green. Right?

[Coggs]

I don't see how that's possible. If a green object is 60% transparent, then anything behind it should be 40% green. Right?

 

In the real world, yes. And normally you'd want it to work that way in a computer program. But, A:M is a computer program. So... a "Object color lock .....on/off" feature on the properties list would be useful; at least for me.

[KenH]

Then it's not transparency that you want. It's some other thing.

 

A workaround would be to color correct for the green. So, your face would need to lack a certain amount of green in it's colour....then when you put the green helmet over it, it becomes the right color. Tricky to work out.

[luckbat]

If I needed counter-intuitive transparency like that, I'd composite the layers in a compositing program, so I could assign different behaviors to the luminance and color channels.