Is there a way for Poser 8 to take a PNG Alpha channel as input into a 2D-map node?

I have not found a direct way to do this in the material room, but I haven't tried since before Poser 8 came out. Perhaps they changed something - perhaps the Comp node will do it.

Quote - I have not found a direct way to do this in the material room, but I haven't tried since before Poser 8 came out. Perhaps they changed something - perhaps the Comp node will do it.

I'll try it some time this week. It would make it much easier to do certain types of overlays.

What do you want to do exactly, hide or show various parts of a bitmap based on a mask?  You can do this with a Blender node if so.

I think he wants to get at the alpha mask that is built into the PNG, because the Image_Map node isn't using it.

This is something I've been trying to figure out for ages. Why does Poser's Image_Map node have no option to honor the alpha mask that is in the image? If it did, we wouldn't need a separate mask and a Blender node to overlay a PNG on another node. You could plug whatever the other node is into the "Background" parameter of the Image_Map and just turn on "Use Alpha".

As it is, the Background only applies to parts of the UV map not covered by the image (when you scale it down and do not enable tiling).

The way things are now, when trying to use a PNG for a tattoo or decal, we usually scale it down, and then we have to load the alpha as a completely separate image (which also has to be scaled down) and use a Blender node to mix it with whatever is supposed to be underneath (usually skin or car paint). To do that, we have to use an external tool such as Photoshop to extract the Alpha as its own image.

This should be part of the Image_Map node's built-in ability. Failing that, if the Comp node were able to extract the alpha mask from an Image_Map, we could at least avoid having to deal with Photoshop and a second Image_Map. But I don't think that works either.

Ah I see what you mean - I didn't realize PNG had an alpha channel built into the image format.

Quote - I think he wants to get at the alpha mask that is built into the PNG, because the Image_Map node isn't using it.

Exactly. I want to apply makeup etc. overlays without having to mess about with photoshop.

If the particular PNG file you're looking at does not already have an alpha channel masked the way you need it to be, then you still have to make a mask that suits your needs.  I don't think I've ever seen a Poser texture that is handled this way (practically all are distributed in JPG format).

Yes but makeup could easily be done this way if the program supported it. You could draw a layer in photoshop with color and alpha and save the layer as its own PNG. Then these could be stacked, literally by stacking Image_Map nodes one to another (via the Background parameter) thus forming identical layering as is done in Photoshop.

You could then get different makeup PNG's from different vendor's and just stack them, one node each.

Quote - If the particular PNG file you're looking at does not already have an alpha channel masked the way you need it to be, then you still have to make a mask that suits your needs.  I don't think I've ever seen a Poser texture that is handled this way (practically all are distributed in JPG format).

Almost all the makeup resources are done as PNGs. However, they tend to have many layters. (Still, one can copy the layer one needs to another file.) I guess the best I can do is to create a layer from the alpha and export that to use with color-mult.