Material Opacity Question

[Grande Gringo]

What is the proper technique for painting opacity on a material from the shelf.

So I start with an opacity layer set to 0 (transparent).

Then I add a material on top. Now the material is transparent. If I enable opacity (OP) for it then I have options to set transparency from the other maps but that's not what I'm looking for.

What I need to do is paint opacity in. How to do that?

I can work with opacity just fine if I have access to the channels (aka build my layer from scratch) but as soon as I put a material from the shelf in I lose all control over opacity.

I'm pretty sure I'm missing something basic here. Most of the tutorials on opacity I watch deal with creating opacity on a layer you build from scratch, not on a material from the shelf.

* to clarify this further, imagine you're putting 'steel' from the shelf into your layer and you want to paint holes in it.

Thank you

[CAGameDEV]

You would use a fill layer with only opacity, and use a mask to direct it.

[Nicolas Fidalgo 0]

Hello, I have a problem with the opacity map:
I would just like to apply a texture decals from the megascan library on my mesh but
When I paint in stencil mode (or other mode), the parts of the painted mesh disappear and only the part of the textures with the map opacity remains on the mesh.
I would like to know if there is a way around this problem