Using the advanced materials tab in Poser

[Ken1171]

Pity I've only found this now - I could had answered all these questions right away. ^^

The Material Room in Poser may be daunting at first, but I think it's one of the strongest parts of Poser, and once you get passed the basics, you will love it. I, too, miss the ability to select multiple materials at once, but there is a multitude of scripts and plugins to make up for that. The one I use the most is Dimension3D's XS (see image below), which allows doing exactly the same you did in DS, and MUCH more. In the screencap, you can see I have selected all of Dawn's skin materials, and from there I can do just about anything with them.

To make you feel more "at home" in Poser, you might want to open the Hierarchy Editor. It's in the Windows menu, or just hit CTRL+SHIFT+E if you don't like using menus. You can see all the keyboard shortcuts to other panels from that menu. It looks the same as the default Scene panel in DS, and you CAN make multiple selections with it, though not for the same purpose as in DS. One thing we CAN do in Poser that we can't in DS is to toggle the visibility of an entire tree branch with 1-click on the "eye icon" at the Hierarchy Editor. Just hold ALT and then click any node to make the entire branch below it visible or invisible. I REALLY miss that in DS. This works in most (if not all) other tree view panels in Poser. Once you get used to this, you will miss it in DS. ^^

Besides the Poser manual, you will also find in the HELP menu many direct links to a multitude of resources, plugins, scripts, tutorials, and contents. In the screencap below I am showing you how to find Dimension3D's store directly from the Help menu. As Chris has mentioned recently, even the HiveWire3D store will be listed there soon, as well as in the Content tab on the far top right side. This means people will be able to see your store products straight from Poser! ^^

Hope this helps!

 

[Pendraia]

Pity I've only found this now - I could had answered all these questions right away. ^^

I'm sure you could...

The Material Room in Poser may be daunting at first, but I think it's one of the strongest parts of Poser, and once you get passed the basics, you will love it. I, too, miss the ability to select multiple materials at once, but there is a multitude of scripts and plugins to make up for that. The one I use the most is Dimension3D's XS (see image below), which allows doing exactly the same you did in DS, and MUCH more. In the screencap, you can see I have selected all of Dawn's skin materials, and from there I can do just about anything with them.

Sounds good and when I can afford it I will pick it up...spent too much lately.

To make you feel more "at home" in Poser, you might want to open the Hierarchy Editor. It's in the Windows menu, or just hit CTRL+SHIFT+E if you don't like using menus. You can see all the keyboard shortcuts to other panels from that menu. It looks the same as the default Scene panel in DS, and you CAN make multiple selections with it, though not for the same purpose as in DS. One thing we CAN do in Poser that we can't in DS is to toggle the visibility of an entire tree branch with 1-click on the "eye icon" at the Hierarchy Editor. Just hold ALT and then click any node to make the entire branch below it visible or invisible. I REALLY miss that in DS. This works in most (if not all) other tree view panels in Poser. Once you get used to this, you will miss it in DS. ^^

I have this open all the time...I did manage to find this. Most likely because someone else mentioned it when I've asked for help previously. Didn't realise that the eyes work differently though.

Besides the Poser manual, you will also find in the HELP menu many direct links to a multitude of resources, plugins, scripts, tutorials, and contents. In the screencap below I am showing you how to find Dimension3D's store directly from the Help menu. As Chris has mentioned recently, even the HiveWire3D store will be listed there soon, as well as in the Content tab on the far top right side. This means people will be able to see your store products straight from Poser! ^^

Thanks for the info...where did Chris mention this...?

Hope this helps!

Yep, it definitely helps...

I'm gradually becoming more comfortable...using nodes is very similar to Shader Mixer so I actually feel more comfortable in the advanced tab now I have worked out how to show all of the bits. I got a good tip from Miss B about filtering...that is something we don't have in DS and I know that I'm going to have to look at some of the networks for SSS where they do a procedural specular and see if I can replicate something similar in Shader mixer.

 

[Ken1171]

Both Poser and DS have this eye icon on the tree view to toggle visibility, but in Poser we can ALT+click to affect the part and all of its children nodes with a single click. Give it a try! ^^

Chris has mentioned adding the HW store to Poser's Content tab when Poser 11 was about to be released. Nerd3D (Chuck Taylor) is a member of the HW forums here, and he is also Poser's product manager, so you can him directly for the details.

One of the things I like the most on the Material Room are the procedural noise generators. Poser has more of them then even 3DSMAX or Octane. You can use them to add bump or displacement on any geometry, and even make textures with them. Since they are procedural, they are resolution-independent, which means they will look sharp in any zoom and size. Even Octane has procedural noise generators, but we cannot use them for displacement, which is something I use a lot. Even though the Material Room is about a decade old by now, it is still as powerful and easy to use as ever. One of the new features is that you can simplify your materials if they get too many nodes and look confusing. You can group them all into a single node and define what inputs and outputs you want to show on it. It's like creating a black box that does what you want with a simplified interface. ^^

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

One thing we CAN do in Poser that we can't in DS is to toggle the visibility of an entire tree branch with 1-click on the "eye icon" at the Hierarchy Editor. Just hold ALT and then click any node to make the entire branch below it visible or invisible. I REALLY miss that in DS.

