Didn't work.
I brought the geometry into Hexagon and selected "select all".  Then I went to tools and utilities and clicked "orient normals".  In the properties pane I clicked "unify normals" and saved it under it's original name (I made a backup).  But when I load it in Poser, there is no change.

There are three layers in the Rievel hair: scalp, hair1 and hair2.  Is there any way of selecting the layers individually?  Anything else I can try?

First, thank you very much for the advice and the offer to help!

I have Hexagon 2.  There is an option in there to "align" normals.  Would that work?  I would save the .obj with the same name, right?  Otherwise, if I save it with another name, I'll have to tweak something somewhere so it points to the new .obj, right?

Thanks Sharen!  That will work!

Thanks for the pointer to DAZ.  I'll keep that in mind if I don't find the one I'm looking for.  The reason I remember it is because it's exactly like the one Jafar uses in "Aladdiin".  It's gold, with a flat nose and red eyes.  The search goes on.

Quote -
I can't get any sense out of what you're saying.  You're saying that setting transparency does not have any effect in one sentence, and then right after that you're saying it becomes semi-transparent.  You're showing pics of how the preview looks but you're talking about how the render looks.  Maybe you'll have better luck with Smith Micro tech support, I don't think I'm able to help you.

That's exactly right!  I can't get any sense out of what's happening either because it changes every time.  I don't think you're able to help me either, but thank you for responding.

No, you'll see in the last paragraph of my last post, "the transparency map disappeared and was replaced by the texture map. "

You can see pictures of how all the material zones are set...up above in my posts.  See?  If the zone is totally there, if the zone is semi-transparent, if the zone is totally transparent, the maps look the same, usually because I clicked "Apply current material to all materals...".  Even if I copy the material and paste it to each zone individually, the the preview shows some parts as transparent and some as normal...always different.  Andf my transparency map has a frayed edge on the bottom of the pant legs and a few holes to make the jeans look old, but those frays and holes never show up.  In other words, the zones don't match the maps.

I have rendered the scene several times and after each re-launch of Poser.  It does look different in that the transparency map didn't have any effect at all.  See my latest example?  Where the "body" is semitransparent and the loops, buttons, and legs are normal even with the transparency map?  When I render that, it looks as though there isn't a transparency map at all.  Everything is visible.  So the transparency map is not working at all, but something is making the material zones become semi-transparent at random.  And once in a while, the transparency map disappears and is replaced by the texture map.

And when that happens, want to hear something weird?  THEN it works...but unfortunately, the transparency is mistakenly being driven by the texture map.  So it looks weird.  Oh, and when I delete the texture map and just have the jeans as one solid color, the transparency map pops back into its proper place and everything is perfect.  But the  jeans are all white!  When I put the texture map back, everything goes haywire again.

The material zones for the pants are:

body
fifth pocket
loops
brass
button
rear pockets
jams
pants

The thing is that no matter what material zone I apply the transparency to, nothing changes.  Even if I click "Apply current material to all materials available to this object?", nothing changes.  Once the problem starts, which is immediately upon applying the transparency map, that's the way the figure stays.  The only change I can make is to make each material zone invisible and visible again with the transparency dial.

Like I said, it worked fine a few weeks ago, and I saw it work once (on the body zone) when I started today.  When I went to apply it to the rest of the figure, the transparency map disappeared and was replaced by the texture map.  Since then, it's been random levels of transparency on different zones at every time with each try at applying the transparency map  Thinking it might be a memory problem, I've exited Poser and started up again several times, but with no luck.

Thanks!  I'll give it a try later.

Well it's pretty easy to just save a prop out as a new .OBJ and then import it again.  There's no CR2 file to deal with for a prop.  I would want to know exactly how to find the references to the geometry file in the CR2 file so I could change it and point it to the new one.  That's how it works isn't it?

You are SO right when it comes to tenacity, especially with Poser.  Of the myriad bugs I've encountered, I've always eventually found a fix, work-around, or answer.  Some took me a couple of years, but eventually I found a way.  These transparency problems are the latest.  Oh, and sometimes, after using Poser for a long period of time, a prop (usually a hair prop) suddenly becomes separated from the figure's head and will not re-attach for all the money in the world.  Probably a memory problem.  In that case, I just save the scene (or all the poses, etc.) and restart the program.  But it's bizarre.

It renders fine.

In Preview mode:

1. For the Egypt hair, the diffuse texture gets used as the transparency map no matter what I do.  Even if I go into the advanced mode and change it, it will use the diffuse texture.

2. For the M3 beard, the transparency maps only appear if I put them there manually, either in the simple or advanced modes, and unlike the Egypt hair, they stay there.  They just don't have any effect in the Preview mode.

I only have one Runtime.

Transparency display is set to "Enhance multiple transparency".

So, the final render of either hair prop is fine.  It's just that I have to do a render to see what it looks like because I can't see any kind of transparency changes in Preview mode.  And that's what I want.  And I don't understand why I can't have what I want all the time. ;-)

I seem to remember a long time ago, I had the same problem with a prop.  Just out of curiosity, I saved it as an .OBJ with a new name and then imported it again.  I applied the diffuse and transparency maps to the new .OBJ, and they worked!  I suppose I could try saving the hair figures out with new .OBJ names, but then I would have to edit the CR2 files to point to the new geometries, wouldn't I?  I've never done that before.  I don't even know if that would work.

Oh...sorry...I forgot to mention that I did try to bring it up with the Ctrl-Shift-B command, but it didn't work.  All my other programs (Bryce, Photoshop, etc.) seemed to adapt fine to the change, but not Poser 7.

And as I understand it, Vue 6 is compatible with Poser 7.  Does anyone know if there are (were) updates to make Vue 5 and Poser 7 compatible?

Yeah, I thought that maybe I forgot to install SR2, but I didn't.  I went ahead a installed it again, but ask you said, no change.

Puntomaus,

Thanks for that information.  I think I will try installing SR2 again.