Isn't there a Python script that you can use instead of Poser's native Material room?
I don't know of any python script that would allow me to set up materials without the default material room. If you're talking about EZSkin, I haven't had much luck with that yet. But then I'm working with EZskin2 and Dawn/Dusk seem to be unsupported/Other figures, so it might be that reason, too, in my case.
also, I often hear complaints about aspects of Poser, like the Material room, but no one ever gets specific about what they find wrong. I wish someone would write all that stuff down.
1.) Inability to select multiple material zones at the same time.
2.) Related to #1, inability to affect multiple material zones at the same time when making changes.
3.) Material room does not "remember" what our last selected material was; defaults back to whatever zone is at the top of the list.
4.) When copy/pasting material settings from one mat zone to another, it leaves a bunch of disconnected nodes in it's place. I'd like to see an option to have it just remove these nodes with the paste operation, as the script button to remove them all is a fair bit laggy.
5.) Material properties are not exactly named in an intuitive fashion; very difficult to understand what some of the properties do by their names, and test renders with them don't really seem to help me identify, visually, what they actually DO for a material.
6.) The tendency of the palettes to fly this way or that and get "stuck" loading that way, even after you've moved them into proper position before going to the next material zone.
7.) I strongly dislike the way Poser's lighting works, too. I understand how to get Daz lights to work. I can not for the life of me get a single decent lighting rig out of Poser, and yes I have followed written tuts and video tuts and all sorts of things over the years. I have never been able to work with Poser's lighting system.
How's that for starters?
My main issues with Poser *ARE* in the Material room. Phu displayed earlier tonight that P11/PP11 the interface can actually, successfully be customized to "clean" the UI up as much as I need it to. This capability does not exist in P10 or Pro2010, as discussed earlier in the thread.
My other chief complaint, is that P10 seems utterly incapable of rendering the heavy scenes I build, while DS 4 doesn't even bat an eyelash. Likewise, the entire interface slows down to a crawl very quickly (2 to 3 human figures and that's all it takes), whereas I have had huge, massive environments FILLED with trees and 10+ figures with all their accessories in Studio and have NO lag or viewscreen slow-down at all.
I have 12GBs of RAM; that might not be a TON, but if it's enough for me to spit out Aftermath in one single pass, it ought to be enough to be able to put out a scene in Poser that has two human figures with their clothes and hair/accessories, and a background. Sadly, it's not, and Poser chokes on it every time, and I end up right back inside of DS to do my renders.
For me, those are the biggest issues I have with Poser. The material room is HORRIBLE for me, the UI in Poser10 and Pro2010 is just as bad no matter HOW I move/rearrange the elements, and the program in general seems to manage memory in a much less efficient manner than Studio.
So, those are my basic issues with using Poser, and the combination has pretty much made sure I stayed out of it except as a content creation tool.
Does that help explain it any? I think it's a very powerful program; it's just not, in the current form I own (P10/Pro2010) an interface that I can tolerate for more than short bursts at a time. What takes me 20 minutes to do inside of DS takes me an hour or more inside of Poser, minimum, to figure out how to accomplish, and I can never seem to match the quality I get out of DS.
While I recognize that part of this my lack of skill, I have followed I don't know HOW MANY tutorials on using Poser's material room and I still, STILL cannot make heads or tails of it, or get the kinds of results I want out of it.
Please understand - I am *NOT* bashing Poser. I'm not. It's just that for my own workflow, the above reasons are enough to make me not only hate being inside of it, but it makes it near impossible for me to accomplish anything, or put out anything even remotely resembling a halfway decent quality texture or render with it. I think it's a really good program, and there are aspects of it that it DOES do better than Studio and vice versa - but for me, personally, I'm just NOT comfortable inside of P10 or Pro2010 at all, and I feel like I'm pulling my teeth out of my head just to try and get anything done.
