What do you wish was easier to do in the Material Room?

[Snarlygribbly]

So I kind of thought it did, but I have to be honest I've never been able to figure out the interface in EZMat. Some of it I think has more to do with Poser. I can't seem to keep it as a floating window, and every time I move it it docks itself in an unusable way, and Poser 11 doesn't seem to give me the option to just keep it as a floating window. But also, I've tried to go through the guide, and it seems like everything relies on plugins. If there are ways of just changing nodes/materials without adding a fancy plugin I haven't been able to figure it out....

You can right-click on the EZMat UI to get a popup menu to resolve your docking issues:

 

[Gadget Girl]

Aha! Finally found the 'spot' that would give me that menu. For whatever reason most of the places I'd right click wouldn't give me the menu. Part of the problem may have been once Poser docked it, it got scrunched up enough that I couldn't find empty space to click it.

 

[quietrob]

Thank you, Snarly! I guess it's time for me to learn EZMat

Like all of Snarly's stuff, EZMat IS an essential part of any Poser Toolbox but I heard it didn't work in Poser 11. Is that incorrect information.?

 

[Snarlygribbly]

Like all of Snarly's stuff, EZMat IS an essential part of any Poser Toolbox but I heard it didn't work in Poser 11. Is that incorrect information.?

No, it is correct - EZMat is not compatible with P11. I had been following this thread with interest and only mentioned EZMat after Robynsveil asked a question.

It's great to see people like GadgetGirl doing cool things to make Poser better and I'd like to help if I can

 

[Ken1171]

EZMat also had a plugin to do what Ken wanted: strip a shader down to just its maps.

No, it is correct - EZMat is not compatible with P11

If I am using regular materials (no double roots, and no P11 materials), how can I use EZMat to reduce a material to bare texture maps?

 

[quietrob]

It's nice to be able to thank the creator of the EZ scripts directly. Including EZskin 3 which makes all legacy figures easily usable in P11. I'd thank more on this American day of Thanksgiving but I'd miss someone and feel awful about it later!

 

[Snarlygribbly]

If I am using regular materials (no double roots, and no P11 materials), how can I use EZMat to reduce a material to bare texture maps?

Hi Ken, I need to apologise - the plugin that does this was not included in the EZMat distribution. I made lots of plugins for people while making EZMat and not all of them found their way into the final release. I'm away from home at the moment, but when I get back home at the weekend I'll find it and upload it here for you. This is also your chance to say exactly what you want it to do as I might have time to modify it accordingly before uploading it

 

[Snarlygribbly]

In keeping with the spirit of this thread, the one request I hear most often is for a script to copy shaders from one material to another while retaining the texture maps. EZMat does this, but only in a pure Firefly environment (i.e. Pre P11). If you were to write a script that could do that for P11 with its multiple roots then you'd make a lot of people happy

 

[Ken1171]

Hi Ken, I need to apologise - the plugin that does this was not included in the EZMat distribution. I made lots of plugins for people while making EZMat and not all of them found their way into the final release. I'm away from home at the moment, but when I get back home at the weekend I'll find it and upload it here for you. This is also your chance to say exactly what you want it to do as I might have time to modify it accordingly before uploading it

Wow, thank you! The reason I need to strip everything but the texture nodes is to have a starting point to create Octane shaders, and also P11 shaders, starting from a Physical Surface node. In addition, whenever I have materials plugged to "alternative" diffuse, "alternative" specular, etc, they don't translate into Octane, and that increases the manual work of fishing for lost maps.

 

[Gadget Girl]

In keeping with the spirit of this thread, the one request I hear most often is for a script to copy shaders from one material to another while retaining the texture maps. EZMat does this, but only in a pure Firefly environment (i.e. Pre P11). If you were to write a script that could do that for P11 with its multiple roots then you'd make a lot of people happy

Well I don't mind if you derail my thread, I've certainly derailed a thread or to in my time. That being said, I really appreciate your input.

I think what I'm going to do first, is work on having my script create a Physical Surface Node, and correctly plug things in there. It seems to me once I've got the code in place to do that I'll be able to add in a lot of fancier stuff.

@Ken1171 I have a question for you, since you mentioned making things usable for Octane. Is it better just to have one root node that is checked for Firefly and Superfly, or if you have a Physical Surface Node set up as well as a Poser Surface Node will Octane (or whatever export setting you are using) 'know' to use the Physical Surface Node?

 

[Ken1171]

I have a question for you, since you mentioned making things usable for Octane. Is it better just to have one root node that is checked for Firefly and Superfly, or if you have a Physical Surface Node set up as well as a Poser Surface Node will Octane (or whatever export setting you are using) 'know' to use the Physical Surface Node?

