How do you add to the materials library? I also work with Ulead's Photo-Impact and they have a way to create materials and textures and I thought it would be cool if I could add some to my rather limited library. If this isn't feasible, where do you go to get new materials? I also wanted to thank those who helped me with my virus problem. I am now trying to reconstruct my library and maybe one day soon I'll have something good enough to contribute to one of the galleries. MADKAT

Is this a poser 5 question? If so, you'd get a quicker response by stating it in the title. I don't have poser 5 installed, so I can't answer, but I seem to have seen p5 materials mentioned as freebies. Perhaps if you do a search in Freestuff for 'Poser 5 materials' you'll find something. Sorry I can't be more helpful. mac

Yes I have POSER (5). Sorry, I'm new at this and thought this was a POSER Forum.

Attached Link: http://host1.bondware.com/~syydr/

The link above is for Runtime DNA, that have some material freebies. You can create your own material by setting them up in the material room - so if you've got a jpg/psd/bmp of the texture, then apply that and add shader nodes as you want - then just click the + at the bottom of the material library palette, give it a name, and Bob's your uncle...

MacLean's point, I think, was that the forum notes ask you to mention your version of Poser when you ask a question. Since there is no Materials library in P4, I think you pretty much took care of that for anyone but a purist. Those of us familiar with P5 knew it was a Poser question, so I don't think alerting the P4 folks that it was would have gotten you an answer any quicker. As a newbie, you should be aware that there is a schism developing between the P5 folks and the P4/DAZ Studio folks that will rear its ugly head sometimes. P5 bad; Studio good! Never mind DAZ Studio is a year late so far and doesn't really exist yet, unlike P5. P5 has an ugly history of bad code and premature releases, and something happened to estrange Curious Labs and DAZ3D, to the point that DAZ is now doing its best to deep six P5 in a quiet, passive- aggressive sort of way. They are the only major model supplier I know of that categorically--and for a while as a matter of public policy--refuses to support P5. There are two sides to every story, and I've lost interest in the gossip-mongering of who did what to whom. But the fact is, DAZ is hurting part of its market, such as people like me who find P4/PP clunky and feature-poor after working with dynamic cloth, the face room, shader nodes, and Firefly (and who can't get today's work done with vaporware and wishful thinking). So welcome to the kennel. Dog or cat, sir? Karen1573's link to RuntimeDNA is great for free materials that install themselves. You can't just move jpgs into the Materials folders, because shaders include procedural code and thumbnail data created by Poser. M

Uh guys, he actually asks a good question. Me - I don't care who uses which version of poser. I have both now. I use both, but I use P4/PP less and less. Nevermind all that tho - a tutorial in how to add materials and what the pros and cons are would be very very useful. Don't make me read the manual!!! AHHHHH.........!!!! There are a bunch of tutorials on Curious Lab's site (go to the support link) but I don't think there is one on the materials. I've often wondered the same thing myself btw, because it would be rather nice to be able to put the mat files in there, instead of the pose folder... I think.

Someone made a series of posts about the material room nodes in here fairly recently. I think it was Ajax, but I don't have time to search right now...

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/firefaq.html

Well, here's the best one I've seen....

Hmmmm.... Do I smell burning martyr in here? Apologies to madkat if I you thought I was being rude. I wasn't. My point about the title was quite simple. If you're asking a P5 question, you'll get a quicker response by stating that you are talking about P5. I wasn't jumping on anyone, nor was I arguing about what version of poser is better. I don't have P5 (installed) so I wasn't sure if it was a P5-specific question. Some of us add the materials through the obj file. 'you should be aware that there is a schism developing' Really? This is the first that I've heard of it. There are no P4/P5/D|S schisms. At least, not in my mind. Of course, if people imagine a schism, one will no doubt turn up to oblige them. mac

Attached Link: Stewer's Firefly tips

To really explain the concept of procedural and/or nodal shaders (which includes P5 Materials) would take a rather thick book. There is a lot to cover because the process is so flexible and powerful. Much of this information is available on the internet, but unfortunately, very little has been published about the Poser-specific shader system. If you really want to learn how to use all this power follow these steps: 1) Read the Materials chapter of the P5 manual, Yes, its boring and not very detailed - but it is an overview of the process and you won't find much of this repeated in other tutorials. 2) Read ALL of stewers tips (see link above). 3) Download all the free materials you can (the ones at RDNA are good and you will find some here). Bring those materials into Poser's Material Room and study them. There are also some interesting materials included with P5 that you might want to explore. 4) Once you know the basics well enough to ask specific questions, you will find that there are several people here willing to respond, but most of us don't have the time to write a complete tutorial on this massive subject.

