Hello. I have the following problem: I want to have a material that has high specular reflections (highlights), like a shiny plastic or metal, but at the same time, i am using a transparency map. What happen by default is that the transparent part of the map (100% transparent) aren't affected by the highlight. This is great if you want the transmap to create some "holes" effect on the surface. Now, what i would like is that these 100% transparent areas actually looks like trabsparent plastic, so i need them to be affected by the highlight... Can anyone help? (I hop i was clear enough, maybe i wrote a bit too much :P )

Oh and actually, i also made the same experience in poser, and there, the transparent areas are affected by the highlight... I can also invert the question (maybe this should be posted in the poser forum but i know several people use poser as well), what if i want the transparent areas in poser to not be affected by highlights!?

You can fake it like this - duplicate your object, and reduce the duplicate in size by a minute amount - I used the object properties box to reduce the inner sphere by .001 of a Vue unit in all three dimensions. Then make your inner sphere into your transparent highlighted plastic. Hope this helps, Adrian

Yeah, I don't think it's possible in Vue to get a highlight on a transparent area when using a trans map. I think the reasoning for it is because the way Vue uses transparencies not as transparent materials, but rather to make areas of a texture map invisible. But yes, it does work in Poser. As for the Poser question, I'm not sure how you would do it. What zoon says would work, but it would take some work, although it might be the only way. What kind of an object are you trying to texture this way, anyway?

Thanks for the tip, i will try it :) In this case i was playing with poser clothing, trying to have some transparent plastic effects... what i did was to reduce the max transparency to about 60%, but then both transparency and highlights aren't too convincing :/ Anyway it seems like it would be a very usefull option to be able to choose between a transparent area or a transparent "material" that could shine :) (maybe for vue 4.1 or 5 :P )

Adrian shows a good tip there (above)! Also, you were on the right track reducing the transparency, but I think you'll have better luck by mixing materials - one, a transparent plastic, and the other the shiny material. The latter would have the transparency map. As a mixed material, they would both be on the same object together. What is transparent on the shiny material would reveal the clear plastic material. If I'm not mistaken, the transparency map could be used in the mixing production production, making the materials mix together only in those places. Geez...hope this makes sense. :)

Hey that's a good idea there Varian, and certainly worth looking into.

Here's Varian's method on the same object, this is a mixed material.

Good idea Varian thanks :) Not sure if it is the same thing i finally found, but here is what i finally did after much more tries: the transparency options contain an checkbox named "underlying material". There, you can define a new material that is seen through the transparency... so i put 100% transparency in my original material (with the trans map) and then checked the "underlying material" and added my transparent plastic there. Also what i found is that you can use 100% transparency and n=1 for the transparent plastic material! What you have to do to get the highlight to show in this case is to check the box "additive" in the transparency options! Thanks again :) PS: The duping object method didn't work well in my case, even trying to make one object bigger. This is mainly due to the fact i use complex object with concavities (clothes) and not a simple shape i guess.

Glad to hear you got what you wanted, at least. You know, I always forget about the "underlying material" option, but it's a very cool thing to play with. Thanks for the tip, too. :)

Nice example, Adrian! I'm glad it worked like I thought it should. :) And cool deal on the underlying material, pink! Now I'm going to have to look closer at that feature, too! :D