Octane doesn't understand P11 nodes, perhaps because the Physical Surface didn't exist when version 3 was released. It does its best to convert Poser Surfaces, but it tends to fail if things are plugged into the "alternative" inputs, with more esoteric layouts. As in most PBR, it just wants the textures maps, and will ignore everything else.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Octane doesn't understand P11 nodes, perhaps because the Physical Surface didn't exist when version 3 was released. It does its best to convert Poser Surfaces, but it tends to fail if things are plugged into the "alternative" inputs, with more esoteric layouts. As in most PBR, it just wants the textures maps, and will ignore everything else.

Good to know. I have a start on the script to create a Physical Surface Node that only has the image maps. The way I've got it set up I think once it's working, it won't be hard to make a version that just does this for the regular Poser Surface Node.

 

[Ken1171]

I was used to having the Octane plugin to automate most of those things, like copying skin settings to the entire body while preserving the texture maps. Now I have to learn how to do that with EZ-Skin in Poser. But first, I need a better starting point with just the texture maps. ^^

 

[Gadget Girl]

it tends to fail if things are plugged into the "alternative" inputs, with more esoteric layouts.

So does that mean that for Octane, nothing should be plugged into Alternate_Diffuse and Specular? Even if it's just an image map?

 

[Ken1171]

I did a test a minute ago, and Octane 3 seems to catch alternate pins alright. So I guess it's just about removing all the non-textures nodes. The more complex the thing, the more likely that Octane will miss maps, and the more work to create SF PBR shaders.

 

[Snarlygribbly]

I did a test a minute ago, and Octane 3 seems to catch alternate pins alright. So I guess it's just about removing all the non-textures nodes. The more complex the thing, the more likely that Octane will miss maps, and the more work to create SF PBR shaders.

See if this EZMat plugin helps, Ken

 

[Ken1171]

See if this EZMat plugin helps, Ken

Yay, thank you! This will save a lot of time and make my life easier! ^__^

PS: EZ Mat seems to crash Poser 11 when I run the plugin. I think you had already mentioned it wasn't compatible with P11.

 

[Gadget Girl]

So I was happily moving along with my script, using suggestions from you guys. I have both a version that clears off everything but image maps from the Poser Surface Node as Ken wanted, and also a version that creates a new Physical Surface Node and plugs in the image maps to give you a base to work off of. That version tends to give pretty good results, although things tend to be 'shiny'. I'm not sure why.

I'm hoping to add in some more options to give better starting nodes for SF. Like ways to easily adjust the metallic and roughness and an option to add in SSS for SF.

Unfortunately the other day my computer crashed on me while I was doing a render. (Not really sure what happened, the screen went black like it was asleep. I couldn't get it to respond without plugging it in, but when it came on the battery was at 40% and the render had actually finished during the 'crash'). It changed something in Poser, because now when I change my script and try to re-run it, Poser still runs whatever version of the script I had when I opened the program. It seems to have cached them somewhere, and the only way I can run any changes I make is to close and reopen Poser. Which, is kind of a tedious process, especially when you are trying to play with the difference in small adjustments.

So I may be spending the day with tech support.

 

[Ken1171]

@Gadget Girl Sounds like it could be your video card driver that crashed. It happens to me if I try to render with SF + GPU + Path Branching, and it's a known issue between Cycles and nVidia.

I find it easy to setup SSS with SF, but once that is done, I can no longer control specularity for some reason. For example, I can't add SSS to lips and make them glossy at the same time. >___<

 

[Gadget Girl]

Sounds like it could be your video card driver that crashed. It happens to me if I try to render with SF + GPU + Path Branching, and it's a known issue between Cycles and nVidia.

I had similar thoughts about the video card, although I wasn't doing a GPU render. I'm not always sure on this particular machine how that works. You see it's a laptop with two graphics cards, and integrated Intel one for when I'm running off the battery (which I was) and then a more powerful nVidia one. Because I was having a bunch of other little problems, I've reinstalled my system, which seems to have fixed a lot of things, but I think maybe there is some sort of permissions error that crept into Poser. I just haven't figured out if it's just in the one folder I have the python scripts, or it's elsewhere.

I find it easy to setup SSS with SF, but once that is done, I can no longer control specularity for some reason. For example, I can't add SSS to lips and make them glossy at the same time. >___<

So my thought was, even though SSS isn't hard in SF, if I have a script that strips off everything but the image maps, it might be nice to have a script that then lets you choose the materials you want to add SSS onto and then quickly puts in a basic setup.