Ok guys, in the process of getting a character in the market place, am teamed up with someone on this one... LOTS AND LOTS of work and am succeeding.  Thanks for the help of a few, I figured how to add a "displacement only" pose, now I have another techincal question.

This question is for a face paint option.  I have the paint textures & displacements set, but want a different specular/glossy look then what the face is set on, like natural dried paint.  Since my partner already filled the "Alternate specular" properties on her original work with Binn, a few Edge Blends, I've looked for ways of adding the paint displacement map with a bit more glossy/lighter specular on the paints.  I tried adding the displacement map (total black/white) to the other functions (Binn, Edge Blend, etc...) experiementing and seeing if I can add another Edge Blend.  Hard to explain, but the results were moot.  So I looked for ways of adding something that would serve as an extra connection from the beginning, so I can play with the paint alone without disrupting the face speculars.

First I loaded "Blender", connected "alternate specular" to that, then added the originals to "input 1" & "Glossy" to "input 2", connecting "Glossy" to the displacement map.  It worked, but the face was slightly changed (brightness), and no matter what I did with the color of input1, it looked different (after test render results).  So I looked for something else.

So I deleted "blender" and added "Math Function" and left it at "Add".  I figured leaving the settings to "1.00000" would just searve as an extra connector, "add" being "strength".  I set both values to 1.00000 and spot rendered/compared.  It seems to do the trick I need.

I'm pretty confident of my finding, but I just want to confirm that it's the way to go.  What do you guys think?

...wolfie

 

BTW, just an extra question, what the heck does "Binn" and "Edge Blend" do anyways?  Why do we need so many "Edge Blends"?? lol  Lots to learn in Poser... sighs