Transparency/Ghosting in Poser 9

[3WC]

How in the world do I make something completely transparent in Poser 9? I have set Transparency to 1; Transparency Edge to 0 and 1 with no apparent change; and Transparency Falloff to 0. I still see ghosting around the edges of my material. Why is this so difficult?

 

[3WC]

Ok, I think I got it. I set specular strength to 0, and that did the trick. Don't know why specular should affect something that is completely transparent, though.

 

[3WC]

Looks like diffuse has to be set to 0 too.

 

[Miss B]

Glad you got that figured out, and I also realized you have to set diffuse and spec to 0 recently.

 

[3WC]

Yeah, it's good to know, even though it still makes no sense to me.

On a slightly related topic, is there any way to save a preset in poser for just one attribute of a material? For example, I am trying to save presets that just hide or show one material, so all I need to save are the settings that affect transparency. DS will let you do that, but with Poser (9) it seems to be all or nothing when saving material presets.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Yes you can do this, just not quite the way you are thinking. Once you have your transparent material set up, go to the Library and Materials. With the figure selected click the plus icon at the bottom. In the popup you get choose Material Collection, and then click on Select Materials. . . In this window you will want to uncheck every material zone except for the one you want to turn transparent. Click okay. This will give you a material that will only apply to that one material zone, leaving the rest of the zones untouched.

 

[StudioMartillo]

Ok, I think I got it. I set specular strength to 0, and that did the trick. Don't know why specular should affect something that is completely transparent, though.

Consider glass.
It's hard to understand just what kind of problem you're dealing with though. Just make one material disappear? Or part of the prop or character? I worked out a similar thing, maybe, for a shirt I have that has a pocket on it I don't like. Luckily the pocket is UVmapped individually so that the texture can make the pocket more apparent. Like on real clothes where it's a seperate piece of material sewn on. Anyway I used the template to make a transparency map that leaves all the shirt visible but the pocket and it worked nicely. Had to plug it in to all the nodes you mention to get the pocket totally gone. BIG FUN!

 

[3WC]

Yes, I want to make a preset to hide just one material, but not change any other settings. So for example, say I have a shirt split up into 4 different mat zones, I want presets to just hide or show various zones and not affect any other settings, such as the texture map. I haven't found a way to save preset info for just part of a material, eg diffuse, specular, transparency, without also saving the texture map, etc. Does that make sense?

 

[Gadget Girl]

Yes, I want to make a preset to hide just one material, but not change any other settings. So for example, say I have a shirt split up into 4 different mat zones, I want presets to just hide or show various zones and not affect any other settings, such as the texture map. I haven't found a way to save preset info for just part of a material, eg diffuse, specular, transparency, without also saving the texture map, etc. Does that make sense?

So Poser doesn't really allow you to save say, just the specular settings for a material. But I don't think you need to do that in your case, if I'm understanding you correctly. Let's say the zones for your shirt are named Sleeves, Pocket, Collar, and Body, for instance. So if you set the pocket to have a transparency of 1 to make it disappear, what you would want to do is save a Material Collection, with only the Pocket material selected. That way it wouldn't change anything on the other three material zones, but only the pocket.

Now it is true the if you have say four different texture sets for your shirt, and all you do to hide the pocket is set the transparency to 1 but you leave the image maps behind, the saved invisible setting, will still have one of the image maps attached, and so if someone applies a different material to the shirt, then makes the pocket invisible it may put a hidden image map from a different texture on the pocket, but that should change what it looks like to the end user.

Does that make sense?

Now yes it's true if you wanted to be able to change the specular for the materials without changing anything else, Poser won't do that, at least not without a script. But if all your trying to do is make an 'invisible' setting you should be fine.

 

[StudioMartillo]

I think so. What I would do is use the method as described by Gadget Girl and save the Material without the 2D texture node there. If you first saved the entire material so you could get it back easy then you wouldn't loose that. Only then when you use it you will have the base node only and need to plug in a 2D texture. So if you had at first a texture and then plugged in the transparent replacement it would be good to have the full material saved to put it back. Actually the texture map (I'm thinking UVs) never goes away. It's part of your prop or character.
I guess this means you would just have a whole bunch of presets, but that's OK

 

[Shellyw]

or you can use Joe's MATWriter Panel to do it. It's a life saver and I use it on all my mats. I have been using it for years and the best money I spent.

 

[Miss B]

Yes, I'll put in a second vote for Joe's MATWriter Panel. It works a dream.

 

[Seebee]

Maybe try typing "2" in the Transparency dial.
Forget the default max.