Moderator, please remove the my comment two up. as you can see I expanding on what I was saying in the bottom most post from me.  Thanks

>>> Wish I could do that for Normal map creation but I've not found a way to that so I just use the created Bump map to make the Normal map.  That works pretty good!  

The Green channel of a normal map controls the direction it faces. For example, if you find that a normal map is saved in DirectX format, you can invert the Green channel to make it OpenGL format, and vice versa.

So, select the area you want to invert and feather the mask.

With the selecttion still selected, switch to the Channels tab in the layer manager. Select the Green channel, and press Ctrl+I (for Invert). Or choose Image > Adjustments > Invert.

The innie becomes an outie.

Top is before inversion, bottom is after inversion. 

Oh thank you honey!  Learn something every day!  

It would be nice to have a brush tool that would invert the colors/grey like that.

There's allot of missed opportunity with the Poser morph brush (speaking of brushes) 

So I've run into another issue.  Not sure if this is a bug.  My maps in Firefly and Superfly using the Physical node all work as expected but in Cycles getting that stupid genital blend to work correctly is really driving me crazy.  Any help?  Keep in mind this set up for the main skin on LH and his shaft and testes for his genital conformer all look great to me.  So if you have a solution that requires me to redo all my hard work ..... sigh, I'll have to see how complicated it may be.  I've tried adding a node to blend out that area but I just don't have the brains to figure that out.  So sorry.  Again, the transmap works as expected in FF and SF Physical Root Node so it's not my maps.  Thanks so much 

Pardon my ignorance, but where does transparency come in? 

Pubic hair.

Transparency is a little tricker in Cycles than it is in Physical Surface.

Try this. I moved things around and minimized things so hopefully you could follow it more easily.

Thanks honey!  I'll take what ever brilliance you can offer.  So appreciate your help!  XO

Pardon my ignorance, but where does transparency come in? 

I've got to say that, with pubic hair, when I have sometimes just a transparency map, sometimes not, I'm using Ghostship's hair shader, that I've put in a compound node 

@RAMWorks andother thing you might investigate is if the black parts of your transmap are truly black. If not you'll get transparency where you can still see the mesh. 

Yes, they are truly black and the other is truly white.  Here is a render from Firefly

Silly question: could it be a question of gamma setting for the transparency map?

Unrelated to gen transmap, but topical: thank you all on this thread, especially @ghostship2, fir sharing that shader. Made several conversions of figures and soon I will be OK with some renders enough to share without shaming my ancestors. :)

Thanks to Denice for her help on this.  I'm almost there, I can't see where she has the HSV plugged in though.  There are two blue lines from it in the example, one going to the Principled Bsdf and then the other I THINK is going to the Subsurface but not sure what input.  But then that may be the Firefly setup she was trying to replicate.  I have a Subsurface Scattering BSSRDF node.  Maybe I don't need this any more.  Again, I'm a dunce when it comes to understanding all this.  I do learn and keep notes but Cycles without any feedback in the viewport is really annoying!  LOL 

Thanks to Denice for her help on this.  I'm almost there, I can't see where she has the HSV plugged in though.  There are two blue lines from it in the example, one going to the Principled Bsdf and then the other I THINK is going to the Subsurface but not sure what input.  But then that may be the Firefly setup she was trying to replicate.  I have a Subsurface Scattering BSSRDF node.  Maybe I don't need this any more.  Again, I'm a dunce when it comes to understanding all this.  I do learn and keep notes but Cycles without any feedback in the viewport is really annoying!  LOL 

I think that the hsv2 input's node comes from the top color node, one blue output line is going to the PoserSurface node (diffuse or alt_diffuse) and the second blue output line is indeed going to the PrincipledBSDF.
In your setup, the hsv2_2 node seems to be full white, it seems to lack of its color bitmap input, but it may be your choice.

@RAMWolff

At end of March I emailed you a set of shaders that included the gen maps. What you can do is load a second copy of the gens into your scene and apply that shader. Then use that as a guide to set it up.

