I had purchased some characters a while back.Whenever I apply the skin matpose the eyes go uniformly black - no white of eye, iris or pupil. Vendor says it must be my installation but I have many other characters from other artists that work perfectly well.

I have Poser 9 with SR2. I would really appreciate the help.

Hmmm...Did you try saving and reopening? Under "render" did you try "Reload Textures? 

Just ideas.

I've seen that myself.   When I rendered the black eyes disappeared.

@all ; IMPORTANT

Prime questions to pinpoint and eventually track the issue.

What video card are you running ?
What video card drivers are you all having?

Do the textures come into view when you click on; "Reload textures".

It seems there might be an issue with ATI/AMD cards and some CCC 12.2 and CCC12.3 video drivers.

Please provide all the info you can to solve this..

System and video card @driver specs please.
Thanks you.

After installing Poser Pro 2012 SR2 many materials showed up black in preview. I updated my video card driver and that appears to have solved it.

@Nanette

What video card are you using and what driver version "solved" it for you??

Thanks guys for the resonse.My video card is a GE Force GT440, Nvidia drivers - latest driver version 6.14.12.9573.

I had 'black eyes' on my ladies even before updating with SR2.

Did reload textures work?

On rendering the figure in the render room the eyes are back to normal. However this is the final step in a scene creation with a figure.I want to be able to change eye colour in the preview room.This is the case with most figures.

You have to do a "Reload Textures" from the Render menu. This will reload the textures in the preview - possibly getting rid of the black eyes.

This problem happens occasionally on loading figures, hiding then making visible of figures, setting the display mode to wireframe and back. The problem you describe may fall into this category

No.That does nothing to the 'black eyes'.They remain.

Then it may be an entire different issue as we were thinking.

Which character pack are you using?

And do you have HW Shading on? (In the render settings menu under the preview tab)

So, if I understand correct, the preview stays BLACK even after a reload textures, but the render is fine.
So the textures are in the runtime. (and are not missing)

Or did you have a missing texture on ANOTHER object, thay you clicked to ignore?
And your figures eyes stayed BLACK after that?

Did you have a missing transmap during that particular Poser session?

I know, many questions. Sorry.

At the moment I am having problems with Schonee's sdmakayla. I have also had similar problems with all the PD characters ( purchased and free ).

I have HW shading on in the preview settings.

Hi Vilters. Yes the eyes stay black after reload of textures but the render is fine.

All I have to do is load V4 with elite morphs and apply the figures mat in the pose menu and the eyes go black. 

I just had a look at PD Claudia.

I don't get the shader for the EyeSurface: In her P9 shaders she has - for some reason - set the EyeSurface material to a strange setting. She has a black simple color node (which is 0 as far as I know) connected to the transparency channel which is set at 1. This results in a non transparent surface for the preview. It renders transparent however - that is a complete mystery to me.

So, disconnect the black Simple color node from the transparency node and leave the rest and as far I can see it renders the same - but I may be mistaken here since I don't understand what the black Simple Color node is doing

For those who are curious: Simple Color connected to transparency (Set to 1), Trasparency Edge (set to 1) and Transparency Falloff (set to 0). Diffuse, spec and all the rest set to 0. It renders as transparent and preview is black

Adam35: Check the other figures if there is something similar going on

I am sure I must be missing something but I don't know what.

As I have said before I have quite a few characters from other artists , purchased and free that preview and render flawlessly.

The reason you see the eyes in black is because the eyesurface is non-transparent without a color - which is black. Remove the black simple node from the transparency and it previews and renders fine.

Why it is setup that way I do not know.

Brilliant.Thanks.I did that on pd Amy and the eyes are back to normal.

Will get round to modifying the other figures. 

Problem.The eyes go black when I try to change the colour of the iris.

If you apply a new mat, the eyesurface node is back to what it was. Disconnect again

Thanks. will do.

Oef, one problem less.
:-)

The transparency channel in Poser is not strictly transparency.

When you have just a number, it is the transparency. When you plug something in, it switches to opacity.

Opacity (the degree to which something blocks your ability to see through it) is the complement of transparency.

Using math:

transparency = 1 - opacity

or

opacity = 1 - transparency

So - simple color black (which is indeed zero) switches the mode to opacity. Opacity of 0 means

transparency = 1 - 0 = 1

So when you plug in 0, it's the same as not plugging anything in it with a transparency setting = 1.

I agree this is senseless. There is no point to plugging in 0 if you want transparency = 1. Just set it to 1 and plug nothing in.

The reason it switches is because the original transparency strategy with transparency maps is that 0 is transparent, 1 is opaque. So when you plug in a map (or any node) it has to go into that mode.

The label on the channel is very confusing. It's an opacity channel, not a transparency channel.

Thanks bb.

Then it looks like the preview treats it wrong. I'll report it

My video card is a GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

Driver that solved it is version 296.10

Thanks for the info Nanette.
Happy Posering.