Hello Poser Community! My name is Betsy and I am the new TechSupport at Daz Productions. For those of you who don't already know, DAZ 3D is the developer of Victoria and Michael, and various other products for Poser. We put our heads together and decided to have a DAZ Tech Tip posted every other week that includes some common questions and helpful hints written by yours truly. And now for a little background. My husband, Jarom, got a job at DAZ as the tech, and brought home Poser. I instantly fell in love and became addicted. Rendering at all hours of the night. So when Jarom moved up in the company I seized the opportunity, and became the new tech. Now before anyone gets any misconceptions, I am not a Poser expert. I repeat, I am not a Poser expert. I am like the rest of eternal Poser students. Are there any real Psoer experts? So if I have missed something or need a better explanation, please reply to this thread. Heck, reply to this thread anyway and let me know what you think! : ) Well, it's summer. So for our first tech tip I would like to talk about the versatility of Victoria's Clothing Pack 1 and using Transperancy settings to make a chic summer outfit for Vicki. These same techniques apply for Michael too. If you have Vicki's Clothing Pack, this will use the T-Shirt, Pants, Sock, and Tennis Shoes. If you have the Clothing Pack but haven't already installed Texture templates for this, download them now for free at www.daz3d.com on the Victoria Clothing Pack 1 Product Page. Start out loading PantsT.jpg into a photo editor or even paint. I personally am using Adobe Photoshop. Now the picture looks like a screwy grid. Don't worry, it's supposed to. It is already configured to tell Poser how to load the textures. With the Pants template we are going to make Daisy Duke cutoffs. To do this you need to understand how transperancies work. In Poser's Render -> Materials, there is a place to load transperancy maps. A transperancy map lets you change the shape of an item or model, or basically make certain parts transparent. When making a transparency map remember that it is only in black and white. Anything black is transparent. Anything white appears. So in your newly loaded Pants Texture template color everything black from the midthigh down. Everything from the midthigh up is White. Color white over the grids. I added a little white scribbly for the cutoff effect. This is a really fast map I made. Whiel this is simple and crude, you can make one much more intricate and complex.

Cutoffs

Great Tip and welcome to the board!

Now load TshirtT.jpg The same rules apply to this. I wanted to make an urban punk shirt and so I used the paint brush to color ragged edges black and white to what I wanted showing. Below is once again a very simple, but effective transperancy map.

Tshirt

Now you are ready to go into Poser. Load Vicki or Vicki 2. Put on her pants and T shirt. Now for the tricky part. Go into Render -> Materials. In the upper left corner it says Object. Choose whatever Figure the Pants are. For the Materials select Pants. Change the transparency slider Min and Max to 100%. Then Load your new transparency map in the Transparency Map slot. Next select Material Capri and do this again. Repeat this again for shorts. Depending on your own map, you may need to change the belt settings as well. You can apply a texture while you are doing this if you would like. For mine I am using a texure found in the Eurowear Pack. Next, Change the object to whatever figure the Shirt is and for Material select Shirt and then shirt trim and follow the same procedure as above. Below is what I came up with in the end. I used the EuroPack textures for the shirt and shorts, and then put on Socks and Tennis shoes and just changed the object color on them to look funky! For the hair I used Anton's Changing Ponytail. Now Vicki is set for a night at a rock concert or club. Please feel free to add to this thread with other ideas, comments, or questions. I want to hear from you. I will keep checking back and answering to anything that needs addressing in later replies. Otherwise, until 2 week from now, TTFN. (Ta-Ta for Now) Sincerely yours, The DAZ Tech Girl Betsy Schow tech@daz3d.com

Finished!!

Hey Betsy, welcome to the land of the poser-obsessed! Thanks for the tutorial, this is a cute outfit. MaryCanary

Yes, thanks for coming here and posting this info :-) I'm looking forward to more - lots more! Claire

Me too, thanks a bunch, look forward to all your threads!

betsy: well done simple and easy to understand

Thanks for the warm welcome all! :) Any advice or requests for future columns? Betsy

I think this is a great idea. I would hate for a message like this to get lost in the ether. Maybe you can convince the 'rosity folk to find a place for it or maybe even house this on the DAZ web site. I think it is very smart of DAZ to have the weekly freebie and perhaps a weekly (bi, semi?) would bring even more visitors to the site. Thanks again.

Attention all! Tech Tips are now going to be posted on DAZ's website, so if you in coming weeks you need to look one up, they will be archived. Thanks! Betsy