Having some problems with this. How do I import a bump map or transparency map? I can't seem to find the option in the material editing mode. How should one facsimilate Poser's use of reflection mapping, when rendering in VUE? Most of the cloth textures I use in Poser rely on reflection mapping. Is there a parallel function in VUE? Very excited about this software! I just wish it would cooperate a bit more....

Have you tried looking over the tutorials here in the tutorials section? Because I believe there is some info there regarding this. As for bump maps, you can rename the .bum extension to .bmp, and use them in Vue then. Transparency maps seem to be a different thing in Vue than they are in Poser, and to tell you the truth I'm really not sure, as I don't evr use them, since I take the chicken way out and rely on post work. ;) As for the reflection maps, I have no idea if it's even possible, but if so, probably much different than the way Poser handles them. I'm sorry that I can't be of more help, but I'm really just not familiar with any of these things, since I never use these techniques in either Vue OR Poser. I can't help it-- I LOVE to do post work in Painter, so my work in Poser and Vue is usually very basic. Have no fear though, because Guitta, or Bloodsong, or Bill or Varian or one of our other experts will see this soon and answer, hopefully, far better than I can right now. Vue? Cooperate? No, Vue's not big on cooperation much of the time. sigh. --Mike

Attached Link: http://www.atomic-knights.de

Actually, Transparency maps ARE possible, I use them all the time. Here's a quick little mini-tutorial for you. First, you need to rotate the map 90 degrees to the left (the bottom will be on the right hand side). Step 2. Open up the material editor and select the Transparency tab. Step 3. Set the Fading out slider to clear (0%) Step 4. Set the Global Transparency to 100% Step 5. In the Effects box, check Variable Transparency Step 6. You should see a transparency function box to the right of the screen with a black marble in it. Right click on this and select "Edit Function" Step 7. Check the "mapped" in the value section. Step 8. Load your transparency map. Step 9. Click "Ok" This will take you back to the transparency section. Step 10. To the right of the now mapped marble (it should be showing a black and white mapped image now instead of the solid black) there are two boxes with one half white and one half gray. Right click on the one that says Transparency (it should be the top box) and select "Load Function" Step 11. Go to the "others" directory and select the "Inverse" function. Click on "Ok". Step 12. Save your material so you don't have to go through this again. :) Step 13. Adjust the SIZE until it fits. It should be the right size the first time but sometimes you have to scale them up or down. Hope this helps. Kate

Amazing !!! ... I'm speachless !

Don't be amazed - I cheated here - I took notes the first couple of times I did it and then made myself a little cheat sheet of instructions. :) I'm not sure if you still need to rotate the map or not since I took these notes before 3.1 came out, but the rest of process is the same. I think you might also need to check the "Object Space" and "One-Sided" boxes on the material editor itself, but I'm not positive. Just need to play around with it a bit until you find what works. :)

heyas; i believe you need to flip the map vertical, not rotate 90 degrees...! anyway, you can do the trans map the same way you do the colour texture map, but in the transparency tab, you have to set the trans to 100% and check variable transparency. the thing to load the image is inside the function for the variable transparency. just set the yscale to -1 to have vue 'flip' it for you. you can do the same for bump maps in the bump channel... but you really want to use greyscale bump maps, not poser's freaky green/red encoded ones. :)