Greetings,
Is there a trick for converting color bitmaps to black-and-white for use as masks and opacity maps? Maybe like rendering with the contrast cranked up? Or do I have to change the colors with materials in an alternate, duplicate bitmap?
Thanks all.

Porter Wayfare
Max Design 2009/2010, 32 Bit
Acer 1710, Pentium 4, 3.00GHz, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5700, Windows XP

I think clarification is in order: What I want to do is convert all colored areas in a bitmap to black (not shades of gray), and have the white remain white. I’m after a 100% transparent/100% opaque mask.
Thanks again.

Porter Wayfare
Max Design 2009/2010, 32 Bit
Acer 1710, Pentium 4, 3.00GHz, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5700, Windows XP

You could open the image in Photoshop, or another image editing software, and select all the white pixels, invert selection, and fill the rest with black.  You may also be able to adjust the Brightness and Contrast to create the image you want.

You can always save the image with an Alpha channel, and set the Bitmap parameters in Max to show Alpha as Gray (under RGB Channel Output).  That way you can keep the color info in the image if you might need it later, but still have the Black and White version.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

In addition, other ways from within Max.
Use a Colour Corrector map (in later versions).
Mess with the Output Graph.
Use a B/W Gradient Ramp, mapped to the image, alter the settings to get the look you want.