OK... looking for help from the gurus here. I'm working with a trans map for the eyebrows... in the alpha channel. Works fine until I turn on the indirect lighting, and then I get a funny shadow (it follows the path the the eyebrows would without trans) Strange thing is the hair is transmapped in the alpha channel as well, and I don't get the same problem. Maybe because it's farther away? Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Confused,
Christina

Correction... it's just more noticable with indirect lighting... and yes I've got the light through transparency box checked. :)

I don't know the answer other than to check the original transparency texture and correct the alpha. This has come up before. I would say to make the alpha color pure black or white. Might be a gamma difference issue possibly.Might be shading domain blending. Not sure cause I don't know carrara well enough.

Well this may not be what your looking for as i have only ben at Carrara for about 5 hours,but i have figured out for the pubes and eyebrows in the Poser figures you can delete the pubic hair and eyebrow objects themselves and the map is still there.Loks good,but as i said i dont know anything about this prog yet:D Now if i can only figure out the eyebrows tranparence problem:P

Making sure the black and white was correct didn't help. And the problem is the current figure I am working on I didn't put eyebrows on the main texture... so deleting the eyeborws would leave her looking like Whoopi Goldberg... "eyebrowless" Thanks for the thoughts on trouble shooting this far.

Did you use a graphic program to alter the texture and alpha channel? A solution would be great...like I said eyelashes and eyebrows keep coming up. I think I will go look myself.Also did you try differnt light methods to see if it might be a gi problem?

Message edited on: 01/01/2006 19:27

You know I haven't tried to see if it's a gi problem... Will check that, but still want a solution... right now I'm thinking of scrapping the eyebrow trans and just put them on a body texture... not too happy with the texture I'm working with anyway. (YEah I know... the grapes were probably sour):P I used Photoshop to correct the trans map.

It's still there with GI turned off... just not as noticable... in fact I could post work it out... but trying to do little to no post work... Thanks for the suggestion Christina

My great concern is that this is a carrara issue. I have had other transparency problems. Usually at an angle. Several people have had this problem. I just checked the file and even made a new one...it was fine and a new one didn't fix it. I tried many options. However, the realistic sky might actually be a problem because that has also come up with this and I do have that set.I will go check. I used alpha and the transparency method. However, I didn't do a layers list. This is very annoying.

Ok....turned off realistic sky...much better. I am going to play with lighting and also the brightness on the trans to see what makes a difference.It almost completely removed it.

It is very annoying... thanks for the trials and help... I've been working with it off and on today... I'm determined to come up with a solution even if it's more trouble than it's worth.

Well. The mention of no eyebrow map is interesting. I wonder if the makeup could be a problem. However, I have seen this w/ other objects.Here is what seems to work, but I will delve further...since it is kinda a big deal. Settings may not be related because I didn't test that. I got no sky and I took brightness on alpha down to say 40-45%. One thing I have seen that doesn't help it the shader preview often shows totally diff results than render. In preview eyebrows look ok. I didn't try to turn off no shadow for brow either.(this is the v3 w/ fairy texture so not so great...have had other anomalies w/ this. I think the texture really doesn't fit this version of v3)

MY biggest complaint... is we shouldn't have to not use skylighting and indirect lighting to get the proper transparency... of course even that isn't working for me. I'm ready to just scrap this project, but I hate to give up. I'm also having problems with hair importing with the morphs (using the native import) therefore I've exported as an obj and I can't get to the eyebrows anywhere except in the shader room. Not sure if it would be different with a pz3 file or not. Guess I should look into that. Your fairy image isn't bad. What I don't understand is why aren't we seeing the same problem with the hair alpha maps?

Ok, I have been complaining about this for weeks. Skylight makes it much worse. but try and import it via transposer. It seems to go away, ar at least enough that post is unnecessary for me.

Thanks for the input... unfortunately I don't have tranposer, and right now it's not in the budget. I'm running C5 Standard. But I was wondering if TP2 would be the answer, and it looks like it might. So maybe in the future... esp since I am finding other quirks in the native poser import. Thanks for the insight.

Well,A good work around also is to get DAZ Studio and open your Poser files in it and then export them as .obj files and open them in C4.You have all access to your materials and it works pretty good.

the best thing to do is not use skylight and fake gi with lights so you can use morphs .Maybe eovia will unify and give us 1 complete poser solution in the future. All in all its the best it has been so far.

Well I wondered why only certain things also and not others. I do not have poser. That is an obj from daz studio. But D|S doesn't seem to export a proper mtl file. I haven't been doing to much animal and people yet w/ c5, but hex outputs a proper mtl and it comes in fine. D|S needs better export. On poser can't say much since I don't use it right now.It is frustrating that all this is really just file format issues.

Poser does an mtl file, but I'll be darned if carrara5 has ever read it. I don't like D/S maybe because I started with Poser? Just not as good... but what can you expect for free? It is a great program considering the price. My gripe with C5... is I shouldn't have to fake GI to get certain transparencies to work. Even when I make my own transmaps so I know they are true, I still get the shadow on the brows and eyelashes. It's frustrating. If I didn't like C5 so much I'd go back to Poser... what can I say despite the alpha problems I'm hooked.

It is baffling why it is eyebrow and eyelashes. Maybe this ought to be reported. I did an obj from D|S into C5 and it worked pretty well much better than c4 with getting textures, however, same thing. I did notice some differences w/ these textures in the way they are done and location on some...so I wonder if that could be it. But this is a ridiculous. Preview looks fine, but not render. Makes it even more confusing. I removed eyebrows, but tried lashes..no go.

I have similiar bug with Jessica. Eovia sough to fix it.