I just wanted to clarify something on this. Studio DOES indeed have a way that you can toggle an entire branch on or off. It's just that we as the end user has to set it up for each branch that we want to toggle on/off simultaneously.

It's called "groups." There's an icon above the DS viewport in the toolbar row :

Click that. Then type in a name for the new group and leave the settings like this :

Now, drag/parent whatever things you want in the group (to be turned on/off together) into the new Group you just created, like this :

And that's all there is to it. Once you've moved items into the new "group," parenting them to that group, then the only icon you have to click is the eyeball next to the Group's name, and EVERY item that's been parented to that group will turn on/off simultaneously when you want to.

So, in my example above, if I click the eyeball next to the group called, "Caris Group," then the suit, wings, Genesis, her hair, and anything parented or conformed to any of these items will turn on/off at the same time - one click.

Now I'll go back to reading the rest of this thread.

 

[Ken1171]

@Seliah (Childe of Fyre) I am not sure if this can be used to hide the right hand or upper body of a figure, though. That's what ALT+Click does in Poser. It affects sub-parts of a figure.

 

[Lorraine]

Groups has become my best friend in DS

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

@Seliah (Childe of Fyre) I am not sure if this can be used to hide the right hand or upper body of a figure, though. That's what ALT+Click does in Poser. It affects sub-parts of a figure.

Ah... fair enough. Yeah, sorry, I misunderstood. To set multiple body parts on/off simultaneously :

1.) Go to Scene tab.
2.) Select all the body parts you wish to turn off.

3.) Now go to the Parameters tab.
4.) Click on "Display"
5.) Now click on "Visible."

All selected body parts will be turned off.

To turn them back on again, you have to select them all in the Scene tab and then go back to the Parameters tab and click on "Visible" again.

This is not as smooth as the way Poser handles it - agreed. But it does do the job a lot quicker than turning off each body part one at a time.

 

[Ken1171]

@Seliah (Childe of Fyre) I have tried your instructions, and it seems to be different over here. I am using DS 4.8. To make that work, I had to do a few more things. In the Scene tab, I have to first expand all the sub-nodes I want, and select them (items in collapsed groups are not affected). On the Parameters tab, I have to select everything on the list, and only then I can click the Display -> Visible. Otherwise, only the single node that is selected by default in the Parameters tab (the 1st one selected in the Scene tab) is affected. That kind of makes sense. In your screenshots, it only shows the Right Hand selected, and that would only hide that group alone. I wonder if that has changed in DS 4.9? Either way, that's what ALT-Click is for in Poser - it saves us a lot of work.

I was also bummed that "Delete Unused Bones" has stopped working since version 4.6 and was never fixed since then. Delete selected bones is also broken and no longer works. The only way is to delete them one-by-one. But again, I don't know if they have fixed those in DS 4.9.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Yes, it will only set invisible the parts that are selected... hence why I said, this is definitely one thing that Poser handles much, much more smoothly. My screenshot, I had the right hand, right thumb 1, right carpal 1, and right carpal 2 selected, so when turning off the visibility, yes, those would have been the only parts to turn off, as they are the only ones selected. HellFishStudios often provides hide-poses for entire body part groups (such as a hand+finger segments) - I keep meaning to figure out how to do that. LOL

It's very strange the different behavior you got, though. I am also running on 4.8, and I only had to select the multiple parts in the Scene tab. Opening the Paramaters tab, all I had to do is click on Display and then turn off the visibility, and they all turned right off in that one click. Very odd.

Poser totally handles this one much more efficiently, for sure.

I can't say about 4.9; I have no idea. At the moment, I'm staying on 4.8; I refuse to upgrade to 4.9 with all the nonsense they pulled on that version, and I'm not sure when I will ever upgrade again. I've seen a whole host of problems being reported so far with 4.9, so I'm not overly eager to try and move up to it. But it would be nice if they would fix the unused bones issue, definitely.

 

[Ken1171]

Oh good that I am sticking to 4.8 then. Maybe the differences are on the version build. This is 4.8.0.59, and I haven't updated in a long while. I tend to stick with versions that work better and I know what the bugs are, so I have more control over what I can do.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Oh good that I am sticking to 4.8 then. Maybe the differences are on the version build. This is 4.8.0.59, and I haven't updated in a long while. I tend to stick with versions that work better and I know what the bugs are, so I have more control over what I can do.

Odd indeed - I have the exact same version number (just checked).

I do the same thing, though. I am a very hard sell on upgrades "just because there's a newer version" available. I stick with what works until it no longer works, usually.