Thanks, everybody, I'm off to study shaders for a while...

Is there any advantage in not using the mask, since I already took the step of making it?

Ok, thanks, that was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. The clothing still looks like skin, though, like a tattoo. How do I make the skin shaders only affect the skin, and apply different settings to the clothing? (The skin I am using has a lot of complicated nodes- actually I'm not even using the skin itself, I swapped out the texture but loaded it just for the complicated nodes because I don't know how to do that stuff myself, and it looks good in renders, but I'm not attached to it, I just want the skin to look skin-like and the clothing to look clothing-like.)

Ok, so I am in the advanced material room for the torso skin. I am using Poser 10, and the figure I’m working with is V4. (Yes, I know she has plenty of clothes, but I also know this will come up a lot in general and I will need to know how to do it. Anyway, I specifically wanted a ‘40s style bikini top, with thick straps, and couldn’t find one. If anyone knows where I can find such a thing for free or cheap, please direct me to that as well, and it will solve this particular case, but I still want to know how to add second skins.) So, the first thing I do is create a blender node and connect it to the skin? And then I suppose I need to import the second texture? I don’t see an option to import an image, how do I get the image into the advanced material room? Is this correct so far?

I did it!!!  It has to match what they are called in the geometries folder.

Thanks!

I googled the lock, it has to do with my Windows home network and it doesn't sound like it's relevant. Supposedly it means I can open it but nobody else can. I made another one that I saved in a different way, and  manually changed the .obj to lower case to match the others, and I am still getting the message that no control cage exists for the figure. For the naming scheme I was going by what he's called in the scene, because it seems like they usually follow that, but I noticed there are a few cases where the figure and the cage aren't named the exact same thing and it still loads for them, so I was wondering if there's some other rule that I'm not aware of. I tried it with and without the space, and I also tried naming it just like the Michael 3 cage but with the 3 changed to a 4.

Is my naming wrong? I tried it 3 different ways. No matter what I do, it says no control cage exists for the figure. Do I need to do something else, besides add the new cage to the folder?

It has this lock next to it in the folder, and it's the only one that has it. What does that mean?

Why does the morphing tool sometimes have a visible effect, and other times I can't see what it has done until I save a copy and dial it up, even though I'm not changing any settings that I know of? It seems random. I like to see what I'm doing, is there a way to set it so it always shows the morph as I'm making it?

My morphing tool doesn't have that "custom morph" dial there.

Phil, I tried making one for Michael 4, by adapting the Michael 3 cage. I called it "Michael4-CAGE.obj" because that seemed to fit the naming scheme. I saved it in the folder with the others. I restarted Poser, loaded him into the scene, opened Face Putty, and pushed the button to load the cage prop. It is still telling me no control cage exists for him. What am I doing wrong?

Where can I download TDMT? 

I have facegen but only the free version. Not much use with Poser. I often fantasize about owning the customizer but it's very expensive.

RedPhantom, where is this dropdown menu that you speak of? I have tried all kinds of things, and nothing mirrors the morphs to the other side.

To be as specific as possible: I am currently making morphs for the open source centaur, which has the ears as separate body parts from the head (they are very large ears.) I noticed that the ears need more morphs. I loaded the right ear into Blacksmith and made some morphs for it. Then I realized that I am not going to be able to duplicate the exact same morphs on the left ear, if I morph it separately, and the ears will look completely different. I want to transfer the morphs I made for the right ear over to the left ear. There is obviously a way to do this, since the figure already has symmetrical morphs for both ears, which were obviously made somehow.

The morphing tool, as far as I can tell, only mirrors morphs made with the morphing tool. It won't even mirror stuff you make with the "combine morphs" part of it. At least it won't for me. The menu that you get when you right click on the body part, then go to "symmetry," then to "this part to opposite side" doesn't do anything either. (what is that even supposed to do? Nothing happens.) MT Mirror does apply the morph, but it applies it weirdly; I think it's trying to move the body part to the opposite side.

Seems  like it should be simple.

Thanks, I have MTMirror, I know how to mirror to the other side of the same body part, I am talking about when it is a completely separate body part on the other side of the body, for example the other hand or the other foot. I already tried MTMirror for that, maybe I just don't know the right way to do it, I think location information is causing a problem.  I am using Blacksmith.