Quote - I found this post while searching forums for something else I see a nice step by step in poser but to clearify say i want to make tears or water drops on the skin do i need to open the texture in a program like photoshop then basically paint say the tears on a new layer then make that layer black background and tears, fluid in white then go do my work in poser?

Yes, take the texture of the head into your paint program such as Paint Shop Pro of Photoshop.

Make a copy of it so you don't accidentally save it with changes.

On the copy, create a new layer.   

On the new layer, paint in the tears using white.  

Now you want to make a transmap, not save the tears on the actual texture.  So to do that you need to save the tears onto a black background.  Simply just flood fill the bottom layer (the texture of the head) with black. That's why I suggested working on a copy instead of the original texture.

Now merge the two layers together and save the image.  You will end up with something like you see in the 5th post in this thread.  A black background with white smudges on it.

To use that transmap in the material room, simply hook it up to the Displacement Surface node,  like you see in this image

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/media/folder_8/file_360559.jpg

Play around with the value of the Displacement in order to get the effect that you want.  You will have to do a render between changes in order to determine if the value is too high or too low.

In a transmap the black is completely transparent, white is completely opaque and the shades  of grey in between are various levels of transparency with dark grey more opaque than a very light grey.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi