okay, i'm just doing quick and dirty...

  grabbing polys with the grouping tool and assigning a material set to 'air.' 

d'oh!

   okay, we'll see what that does.  my problem is, of course, the inside of the back fold of the poncho is visible, so i had to model it.  :/  ...

oh!  oh, the pools are gone, but the back of the cloth is still poking through the front.  hmmm...  i dont suppose there's any self-collision or pass-through preventative things on the simulation?  :/  if i re-run a simulation, do i have to set the magnets to zero before i start?  (i put magnets on it afterwards.)

or... maybe i can finese the suckers away...!

thanks guys!!

h:

putting the blend at 1 makes it all the second image, and none of the first image.

i thought that number was the blend balance from 0 (all top) to 1 (all bottom).  and .5 was 50/50.

all right...

  i used colour math, and i put the colour tattoo in the top, and the black (dark brown) ink tattoo in the bottom, white both chips, and i used MIN mode.  which looks really good!  because the dark ink goes on but the skin tone doesn't darken.

   BUT!  now i see that the colour in my colour tattoo is washed out.  oh... let me try to strengthen the colour before that blend...  well the dark outline is getting darker, but the faded colours are not becoming more saturated to offset the effect of the desaturation... and now the darks are too black.

meh.

okay, i ran into a problem...

   i blended one tattoo with the skin, and another tattoo with the skin.  when i went to blend those two together at 0.5, they each washed out each other's tattoo...!  the skin part of each blend is 'covering' the tattoo part of the other blend.  you know?

how do i do this right?  btw, each tattoo is blending with the skin in a different manner, at a different strength.  one is in colour, the other is plain single colour ink.

ohh...

does he also have like SkinArms and SkinLegs and SkinButt and whatnot-all?  that used to drive me bugnuts, so i just combined all those into one material in mine.  yeah, now it's all coming back to me!

i have also learned i DO have the satanica m3 gens.  it's designed to take the same texture map (i think...) which is why i couldn't tell by looking at it.

i feel so much more educated, now!  and 'maybe' seems to do wonders for my eyebrows.   ;)

thanks a bunch, guys!!

ps: yeah, i just added my m3 w/ skintorso and the satanica gens to the definition files.  sweet!

snarly, you rock!

pps:  bagginsbill has no free stuff or tutorials here.  :(   where does this venerated poser master keep his stuff??

OOPS!

i found the 'editor'!  and the definition things.. in the editor tab...

okay, i see; SkinBody for some reason is set to 'ignore.'  i can change that.

new question:  eyebrow is set to 'maybe.'  ???  what's THAT mean? lol!

wait wait!  okay, while we're here and since nobody answered yet... :X

the EZSkin manual says to make sure to enclose everything in an environment for proper reflections.  dumb bloodsong the dinosaur question:  is throwing an IBL light on the scene considered 'enclosing it in an environment'?  :X

also, vilters... can you post your setup as a tutorial maybe?

NEW QUESTION:

so... let's say i have two (or more) tattoos/decals i want to stick on one skin.  how do i do that?  do i have to make them all combine into one inverted mask and use one blend with the skin?  or would it be possible for me to, say, make one very fresh and dark, and one very light and faded?

les, yes; that's the thread!

i have subscribed to that thread (probably twice).  my problem is, i can't find anywhere in my profile/control panel where my subscribed threads are stored.  so i can find them again.

vilters, thank you for the pic!

and everyone else with the subtraction math.

as for mutliplying, i really wanted to use a mask method to try different blending methods (blend, multiply, whatever) to get a better tattoo.  if possible.

hang on a sec... where is the 'texture filtering' setting in 2012?  NM! i found it!!  its on the image map window shade thingy-doodle settings.

okay, now...  when i use the 'add subsurface scattering' wacro... it uses the blend like the regular image map, to plug it into the alternate diffuse and yadda yadda.  but.  unlike when i hit that wacro with a plain texture on it, the result comes out lighter than the original skintone.

   any help on that?  should i post my shader thingies?

no no no...

  guys, that's not what im talking about.  i know the skins are different, and the maps are different and all that.  and there's no second skin or extra figure or layer.  i have the right textures ON.

what i MEAN is...

