I've been working through the Captain Blender tutorial in the "Introducing Character Animation with Blender Book" and have hit a road block at the eyelashes.  The picture below shows the problem.  Top picture is the render of just the eye lashes.  At this point they render as they should, with the transparency working perfectly.  When the eye lashes are in position with the mesh of the head I get this strange block of solid colour where the eye lash mesh and head mesh touch.  If I move the eye lashes a short distance away from the head mesh they render properly again.  Can anyone tell me why this might be occuring?

Off the top of my head...

1.    looks like your using Ambient Occlusion?  .. as far as I know.. Ambient Occlusion doesn't render transparent shadows.

2.  Does the material for the Face/Eyelashes have Transparent Shadows selected.  It's a button in the material setting for each material which tells blender that it should receive a transparent shadow. 

3.  You may need to increase the Ray Depth.  I believe it's set pretty low by default.  You may be getting a shadow from one eyelash through it's fold to the other side.. but then not through it again.  It should be under the render settings.

My best guess would be the fact that it's the ambient Occlusion issue.

Check these:

http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13328&sid=33e32cb7c5ab8ef5ec014578f9847fd9

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=150949

http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11500&view=previous&sid=6a875fcba385ac850d5362c5fd813bfc

Good luck,
Scott

Make sure you have activated "TraShado" (Transparent shadows - shadows take into account the alpha map) for the material of the face - on which the shadows fall. This button is on the shaders tab of the material buttons window.

Reddog9 & l3la

AO is not being used, however I selected Transparent Shadows as you both suggested and that fixed the problem.  Thanks for your help

Shane

Attached Link: 3d Animation & Rendering Studio

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