I'm sure I must just be doing something wrong, or that this is a known issue with an easy fix. I've been trying unsuccessfully to apply any kind of textures whatsoever to the standard Vicky bikini bottom and bikini top from the standard clothing pack. No matter what texture I try to apply, or with what settings, it appears fine in the pre-render document window, but as soon as I render the texture gets pulled clean off the item and the item is rendered as a plain, untextured piece. I really am not a novice and have textured many far more difficult things in the past, but this one just won't cooperate. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Any help is appreciated, thanks...

Maybe you have the Render with Texture box unchecked in your render options. --Rebekah--

It's not that, because everything else in the scene renders with its textures just fine. Other clothing items, characters etc, all work as they should. It's just those Vicky default clothing items that get their textures wiped off at render time. I've even rebooted and started a brand new scene from scratch, loading only the bikini bottom and nothing else, applying the texture,and rendering. Same result: the texture appears on the figure in the document window as though it is applied correctly, then gets wiped clean off mysteriously as the render line flows up the screen. I'm stumped.

Sounds like maybe the item is corrupted somehow and the UV mapping info has been removed - I'm assuming this item does come UV mapped? Try reinstalling it is about the only thing I can think of... :-(

Is it possible you have a 'preview' material group and you are applying the texture to it rather than the actual material group that renders. ?

Thanks for the most recent responses. I don't really know what UV Mapping is, but I presume the item is however it should be since I got it from DAZ. It's just the regular bikini bottom/top that's part of the standard "Clothing Pack 1" for Victoria. Believe me I did consider all kinds of possible rookie mistakes like applying the texture to the wrong part of the item, but that's not it. I've tried it on each part seperately, and on all parts of the entire figure at once. In the correct cases it shows up on the item in pre-render mode, but vanishes upon rendering - gets wiped away by the render line like an eraser rubbing out pencil. I have tried re-installing as well, and the same problem occurs. If something is corrupt it's corrupt for good.

I believe I can say with reasonable confidence at this point that something is corrupt with the item file. Upon close inspection of the textured item in the pre-render document window, I see that while the texture is in fact applied, it looks very strange and distorted on the bikini top and bottom specifically. Funny thing is, it's only those two items that are affected. Others like the ankle boots, pants etc all work fine. Just the brown bikini top and bottom whose UV mapping must be screwed up. Unfortunately I don't quite know how to examine a "UV Map" file to get more specific information the problem.

At this point if it is a recent purchase I would put the problem to DAZ sales support. They would know if there is an update patch for the product. There are I believe a number of free textures for that item. You could try one of them to see if its your textures that are bad.

the poser preview of a texture is a low resolution sampling .. it looks very little like the final render. If you are in POser4, check to make sure the texture strength is set to 100. if it is set to 0, it appears in the preview at full strngth but does not render. In poser 5 you will need to check the same setting now called 'Diffuse Value' and make sure that it is set to 100 this is a more likely problem .. I do it myself occaisionally

I've actually checked all those things and still no luck. I've downloaded several free textures and tried them, all with the same result. I've also used a few "generic" textures, just general patters like plad, stripes etc, and it's all the same. While I do realize that the pre-render document window only shows a very low-res approximation of the actual true texture, the fact remains that "plaid" still looks like "plaid" in preview when I try it in the ankle boot, whereas it looks like a funky computer kaleidoscope pattern on the bikini top and bottom. I got the clothing pack from DAZ quite a while ago and everything has always worked fine, I just never tried texturing the bikini before. Changing the color yes (works fine), texturing it no. Not sure if they have a fix but I'll check it out. Any further suggestions on how to examine the uv map or anything else are still more than welcome, and thanks again!

Well you can go get uvmapper (uvmapper.com) which reads obj files. That should give you some idea about your file.

I do have UVMapper actually, but I'm afraid I'm not a quite advanced enough user to really understand that aspect of 3D objects. Here are a couple of examples of what the bikini objects look like in the pre-render document window. As you can see, the supposed default flowery texture actually appears as a weird microchip-like pattern. I hope this gives someone a better clue of what's going on.. I checked at DAZ and there is no update/fix for this item! :(

GOT IT!! It was definitely some kind of corrupt .OBJ file. When I took a look at it in UV Mapper it appeared at a way different angle or orientation than the texture map would seem to imply, a perspective from far above looking down or something rather than straight on from the side. All the other clothing items mapped correctly as you'd expect them to, so it was just something with those ones that for some reason had the map oriented all wrong. Thanks for the help everyone.. the tip about UV Mapping set me in the right investigative direction!