using the bump map

[Nothingman]

im using a bump map to indent numbers such as 10, 20 etc on the metal around a watch that im making.

i can get it all to work fine, but just wondering how i would go about making the indented parts black, the rest of the material is gold.

i tried saving a transparent gif from photoshop, but max seems to convert it to opaque as soon as its imported. making the gold go white, but the black seems to work.
i just want the black not the white.

i have the gif in the difuse map

[niki]

maybe you should put your gif file into opacity channel

[Nothingman]

im not familiar with the opacity channel in max

is it part of the material editor?

opacity slot of your material editor.Browse your your gif and place in the map slot.
It`s all explained in the help files of max.......

black=transparent
grey =semi transparent
white=opaque

if things don`t map out correctly.....unwrap the section of your watch that your working on....bring it into photoshop and make a same dimension opacity map as the unwrap window...and create the new text to fit the unwrapped mesh.....save the opacity map.....then when you allpy it...it will wrap to the place you want it.

[Nothingman]

the material im using it on is a gold material. its a raytrace.
the opacity map isnt there for raytrace.

what i want to do is have the gold material, but have indented numbers, and the indented numbers to be black.

so far i can indent the numbers with the indents being gold.
ive also tried putting the gif in the diffuse slot which made the numbers black, but it affected the rest of the material. making it have a white overlay. because the rest of the gif is white.
even know its saved as a transparent gif.

[ross_coe]

think what you need to use is a mix map, if i understand right.....

change your gif so that it's a simple black and white image...black letters and white background. no need for transparency or opacity either in max or in your gif methinks
next, add a mix map to the diffuse slot, then in the "mix amount" map slot, add your gif.
go back into the mix map
in color#1 of the mix map, make the color gold
in color#2 of the mix map, make the color black.
now if this is the wrong way round and you've got a black face n gold letters, just hit the "swap" button that sits beside the color#1 and 2 in the mix map
finally add your bump map

hope this helps

[ross_coe]

here's an image to help.
like i said, this mix map has been added to the diffuse map slot of a raytrace material. i added a checker map into the "mix amount" map slot....so just put your gif there instead

[Nothingman]

yeah thanks that did help.
theoretically that should work.
but...
for some reason max is treating the black as transparent

so if i put black in the mix map i get the gold color.
if i put white or anyother color i get that color overlayed over the gold.
which is good but i want black to be that color

i can post up some screenshots if that helps?

[Nothingman]

white and black
http://morry.customer.netspace.net.au/mixmap1.jpg

black and white
http://morry.customer.netspace.net.au/mixmap2.jpg

pink and black... to show the color effect
http://morry.customer.netspace.net.au/mixmap3.jpg

[Nothingman]

im still wanting help on this issue
if anyone is able to help at all that would be great
ta

[ross_coe]

do you have anything in the opacity slot??? the way I'd descibed for you doesn't need anything there....so if you'd tried adding any opacity maps, make sure they're not still in there.

apart from that I don't know why it'd be transparent