That is basically what I used when I tried to isolate the steps you needed to do to hook up the trans map.

You can apply that shader to the gens, and then just change out the color, spec, bump, and trans maps with the ones you are using.

Thanks for the reminder! LOL  I always tend to take the long way around in hopes that info will stick better.  Apparently that's not the case . I've loaded up your settings and will replace maps and tweak and see what happens.  XO

What I'm getting with this set up is a really orangy saturated color around where the transparency is and the shaft is desaturated more than it's supposed to be.  I guess your right Denise, transparency with Cycles is a completely different animal.  Not sure what I'm going to do about that.  Maybe we need more of the Cycles nodes set up for Poser to truly get the results we need for things like this.  Quite frustrating.  I tried your settings, really really orangy, reloaded my attempt and it's better but trying all the various tricks with the HSV node and Subsurface and Specular get things calmed down a bit but not acceptable to me.  

Post a screencap of that render.  It almost sounds like bad SSS but can judge based on description.

RAMWorks posted at 12:28 PM Thu, 20 April 2023 - #4462859

What I'm getting with this set up is a really orangy saturated color around where the transparency is and the shaft is desaturated more than it's supposed to be.  I guess your right Denise, transparency with Cycles is a completely different animal.  Not sure what I'm going to do about that.  Maybe we need more of the Cycles nodes set up for Poser to truly get the results we need for things like this.  Quite frustrating.  I tried your settings, really really orangy, reloaded my attempt and it's better but trying all the various tricks with the HSV node and Subsurface and Specular get things calmed down a bit but not acceptable to me.  

B/W bitmap (gamma=1 always, following BB's advices on this) in Fac: black = 0 = Closure1 as output, white = 1 = Closure2 as output,
plus all the possibilities between 0 and 1.
And depending on the bitmap you have, you may connect the TransparentBsdf to Closuer2 instead, the logic remains the same.
Using PhysicalSurface: I keep getting confused between its transparency mode and its opacity mode 

@ghostship2: your skin shader is amazing. Thank you a million times! Now to test with a darker color map.

From Afrodite-Ohki:

"Question: do you have SSS on in both the hip and the genitals?

Superfly likes to double them down. It's a bitch. For my boys, I've switched SSS off for the genital only, to go around that

it happens when you have two sets of polygons with SSS almost touching each other."

So I removed the SSS from the hip or pubic area of the genital conformer and all is well now.  

@Rhia474 Lovely render!

@RAMWorks have you tried changing the scatter group ID numbers so parts that touch don't interfere with each other? That sometimes can  help quite a bit.

Don't know anything about that Ghostship!  :-( 

RAMWorks posted at 1:20 PM Fri, 21 April 2023 - #4462969

Don't know anything about that Ghostship!  :-( 

Is there a known scatter group that may keep both the body (torso) and conformer from creating that weird lighting issue when both have the SSS turned on? 

@ghostship2: your skin shader is amazing. Thank you a million times! Now to test with a darker color map.

Wow!

@RAMWorks there is no difference in how the scatter groups work, they all look the same. It's a way for the render engine to keep SSS from one object messing with another SSS object. Sometimes you'd need to use different group numbers for different zones on a figure so you can avoid the dark green crosstalk lines.

I'm pretty happy with the blend now.  So on to the next thing.  How does one set up the figures skin to have the glow behind the ears and other more translucent areas?  My setup according to Ghostship tweaked is below.  

Also what are the uses of the Volume input on the main Cycles node?  Never figured out what exactly that does or can do!  

I'm pretty happy with the blend now.  So on to the next thing.  How does one set up the figures skin to have the glow behind the ears and other more translucent areas?  My setup according to Ghostship tweaked is below.  

Also what are the uses of the Volume input on the main Cycles node?  Never figured out what exactly that does or can do!  