okay, M3 starts out with mats like SkinHead and SkinBody.  but the bodysuit MAT poses make him end up with SkinHead and SkinTorso, SkinForearm, SkinNeck, etc etc.  you know, the ones that aren't there to start?  something in the MAT file is creating those new materials.  and for some reason my M3 Bishonen MAT files are failing to create those materials.

i guess i should dig out my cr2 editor and just look at the m2 and m3 mat files and see what is different... :/

hmm...

  okay, i took the bisonen bodysuit MAT files for M2 and applied them to M3.  THAT caused all the torso/arm/leg body parts to flip out and get weird random preview colours on them.  then i was able to apply the M3 material to those, but not with the MAT file. 

   i dont think it's the MAT file that is having the problem.  i'm thinking i might have done something to my M3 that made him not have or not able to have those bodysuit groups.  which is why i asked what the underlying mechanism to it is.  i know i can use the grouping tool to create new material zones, but i can't remember how a pose/mat file does it.

ya know?  :/

hborre:  you using the Beautiful Bishonen body glove MAT poses, or other bodysuit MAT files? i don't think i have any other mats that access that function.

26F:
   i did double-check the TOS before posting, and steve is correct.  there's nothing in there against 'commercial' posting.
    thanks for the clarification, Kimberly.  it IS commercial (i need the bucks), but i also hope it is a valuable resource for folks who've been looking for it.

vintorix:
   technically, it's the other way around.  without renderosity (and it's prehistoric progenitors), the book wouldn't exist.  ;)

i really can't do any updates to the book, i haven't been using poser since i left :/  i'm a total noob now.  maybe in a couple of years i'll catch up again!

heyas;

   it's 99.9% as simple as 'export as bvh' from poser.  but there are some things you should know about setting it up for SL.  such as starting from a T-pose (or other pose), how to get the SL importer to recognize which limbs are active in the animations -- or to get it to ignore some limbs (for animation layering).

let me check my notes....

     the first frame has to be a 'base' frame.  it's usually the default T pose, but it doesn't have to be.  for example, if you are making animations for a folded ao (tinies), you can start with the figure already folded up.
     what you DO need to understand is, that ONLY the limbs that are moved from that first frame's base pose will be given animations when imported into SL.  this is important, if you need to control certain aspects of the avatar, like the head.  if you need the head absolutely still, you have to move it.  if you need it absolutely still in the default head/neck position, change the head/neck position in the first frame to something crazy, like totally folded over, or bent 90 degrees.

   also, no matter how you face the hip in frame 1, it will use the hip's up/down axis.  so, for example, if you are doing a lying down animation, start with the hip standing up vertical, THEN move it.
   as i recall, this also goes for the hip position. if you need to change the avatar's height above the ground, you need to move it up/down from the first frame's position.

   if you do move a limb, but only a tiny fraction, it may not register to SL's animation importer. 

   if you turn the hip during the animation, the sl importer seems to lose track of how high it is (if you are also moving the avatar up and down).  for example, doing a backflip, you may find you have to heave the hip several meters up in the air while going upside down just to get it to move up half a meter in SL.

max length of animation: 30 seconds.  30fps max applicable speed, no matter your fps setting.  (you can make the animations lower speed.)  tip: if you're doing a complex fast animation (light fighting animations), set a lower fps to test it in sl, then you can preview it in slow motion.  go back to 24 or 30 fps for the final.

  best SL animation tip ever:  go to the beta grid for testing.  that way, you can upload your animation umpteenmillion times as you tweak it and never pay any real money to do so.

   if you need information on the SL animation import/upload, send an IM to Bloodsong Termagant in-world, and i'll send you a notecard.

i had wireframes showing over my render. (i dont know if that's the same thing the OP had, with 'edges of polygons showing,' but it sure looked the same.)  what i did that fixed it...

i had the main light that was depth-map shadowing, and i changed it to ray trace.  then i turned on AO for it.  the default shadow min bias was 0.0 (which apparently doesn't work?)  changing it to 0.1 made it render fine.

why on earth anything would make the wireframe render is beyond me.

btw, all the right side checkboxes in the render prefs were UNchecked, including smooth and backface stuff.  (both before and after the fix.)

thanks, h!

complicated stuff, this.