I'm getting this weird problem when I use a displacement map in a material that is using an opacity map. I have included a link to a render below and the houdini file… you can see the wooden ball is showing through the object that has the opacity map and no displacement or anything is showing over it but to the left it is showing hints of the displacement.. so it seems that when nothing is behind the object with the opacity map then it shows part of the displacement map… it seems to me that this is a bug but of course I could be wrong.. would appreciate any advice on this.

http://rick-dane-files.s3.amazonaws.com/opacity-map-problem.jpg [rick-dane-files.s3.amazonaws.com]

http://rick-dane-files.s3.amazonaws.com/opacity-map-problem.hipnc [rick-dane-files.s3.amazonaws.com]

EDIT: it has nothing to do with the ball as it shows that over it when I move the ball too… I guess this might have something to do with the uv mapping / object / tiling so I need to play around with it more

edited… see below for solution I came up with

I just wanted to close this out in case anyone else has this problem in the future as this caused me a few days worth of agony…

solution: I finally figured out that you have to match up the displacement map with the transparency map, to do this you make the part of the displacement map, (that you want to appear as being transparent) black (the blackest black you can make it) then when lined up with the opacity map it will show as being clear, otherwise it outputs this garbage where it shows specular glare off the part that should be transparent…. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a bug for side effects to look into for future releases.. I am guessing that not many people are using transparency maps with displacement maps in houdini since its normally used mainly for animation for which, as I understand it, transparency and displacement maps aren't normally used.