I can't seem to get Poser5 to recognize my transparency maps. I can get the object (or clothing area) in question to become transparent, but only in whole strokes, not to the specs of a map.

I spent the morning looking at relevant, old posts, and my settings seem essentially correct. But I also see that the node plugged into "Transparancy" is often called, in fact, "Transparancy Map". All I can find is the 2D Textures/Image_Map node.

Is this my problem? Is the Transparancy Map node hiding somewhere?

My transparancy maps themselves are simple jpgs (based on UV Mapper texture maps). Should they have some kind of UV info encoded into them somehow?

Please advise. Thanks.

Make sure that your trans map is pure white and black, not coloured. Black for invisible, white for visible, grey in between. (Kind of basic, sorry if you already know this.) The map must be plugged into the Transparency node - the name of the node doesn't matter. The Transparency value must be set to 1.0, the Transparency_Edge also to 1.0, and make the Transparency_Falloff 0.0 - this should give best results. If this doesn't help, please post a screenshot of your material room settings, and a render of how it's coming out.

I'd love to know what you think... I'm baffled.

It looks like you are applying the transmap to the TurtleNk part only. That bit appears to be working just fine.

No, see my problem is that I'm just trying to cut out a V at the neck, but the whole piece is transparent.

If I wanted to get rid of the whole thing, I wouldn't need a transparency map at all...

Still baffled.

Message edited on: 01/18/2005 17:43

Ah, right, now I think I have it. Your transmap, from what I see there, is not correct. It looks like you have expanded the neck area to the whole of the map. The map should be for the whole of the catsuit. AFAICR, the neck part should be only a tiny little bit way up at the top of the map.

Okay. Because I couldn't select the suit as a whole (no "Body" area), I assumed that the transmap needed to be just of that one part. I'm going to go back and try that. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks, SamT!

You're welcome. :) FYI, "Body" is generally only for posing purposes. The material zones are often different. You can download the template for the catsuit from the product page at DAZ.

At least now it's referencing the transmap (see the bad seam). But it still doesn't seem to be referencing the area I want to make transparent. Is UV Mapper known to return bad transmaps and funny seams? Or have I done something wrong in the process of collecting/altering it?

Oh, and I just saw your response about dl'ing from DAZ. Will do! Thanks.

I think there may be a "seam guide" by SnowSultan in Freestuff here, too. Think of a seam guide as an advanced template, if you're not familiar with the term. It makes texture creation and transmapping a lot easier.

A good trick for knowing where you will want to paint holes into the transmap: Render the catsuit with SnowSultan's colorful seamguide for it as a colormap, render several pictures that will show you which seams are where (don't forget at least two 'full renders' which allow you to see the seamguide completely on the catsuit!) and save them to your harddisk. Now, when painting the transmap, do that as a layer over the original seamguide, always comparing with the reference pictures you've rendered. As it seems, you have confused the front of the catsuit on the seamguide with the side, that's all... and that can't happen if you had reference images on how the seamguide works...