Looking to create translucent leaves. The intent is that the V4 body texture, when lit from behind shows overlapping leaves through its translucence based on a map (plus whatever is between the light and the material). Yet, no matter what I come up with, I either get a very bright texture with everything translucent, or a dark texture with no translucence. Can't use the transparency as that defines the shape of the leaves of the figure. I've googled just about everything, but all I come up with translucent skin using SSS shaders. Haven't seen a lot of love for the translucence channels in Poser. The picture below was my original idea, but a bit naive as it turns out.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

The translucent node on the main node is a leftover from earlier versions of Poser and was an SSS fake rather than true SSS (uses ambient rather than true SSS). If you want translucent leaves and have a version of Poser 9 or newer, use SSS...I'd use the Custom Scatter node for leaves.

Try a blender node, plug that black and white map into it and make the white part of the texture SSS and the black part solid (or whatever it is you're after). The blender node can create kind of a mask for you and break apart the black and white into separate parts that you can manipulate individually.

Laurie

True SSS (the kind we get from the new scatter node) won't work on single-sided geometry. It needs to be a solid.

If you want to use the old-style one-sided geometry with back lighting and translucence you have to do it correctly and it works fine.

These are the rules:

A) Geometry must be one sided.

B) Geometry must be lit from the "wrong" side (rear) using a directional light source. Not IDL alone - it needs a directed light - you may have other sources of light, but without a light from "behind" the surface aimed towards the observer, nothing interesting happens with translucence.

C) Plug a Diffuse node into the Translucence_Color chip.

D) If you want color either place that in the Translucence_Color chip, or place it in the Diffuse node's Diffuse_Color chip. Whichever you're using, the other should be white, unless you know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, just follow my instructions. If you need a color map, set both chips to white and plug the color into the Diffuse node's Diffuse_Color.

E) Define the amount of translucence with the Translucence_Value - try .5.

F) You MUST enable Normals_Forward on the Diffuse node going to the Translucence_Color for the back-lighting to work.

In addition, if you want front lighting to work as usual, you must have the built-in Diffuse working as well. If you are looking at the back side with back lighting and want that to behave like front lighting to the back-side camera or observer (such as a mirror) you will also want the Normals_Forward checked on the main Poser surface node.

One more thing - the Diffuse node you use for Translucence must be dedicated to that input - don't plug it ANYWHERE ELSE or you will confuse it and it will behave like normal which is to say not translucent.

I think those leaves are meant to be used on Vicky...correct (in which case, Vicky is a solid)? I'm asking the OP btw. LOL

Looks like her map, but with leaves instead of skin.

Laurie

     I would think that the map driving translucence value should be greyscale leaves on a black background.  The transparency map should be likewise.

     I can't see what's plugged into alt specular, but it should be limited by (i.e., multiplied by) the transparency map, or you'll get highlights between leaves, making it look like clear plastic.

     Laurie, I also guess that it's for his dryad, but even so, while Vicky may have considerable thickness, the leaves would not, so I think it would be a better strategy to use translucence.

And if you combine translucence with fastscatter you can get some nice results :D

Bill