Creating transparency

We will now learn two different ways to create transparency in Blender. First, we will learn how Alpha maps can be used to create transparent areas in a texture, and then we will learn how to create realistic glass in the Cycles render engine. This will allow us to create vegetation, nets, windows, bottles, damaged fabric, and other objects that require some level of transparency.

Understanding Alpha maps

Alpha maps are texture maps used to control the transparency of a material. Alpha is a property of color that measures the degree of opacity, and opacity is the level of visibility of a texture. If an image is transparent, it means that it has no opacity, or that its alpha value is 0. Alpha maps are useful for textures on which some parts are transparent while other parts are non-transparent, such as vegetation or a fishing net texture.

Much like a roughness map uses the brightness of each pixel to determine the roughness value of a texture, an Alpha...