[Figure 8-14] Positive and negative displacement map

Using Displacement Maps
You can also enable the Displacement option within the Bump attribute, which applies the texture as a displacement map. A displacement map is different from a bump in that it actually changes the geometry of the object to include the affected bumps. You can see this geometry change along the edges of the object surface, as shown in Figure 8-14, which shows a positive displacement map on the left and a negative displacement map on the right. Displacement maps are preferred if any shadows cross the mapped object because shadows are accurately displayed for displacement maps. Bump and displacement maps are not visible until the scene is rendered. Displacement maps are covered in more detail in Chapter 16, “Rendering Scenes.”

You can set the Amount value to a negative number to make the lighter areas of the Bump Map indented and the darker areas raised.

Even though the Displacement option is enabled, the displacement map won’t be rendered unless the Use Displacement Maps option in the Render Settings dialog box is enabled.

[Figure 8-15] Transparent material

Using Transparency
You can use the Transparency value to make your entire material transparent. Transparency means that you can see through the material, like glass, to the objects behind it. The Edge value sets how transparent the edges of the material are and the Falloff value causes the areas closer to the edges to become less transparent. You can also select a texture map to define the areas where the material is transparent with light areas being transparent and dark areas, opaque (or non-transparent). Figure 8-15 shows a transparent material applied to the skin material group of a figure. This creates an eerie invisible man effect. Notice how you can see the interior objects like the eyes and teeth through the semi-transparent skin.

Setting the Transparency value to 100% will not make the object invisible unless the Falloff value is also set to 0.

Within the Poser 8 Library are skeleton models that exactly fit the Ryan and Alyson models. These skeleton models are available for medical visualization by making the outer skin semi-transparent.

[Figure 8-16] Simple green materials on a frog figure

Apply Simple Materials
1.       Open the Poser Library and locate the Frog figure in the Animals folder.

2.       Click on the Material tab to open the Material Room.

3.       Click on the frog’s skin with the Material Select Tool.

The frog’s default skin textures are displayed in the Simple material panel.

4.       Click on the texture under the Diffuse Color attribute and select the None option from the Texture Manager dialog box. Then click on the Diffuse Color color swatch and choose a green color.

5.       Click on the Highlight color and set it to white and set the Highlight Size to 15.

6.       Click on the Bump texture and replace it with the Cells.tif texture file or another texture file. Set the Map Strength to 50% and the Amount to 0.007.

7.       Select the Eyeball group from the Material List at the top of the Simple panel. Replace the texture with the None option in the Texture Manager and choose a bright yellow color. Then set the Transparency to 25.

8.       In the Document Window, click on the Render button to see the resulting materials.

The rendered frog with various simple materials is shown in Figure 8-16.

9.   Select File, Save As and save the file as Green bumpy frog.pz3.