Attached Link: http://www.lindabucklin.com/eyebrow.jpg

This is my first post to the Poser forum. I'm struggling to learn Poser and I'm trying to figure out how to use transparency maps to have natural looking eyebrows and eyelashes on Victoria (or any model, for that matter). I thought I was doing things right, but then the eyelashes disappeared and the eyebrows look discolored - in spite of the fact that I changed the material to white before applying the texture and trans maps. I'm about to pull the hair out of my head! (and maybe the eybrows and eyelashes... :)) Any suggestions, guesses, anything - I would really appreciate!

Hi Linda, For the eyebrows (and upper eyebrows) and the eyelashes you need to do the following: 1. Set the Transparency Minimum and the Transparency Maximum to 100%. 2. Set the Transparency Falloff to 0%. 3. For the texture map, load the head texture. 4. For the transparency map, load the transparency map. If you did all these and you still got the results in your picture, then I don't know what could be wrong. I hope you'll be able to get the results you want. Sue

Thanks so much Sue! You suggestions solved the eyelash problem, and almost solved the eyebrow problem - this is what I've got now... Any ideas what's causing the problem now?

Attached Link: http://www.ronknights.com/victoria/index.htm

Check out my Victoria Texture tutorial. I've made screeshots of all the texture screens and all their settings. It should help a lot! Ron

Ron, your screenshots look very helpful to me. Thanks for putting them together.

Ron, this is a great resource, thanks! Your examples helped me figure out that in order to solve the problem, I needed the transparency min and max sliders on 0% for the eyebrows, yet the min and max sliders need to be at 100% for the upper eyebrows. Now I'm almost there! There are still weird 'swellings' in the eyebrow area. Any suggestions? Maybe I just need to sleep and take a closer look at your tutorial tomorrow. Anyway, here's a picture of what I have now. How on earth does anyone learn this stuff? Poser is turning out to be a lot more difficult than I expected it to be.

Yes, you need to take a fresh look at the settings tomorrow. Take it from me, the problems will go away. You might also want to know one thing. These days when you get a texture from DAZ3D, it includes MAT file poses which will setup these textures for you. In this screenshot, the MAT file pose set is called MAT V2 Light. You go to Poses, then look for that section. Then just click on the settings you want. I'm glad I could help. Ron

You might want to look for the setting for Upper Eyebrows. There is no texture here, but you do use the transmap that I have indicated with the arrow. If you don't have the transmap, you can find it in Free Stuff. Also it should come with some good texture sets. Ron

Here is the other setting for eyebrows. See how it is different from the Upper Eyebrows? You have a texture here. But you don't use the transmap!

Here is the screen for the eyelashes, just so you have all these settings in one place.

for the upper brow & lashes object color = black or brown highlight color = black ambient color = black reflective color = black highlight size = 1% transparency min = 100% transparency max = 100% transparency falloff = 0% use transmap

Looking at the screenshot the most important one for LindaB seems to be the highlight must be set to black (RGB 0,0,0). This is easily overlooked. Transmaps don`t react well to highlights and generally should not be used in combination.

Thanks everyone for your help! I really appreciate it, and I finally got the eyebrow problem solved and learned a lot in the process. This forum is fantastic. Thanks Ron, for letting me know about the MAT file pose set. The first time I tried it, it worked great - Victoria looked beautiful. Then I tried it again, and again, and I keep getting this result. Poor Victoria! Did I somehow corrupt some files? Should uninstall and reinstall Victoria?

I figured out what's going wrong with the MAT files (a miracle in itself). The .jpg bump map is being loaded instead of the .BUM bump map. Once I changed it, Victoria looked fine. I wish I knew why it loads like that, but at least it can be fixed. Thanks again, everyone - you've been super helpful!

OH, I'm sorry. I forgot a lesson I'd learned long ago. You need to use the MAT poses that end in P4. (This is when you do her skin, not the eyes, etc.) The other MAT poses are meant for Poser Pro Pack. Look at the screenshot. I'm sorry I forgot to mention that situation. Ron