This is not correct.  You are using a separate SubSurfaceScatter node when it is not necessary.  You already have SSS built into the PrincipledBsdf node; you have created redundancy in your setup.  The effect you are describing is accomplished by SSS.

Explain the rationale behind this setup.

So get rid of the Subsurface Scattering BSSRDF node? 

OK. I'll change things up again!  LOL  Always learning with my old addled brain!  Thanks so much 

@RAMWorks My original shader did what it was supposed to do regarding SSS. No need to mess with nodes other than tweaks to the HSV, bump amount, roughness amount

I don't know if L'Homme suffers from the same problem as La Femme when she was released, ear meshes were too thick to allow correct translucency through the skin texture.  I hope it was addressed.

Sorry for the delay.  Had a client over for a cut and chat.  Well L'Homme IS La'Femme.  He graduated to his own mostly stand alone figure setup rather than remaining a morph of LF to make making stuff for him less of a hassle.  It's still a hassle but we are supposed to be getting new figures.  I hope it's going to be the second generation of these figures as I hate when everything is scrapped and everything starts anew.  

I don't know if L'Homme suffers from the same problem as La Femme when she was released, ear meshes were too thick to allow correct translucency through the skin texture.  I hope it was addressed.

I don't know if this is a bug in Poser 13 or my video card but the teeth shader, followed Ghostship's example on the other page to the LETTER.  Grainy and weird.  I then used one of their simple shaders, I believe it was PVC to get a shine on the teeth, loaded that, copied it, brought back the shader in the works, pasted the PVC shader and looked it over to see what I could do to perhaps get the teeth less grainy.  I experimented with that for a little while and then ended up going back to the original shader but the PVC shader was held in memory and all the teeth would do was render out with that, even reloading textures didn't work so I saved and closed out.  I'm so tired from lack of sleep with this damned rotator cuff issue I think I'm going to just watch some Netflix and get back to this tomorrow.  I feel like my mind has gone upside down and not a fun way.  Cheers 

That's strange.  I've looked over Ghostship's teeth shader and do not see anything that would cause graininess to show while rendering.  You could have bad render settings.  The only correction you should with the shader is to disconnect the bump node from the Clearcoat Normal channel.  Ghostship does not have Clearcoat nor the Clearcoat roughness active so there is no need to plug that in.  However, if you want pearly white then increase the Clearcoat value.  FYI, teeth are not naturally white.

Here is the main shader. Skin maps sometimes need adjustment in tone. HSV node controls skin tone and saturation, Roughness and Clearcoat Roughness control the glossiness  of the skin and bump is controlled by the distance on the Bump2Normal node.

That's strange.  I've looked over Ghostship's teeth shader and do not see anything that would cause graininess to show while rendering.  You could have bad render settings.  The only correction you should with the shader is to disconnect the bump node from the Clearcoat Normal channel.  Ghostship does not have Clearcoat nor the Clearcoat roughness active so there is no need to plug that in.  However, if you want pearly white then increase the Clearcoat value.  FYI, teeth are not naturally white.

Here are three renders and the current teeth set up.  I've even turned down the bump to zero with this happening so it's not that.  Very strange..... at least this morning the shader I was playing with to fix the noise (which did work actually but even hooking up the bump didn't give me anything, which was strange).  These are the three modes, Random Walk Fixed Radius, Random Walk (dig that blue hue) and Burley 

why are you plugging the HSV node into the CLEAR coat. As it's name implies, it is supposed to be CLEAR. lol

plus you have SSS turned on and that is also making the grainy, glowing teeth

here is the original shader I made. No need to modify something that already works.

I found when I turned the Transmission off the graininess went away.  Yea, the other values and plug ins were experiments, I forgot to put them back to your values!  

transmission is for glass. I was using it as an alternative to using SSS or translucence for teeth. I'm not getting grainy renders with it on my machine.

OK, teeth perfect now.  I ended up putting the Specular Roughness up a bit to spread the light on the teeth.  Looks right to me finally!  Sorry to be a PITA! LOL