Hey guys,

I'm in the middle of making a couple of corrections to a hair I'm assigned to.  I actually do the DS mats and know how to do the "hide"/"show" mats without disrupting the diffuse, ambient, etc etc... just to move the opacity dials.

Poser, however, is a bit different.  I know that if I either unattach the trans map and dial transparency & transparency edge to 1.0000, and transparency fall off to 0.00000, or attach a black block as the transmap in place of the normal transmap, it'll hide the part you want.

However, after making the mat file and deleting everything except the transparency calls, and the "Image" "Transparency Map" part, it deletes the diffuse and all that part but inputs the transparency settings.

Is there a way I can have a Poser mat to ignore everything except the transparency parts?

Here's my idea.  I want to just "hide" and "show" a part of the hair without disrupting the hair mat, this way if a user has the hair as blonde, and he/she clicks "hide" and changes his/her mind and clicks "show", the hair's still blonde.  I can do this in DS but if I can't do the "show" in Poser, then having a "show" in DS only will upset Poser users 'cause it doesn't work for them.

Thanks in advance for all the help!

...wolfie

There's really not, unless the transparency is the only part of that material zone. Since it can't really be because there is a hair color map that goes with it, I don't see how it can be done.

Laurie

Ugh, I was suspicious this might be the answer lol.  I mean, I'm certainly not an expert in Poser, but having quite some good experience in mats (especially characters), I pretty much knew this might not work! :(

Thanks a lot for such a quick reply, Laurie!

...wolfie

No problem. I asked this very same question myself a couple years ago...lol.

;o)

Laurie

Good to know I'm not alone on this idea LOL!  Wish there was a way though, that would be a nice option!  Maybe we outa bug the python guys... :D :D

Python guys have lots of little scripts that do this stuff :)   can you state exactly what you need to happen , both ways ? 

Its probably easiest to save the original as a mat file to restore later.

Quote - Python guys have lots of little scripts that do this stuff :)   can you state exactly what you need to happen , both ways ? 

Its probably easiest to save the original as a mat file to restore later.

Exactly what I'm trying to do is make a mat that only effect the transparancy, without effecting the rest, such as diffuse, ambient, etc...  to turn off and on a part of a hair in the material zone. I'll try to explain again my idea... Say, I have my hair set with brown textures, I want to turn part of the tails off (turn it transparent), then I change my mind and turn it back on, which will then be brown again.  Ok, so I change my mind and change it to blonde, then I turn the tail part off, then turn it on again, which will be blonde again.

...wolfie

The only way I see to do this without leaving a script running is to generate a group of material files which have the transparency set . This wouldnt work for changing the color though unless you keep recreating the mat files.

I will think on it some more.

This was actually doable in Poser 4, one of the features that should have been kept IMO. 

If you are working with conforming hair, you can simply turn visibility on or off for eacg body part. Thats not the same as fiddling the material zones and wont work for prop hair.

I know very little about Poser material nodes, but think I may have a solution to the problem, if I have understood the question correctly.

As I understand it you want to be able to make various parts of the hair invisible, without affecting any other material settings.

Start by making all of the hair transparent by seting the "Transparency" value to one. At this point everything is transparent (there are no trans trans maps applied at this point). What we will do now is to divide the hair into parts that can be made visible individually. Each part that is to be made visible gets its own trans map, with the parts that are to be visible in white, or shades of grey, and all the rest of the map black.

These individual maps are then added together using Math Functions nodes, as in the above image. To make a part invisible, you turn its map off by setting the value where it plugs into the Math Functions to zero. In the apove image, Map_6 has been turned off, making the lower left corner invisible. The important thing to grasp is that you are adding or subtracting visibility, not transparency. In principle it is reletively simple, but in praxis the hard part is knowing which parts of the map relate to which parts of the geometry.

I should add that a big downside of the method is that (in P6 at least) the hair will be invisible untill rendered. :(