Apply texture with alpha channel to PBR material keeping materials solidness

[antmelnyk]

Hello

I’m struggling with applying texture to PBR Material. If I have PBR material, is it possible somehow to have a “solid” roughness as material and transparent texture applied over it? I can’t figure out if it’s even possible. Attaching simple playground. If I put texture.hasAlpha = true the whole material becomes transparent.

Babylon.js Playground

In my real scenario, the problem is the same, I have PBR material, and I’m wondering if it’s possible somehow to combine transparent texture and keep the material solid “as it is” on background. Best I achieved is transparency being black.

Maybe the texture should not even be albedo for this case? I see tons of different types of them, but as I understood albedo is the one I need.

[sebavan]

In your case you d need to ensure the background of the texture is the same color as the cup albedo.

The texture alpha is not used to layer both albedo but only to choose the final albedo color by multiplying them.

[antmelnyk]

Does this mean that using textures with alpha on PBR is basically impossible? Does alpha have to be changed to the color of the albedo?

[sebavan]

alpha is used for transparency not layering in the material so yes you can not use it in this way.

Indeed you would need to replace the transparent part by the desired albedo color.

[Blake]

You could also use a Material Plugin for this, for example here’s a simple one that uses alpha to mix the colors.

Babylon.js Playground

[antmelnyk]

Interesting. Thank you for your replies. I will try that plugin, looks like what I need