Final Entry

I had just enough time to try and resolve the issue I had with my alpha's not showing correctly on the excavator, and with the help other people and their knowledge my alphas are now showing correctly.

Maya can take alphas from the alpha map in the diffuse texture, however UDK apparently prefers one model to have two or more materials which are used for the alpha mapping. What I had been told is that wherever the alpha is the material should be different from the rest of the model, as it then has its own properties for transparency to apply to.

So to rectify the alpha mistake, I had to remove the mesh from UDK and import a new one that I had now applied a second material to. I then made another material within UDK and applied my newly created, stand-alone, alpha. With the model being exported with two materials, I could now go into my static mesh editor and see two sets of material channels that I can apply two difference materials to. One was a material containing the diffuse, normal and specular map, and the other with only the alpha. The results can be seen below:

Excavator with correctly alpha'd (tinted) glass.

Here is my presentation render of the module: