Creating alphas in Bhodinut's Smells like Almonds (SLA) shaders

Here is a workaround for creating alphas in SLA shaders.You will of course need SLA and an alpha image.

First, create a material that contains your SLA Shader.

Second, you'll create a material that will essentially apply an alpha map to the SLA shader. Here's how. Create a material and load your alpha image in "alpha" channel. Set the alpha channel settings that suits your needs "soft", "image alpha", "invert" as you normally would. Now just activate transparency channel (VERY IMPORTANT!)

Now first apply the SLA shader and then the alpha material you have created to your model. Make sure that the alpha material is to the right of the SLA shader in the Object Manager.

Voila!, I hope.

To create the earth image above I simply duplicated the model and inverted the alpha map. A simpler way to just use a solid sphere and make sure it is lower in the hierarchy of the Object Manager than the model with the SLA alpha.

The truth is I don't know why this works but I am glad it does. It is just something I stumbled upon in XL 5.3 when I was learning to mix materials. Upon further experimentation you'll find out that you can actually mix the SLA shaders by using soft alphas, gradients, fresnel, etc. as the alpha image. I'll leave that up to you. (beware of dark fringes in the alpha)

I would like to hear of your findings, experimentation or anything you can add to this workaround.

Below are links to the Cinema file with the earth image shown above. Self explanatory.

C4D XL 6.3 Stuffit File
C4D XL 6.3 Zip File


Creating soft alphas for CHEEN SLA shaders

Currently when using the transparency option in the SLA CHEEN shader, the alpha channel that it creates appears to be one of a solid object rather than a transparent one.

Using the workaround discussed above (maybe we should call it The NutHole trick) we can create the alpha we'd expect so we can use it in compositing programs like After Effects.

It is pretty much the same process as above except we will use the SLA Fresnel Shader to give the CHEEN shader its transparencey (it also renders over 2X faster)

Create your CHEEN shader. Now create a new material where you load the Fresnel shader in the alpha channel and adjust settings accordingly. Then make sure to make active the transparency channel.

Below is a before and after picture.

Pros about this workaround are that it renders 2x faster than the CHEEN transparency option and gives you the alpha you'd expect. Cons are the alpha can get goofy if you are planning to render with other scene objects behind.

Below are links to the Cinema file with the CHEEN workaround.

C4D XL 6.3 Stuffit File
C4D XL 6.3 Zip File

Thanks to bunk and Michael Vance for extending and refining the Nuthole trick

Roy Santiago