Hi! Gosh, I'm clueless. I'm trying to get to grips with transparency maps, specifically, getting realistic eyelashes and eyebrown on figures. Using UVMapper and Photoshop, I created an image to use for a transparency map, and applied it to the Poser4 Nude Woman figure (in the 'Transparency' section) while leaving the texture and bump maps to default. When I render the image, I see the outline of the lashes and brows I painted, but they appear overlaid on top of the 'fin' of the figure's eyelashes-- it is still visible. I have been looking over tutorials on the Web as well as the manual and I must be missing something. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrongly?

heyas; you need to do three things when you're doing trans maps. 1: in the colour, set the highlight colour to black. this will prevent the transparent parts from having shiny highlights along the invisible edges. (i also set the highlight size down to 1%, but i dont think it matters.) 2: set the trans min and the trans max to 100%. you can leave the min at 0% if you want. just remember that trans min doesn't mean minimum transparency, it means 'transparency at the edges.' also set the falloff to 0. 3: load your trans map in the transparency texture slot. since trans maps use a greyscale, you can save them as gif with no loss. and, when making them, remember white is opaque. :) another thing to keep in mind is that the p4 figures are not made to use trans maps. the eyelashes will work okay, although they are really double-layered meshes and will look funny in close ups. i dont believe the eyebrows will work at all, since they are part of the head mesh. the parts you turn transparent will look into the inside of the head. april just made some eyebrow props for the p4 woman, that goes with her p4woman that takes victoria texture maps. you might like to try those.

go to digital babes and dl the eyelash trans. uzip to anywhere ie my docs. in the materials section select the figure in the top right of the material box it should say preveiw click on this and you get a list of body parts select lashes then load the trans map set trans to 100%set obect colour to white reflect to black and ambient to black. hope this helps. stu.

Thanks very much; I shall try that. I had no idea this was going to be so complicated! I may just do it in post-production. Photoshop is a wonderful thing. Thanks again for your help. I'm sure I'll ask for it again...