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I have been trying this for 5 years failing, and although I've tried tons of different tutorials, I still seem to fail at something that should be quite simple.

I have a BMD pbr beautiful material. I want to overlay a translucent PNG texture onto it (for example a label on a bottle as in my example).

When on material preview, the result is what I want: enter image description here

But when I look at it on render view I still have this very frustrating grey background interfering:

enter image description here

Here's my nodes for the combo of material plus PNG:

enter image description here

...and I seem to not be the only one with this need! has anyone sorted this out already? Can anyone send me to the correct youtube tutorial where this is sorted? Can anyone tell me what to change/adjust on my nodes so that this works as I want?

THANK YOU!!!

Duarte Farrajota Ramos
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user50299
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  • I've added the file link into your question which should mean that it will be seen again by those in the know! - I've tried the usual trick which is to change the render engine to Eevee, change the material Settings > Blend Mode to Alpha Hash or Alpha Blend, and then change the render engine back to Cycles, but it doesn't seem to work in this case. – John Eason Jun 28 '23 at 23:47
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    The acronym "BMD" is not a standard term in Blender or PBR (Physically Based Rendering) terminology. Just out of curiosity - what is it? The shader you call "BMD" is quite weird. For example it is for a metal, isn't it? But it has diffuse element and also it has fine directional noise bump that already mimics anisotropic effect, but also Anisotropic BSDF on top and weird input for roughness - it uses square root of the input, also gradient based on viewing angle, but its 50% mix with the color... None of this makes much sense... What is going on there? – Martynas Žiemys Jun 29 '23 at 08:48
  • Thank you again John! Martynas: yes, the BMD acronym is the name of the texture I used, which indeed is a pbr type of texture/material. I downloaded it from somewhere can't remember exactly where from or when, but it works lovely. I did not crate it so am not exactly sure how it works and why it is built as is. In this file the bottle is one mesh and the cilinder of "metal" where I was trying the label is another mesh as I did not want to disturb the bottle when trying different solutions Thanks for your answer! – user50299 Jun 29 '23 at 11:45

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You should consider what this object is supposed to be in reality. It's a metal container that has a label on it. So those are 2 different materials - the brushed metal, and some sort of sticker or paint. You should be mixing materials/shaders, not colors. Also there is no reason to use "Darken" mode of Color Mix node, and you should use alpha as well to mix them.

Simple mix of 2 different materials should work:

enter image description here

Martynas Žiemys
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    It should perhaps be clarified, that unless the label for some unmentioned reason needs to be a separate object, the OP's goal is more easily achieved by using a single object, and mixing like you describe here. – Titanius Anglesmith Jun 29 '23 at 04:15
  • It really should be clarified - wasn't that what they were doing? :D – Martynas Žiemys Jun 29 '23 at 05:24
  • The blend file has two objects. One for the bottle, and one for the label. – Titanius Anglesmith Jun 29 '23 at 05:42
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    Yes, but then the blend file has many mysterious things in it. Who knows what they mean?.. :D – Martynas Žiemys Jun 29 '23 at 08:01
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    Martynas again thank you for your reply and the nodes you shared Will try setting that up. Titanius: Correct- In this file the bottle is one mesh and the cilinder of "metal" where I was trying the label is another mesh as I did not want to disturb the bottle when trying different solutions. And yeah Martynas the file has many misterrious things in it because of my ignorance :P – user50299 Jun 29 '23 at 11:47
  • Hi again Well.. the mystery persists! I tried setting up the nodes exactly as on your solved example, and had the same result I've been getting myself stuck with. Quite odd. Am gonna try with a completely blank, new, nothing-in-it file, start from absolute scratch and see what happens. But I somehow suspect the issue is in somewhere within my blender settings, as I've set up a bunch of things for renders to be quick etc... dunno. Will try and get back to you with the update. – user50299 Jun 30 '23 at 00:07
  • It's frustrating, cos I have a pile of nice materials like that metallic pbr which I would like to ocassionally apply a transparent png with just a mix shader - not having to edit-redo each material... kinda defeats the purpose of having bought materials in the first place! – user50299 Jun 30 '23 at 00:09
  • Latest update: cleaned up all materials in my file, and it worked. Evidently an issue with the materials I have loaded by default within my startup file. Thanks!!! – user50299 Jul 06 '23 at 12:17