Is Transparency animatable? For that matter, are ANY materials animatable in Poser? Specifically, I'd like a solid texture on a sphere to go to a bubble-like surface. How would one go about doing this directly in Poser? Thanks! --silver

To my knowledge the answer is no for V4. But I have to admit that I don't know if you can in ProPack.

I think you can do this, but the only way I know is somewhat ugly and brute-force. If you really want to do an animation this way, it should do the job. It's a bit too ugly to release in a product, though. What you would do is make a geometry-switching CR2 for your sphere, with a knob that selected between say, 25 geometries, say, sphere0.obj through sphere24.obj. The obj files would be identical, except for the material name, which would match the file name (sphere0 through sphere24). You set up 25 materials in your file, identical except for the transparency setting, with the transparency setting gradually increasing or decreasing. Then you animate the knob. I have done the geometry switching part (in order to make models with selectable textures). I haven't tried animating the knob, but since geometry-switching knobs are defined pretty much like all the other knobs, I think this should work. You may have to vary the number of obj files and materials in order to get smooth steps between the transparency settings...25 is just a guess. Besides being ugly, this has the disadvantage that you have to manually edit the CR2 file, which some people find distasteful. But I believe it will do the job. Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

If I remember correctly, Poser 4 Pro Pack adds the ability to animate materials, but I have not used this feature. Has anyone out there used it?

In ProPack you can animate diffusion colours, highlights and transparency levels, but not the maps, ie. you can't blend from one texture/bump/transparency map to another.

I tried material animations in the original ProPack release, and it caused me a few problems. I haven't tried it since SR3 was released.

Hmm, cool. Thanks Lynn, that's something to try. But if Pro Pack will animate transparency (which is all I really need) that might be worth it. $149 for a 20 second scene though... :( Thanks gang!

Silver, ProPack also allows you to have multiple views at once (which I find handy when posing) and it has a "setup room" for rigging any object you create so that it can be animatable. Check it out on the CuriousLabs site (link in the right column). Oh, when pricing things and evaluating if they are worth the cost, I use the cost of MY time as a comparison. A hair model might cost $20, but if it would take me a week to build it... I'll just buy it. If a program will do the job faster, and with less frustration and tedium, it makes sense to get it, and use my time for something more creative. Carolly

Attached Link: http://philosplace.homestead.com/Files/movpic/index.html