Okay, I recently bough the Universal Boonie Hat by kalebdaark and applied it to my Michael 2 figure. The hat fits, but it's transparent - you can see Michael's head and the inside of the hat, but the outside is invisible! This si no matter which of the 6 textures I apply to it. Does anyone have any ideas?

What is this? The Emperor's hat? loll Seriously, check the transparency settings for that "material". France

When you render it does it look correct?

That's a very good question, PhilC... it happened to me so often in the beginning, I can't believe I didn't think of asking ;o) France

Sounds like reversed normals.

Thanks for the response, guys. When I first put the Universal Boonie Hat into a scene, it doesn't have any textures - they need to be applied in the material room. But in both cases, the hat is transparent. It's also transparent when I render. Apologies for the newbie question, but what are 'normals' -reversed or otherwise?

Normals are the direction that the polygons are facing. In the case of this hat, they are facing toward the INSIDE of the object rather than the OUTSIDE. In other words, this product has normals that are reversed. You can fix that with the Grouping Tool (group editor) in Poser. Just select the hat, select the Grouping Tool from your Editing Tools, and on the Group Editor panel, near the bottom you will see a button "Reverse Group Normals" - press that and you will have the problem fixed. IMHO this is the type of crappy product that should never have been allowed in the marketplace - not only are the normals reversed, but there are no material zones assigned. There are duplicated (and useless) groups bloating the geometry file. The product has textures, but none of them are applied to the product and there are no MAT Pose files (because its a prop and not a figure) so you have to hunt down the textures and apply them manually. I sure wish the marketplace here would adopt some sort of technical standards because when they sell products like this, you really begin to question their judgement.

I'm really puzzled as to how this could pass testing here if it really has inverted normals. It certainly shouldn't have been released into the MP as is. Usually the testing staff does a good job though. This is not "normal" MP standard.

Poy. If what you say is true, Ron (and I have no reason to doubt you), it casts shame on all of us merchants. We'd like to think we police ourselves better. Not saying anything horrid about the hat, mind you. Those reversed normals and missing mat zones and extra geometry could be fixed in a few minutes. Seems a shame to spend the time on a model and skip that last step!

Okay, I reversed the normals as ronstuff suggested, but now no texture can be applied to the hat - it could before, but not now. Although the hat is no longer transparent. Do you reckon I'll be able to get a refund?

Can anyone help with the textures problem? Like I say, when the normals were facing in textures could be applied, but now that I've reversed them textures have no effect on the appearance of the hat.

I think the product in question may have been released some time ago when reverse normals were not at issue. I'm not all too familiar with Poser 5. Does it have a setting for rendering backfaces? If so, this would solve any rendering issues.

Hi, it's me, the creator of this item.

Don't know how this happened initially, but it's doing it on my machine now too. Somehow, the normals have been reversed when it's created.

To fix it, create the figure, and then the item in poser. This guarantees that it's properly smart-propped. Click on the Group Editor button (the rightmost of the editing tools). On the menu that appears, select "Reverse Group Normals". You may want to re-save the item at this point.

This should solve the problem nicely. Sorry 'bout this.