Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: Dragonwing Transparency

awrc opened this issue on Sep 10, 1999 ยท 2 posts


awrc posted Fri, 10 September 1999 at 8:48 PM

Attached Link: Basic Dragon Wing Transparency Map In Bryce 4

I gave in to a long-standing temptation earlier this week and bought the Zygote. One of the things that struck me about it was that the wings looked too solid, so I've started fiddling with a Bryce transparency map for the dragon. The attached, decidedly basic image shows the Zygote dragon rendered in a very basic Bryce scene with it. The map itself (which isn't close enough to "done" to upload to Fun Stuff) can be found at http://www.awrc.com/poser/dragonwing.jpg. I've yet to master the black art that is transparency in Poser 4, so any help on how to get the above map working properly there would be welcome. Right now I seem to be able to get almost any part of the dragon *except* the wings to disappear. Anyway, any thoughts on how to improve the wing transparency are welcomed. One thing that's currently beyond my control is that there appears to be some sort of flaw (in the UV values?) in a couple of the polygons in the dragon's outermost wing panel. It's not too apparent in the image I've uploaded, but in a higher resolution it's obvious that there's a gap there. Other possible areas for improvement that I've thought of - fiddling with the transparency dropoff from the fingers/ribs to the wing material itself. Right now it's not *quite* smooth enough, and just gives the effect of thick wing ribs, which isn't what I really want. Adding some sort of circulatory system to show veins/arteries in the transparency. Then there's the transparency level itself - I based the overall look on images of bat wings (which verge on the translucent) then dropped the image brightness to "thicken" the wings, but I think it might still be a little too translucent. Then again, we're dealing with a surface that has to lift several tons of fire-breathing lizard into the air, so there may be no "realistic" wing thickness at all.

bloodsong posted Sat, 11 September 1999 at 10:33 AM

heya; cool! for poser, paint a transparency map on the texture template, just like any other texture. but remember poser is backwards and white is OPAQUE. then, IN poser, load your transparency map. select the wing membrane material and set your min/max transparency. if you used full black in your map and don't want 100% transparency, then set the max to 75% or so. (and remember to grab the wing material for this... i usually load the map, then set the transparency, and it is automatically changing some other material i didnt mean it to!)