I admit it! Im lost! Can anybody point me in the right direction for using trans maps? I understand the concept, but Im not getting how to properly apply them in P5. (eyebrows, lashes, etc.) Ive just been blindly connecting nodes for V3s trans map, but Im obviously doing something wrong. Ive only been able to find a few tutorials for Poser 3 so far. Thanks guys!

I don't know of a tutorial, but it's fairly simple. You go to the material room. Choose V3's eyelashes. Go down the list of options until you find three: transparency, transparency edge, transparency falloff (I think, this is off the top of my head). Created a new node at Transparency. Choose 2D image map. In that little space at top that says 'none,' click and you can browse for the transparency map. Find the transmap for V3 and choose it. Remember that the transmaps are black and white and gray. After you have set up the node, change the value for Transparency to 1.0, and then edge and falloff to 0.0. And there you have it. There are many more things you can do with transmaps, but that's the simple version that will probably get you to where you are going in most cases.

Also anything black in the map will show tranparent in the render, anything white will be opaque, and anything gray will be semitransparent. Transmaps are also great for masking off clothing items. Such as if you want to make a pair of shorts out of long pants, just make a transmap with the legs black and the hip white.

AH-HA!!! Did the trick! I love you guys! Thanks and happy 4th!

I have a question regarding transparancies. I have a project that I'm trying to put together, which requires me creating new trans-maps for this clothing item. The object has reflection maps, however. When I apply a trans-map to the image it removes the texture, yes, but the reflections remain as some sort of "ghost". I can't seem to completely make something transparent without some sort of above-mentioned "ghosting" going on. I tried applying the trans-map to every thing, including the reflection, but it is still there. Can someone give me a hand with this? How do you apply a trans-map to "everything" to make areas completely invisible?

What you need to do is use the transmap to control the Specular_Value (see above).

The left ball has the correction applied.

To deal with the reflection, connect the transmap into the Reflection_Value as well.

In P4 you have to change Reflective color from any to black - if not all invisible (because of transparency maps) parts will be shiny and glossy and looking like transparent plastic bottle ;) I think it should work in P5 too but I'm not too sure.

Message edited on: 07/04/2005 16:29

I haven't done my own reflection maps yet, but if I understand it correctly, they should work like other maps. The areas that get reflection are determined by the map. Applying transmaps to your reflection maps, as suggested above, is one way to do it, and another way would be to build a custom reflection map on a template. I haven't used P4 in a long time, but as I remember, there was no way to prevent the invisible areas from showing spectacular.