No martyrs here. As for "schisms," I don't know what you would call a situation in which a major upgrade to a product gets responded to with threats of a class action suit and the public announcement that the biggest supplier of 3rd-party products will not be supporting it or, to paraphrase, "installing it on our computers." And a situation where the parent company, desperately trying to recover from the backlash, re-markets the old version as Poser Artist, accepting the idea that a huge amount of its user base is going to refuse to upgrade. Whether the backlash was warranted, excessive, or fueled by some conflicting self-interests, it sounds like a schism to me.

And I wasn't suggesting that you were a schismatic, if that's how you took it. I can see why, as a DAZ broker, you might take it that way, but that's your interpretation. I was merely reacting to what seemed like a rather strange suggestion. As I said, the P5 folks have no trouble "getting it" that a question about the Materials library is addressed to them, so the suggestion is, well, rather strange. An OBJ file is not a Materials library; but you knew that.... Putting P5 in the subject line would have made what difference? As the poster said, "I thought this was a Poser forum." How many P5 questions have you seen in the forum that spell out P5 in the subject line?

Anyway, if you don't think there's a schism, more power to you. What I've seen, here and elsewhere, smacks of a witch hunt. If you missed the celebration, good for you; it was bloody, savage, and not especially uplifting.

Certainly DAZ has every right to not support anything they don't want to support, including the software that created their market and bought their bread and butter. If they ever release their Poser killer (having done a pretty mortal job on P5 already merely by announcing it at least a year prematurely), fine. I'll look, and maybe I'll buy. But I'd like to have more stuff for P5, and if you think DAZ3D's boycott of P5 has not hurt the overall market for P5 stuff, you should be wary of men selling bridges.

Sorry, I didn't want to get any feathers ruffled here. I am surprized to hear there are these conflicts going on. It seems to me that Curious Labs would be more than helpful to all these outside companies for supplying support for their product which they don't seem interested in. There doesn't seem to be much you can download from Curious Labs, either free or for sale. Kinda like a sandwich shop that only supplies the bread, plate and some beverages but you gotta bring your own meat and cheese! As far as the manual goes, I don't consider myself stupid by far but you gotta have a Ph.d to understand that thing! It feels to me like you need degrees in mathematics, anatomy and physics to follow what they are saying. And each time I've tried to read about how do to something in particular, it keeps referring to other sections of the book to look up a function and I never really wind up understanding the first part I started reading. Specifically, in my Photo-Impact program, I can take a shape and give it material attributes and or textures and I can save it in a variety of formats (jpg, gif, png, etc). I thought it would be really great if I could then add some of these to POSER 5. I looked under Runtime/Libraries/Material and found png and mz5 listings. Now, I think the png are the pictures of the materials and the mz5 is probably the actual material that gets supplied. So, in order to add materials would I need to supply a png and an mz5? Photo-Impact doesn't have the mz5 capability to save in. Where do you find the materials at RDNA? I see a Texture category but Textures and Materials are two different things right?

Sigh...lets see who bites my butt first. Okay after you create your texture in ulead, save it as a gif, jpg or bmp to a folder in your P5 texture folder. Now open P5 and go into the materials room. Right click in the material room box. You want to add a new node, choose 2d image(it is called something like that, I'm not at home so I can't check). This will give you a new box. At the top of the box there is a name with a little down arrow. Click on it and choose browse. Find your file and choose add. Now click on the top left hand corner of the box(the plug) then click on the the top right hand plun on the main plug...your texture should appear at the bottom. you can tweak it even more if you like but at this point open the library and choose the folder you want to save the setting in. Then click the plus and add a name. Poser will automatically create a png for it. To use it add a prop in the pose room and choose a section of it in the material room..then select your texture and click the check mark. It is in the manual, but most don't connect the whole choose a texture map thing. Now at Rdna look under P5 free stuff I would suggest you read the whole manual, wheather you think you need to know something or not, it is actually quite informative and going through all the little exercises will give you a feel for the program. Otherwise feel free to ask questions. Every post that is about P5 at renderosity cause a spiting battle between Nay users and Yay users. If this gets to you come over to poser pros, things are a bit nicer there when it comes to P5 and there is a material room tutorial at the top of the P5 forum. Butt bitten 1258 times since september 2002.

OK, apologies to anyone who has ruffled feathers. I really don't want to get into this stuff. There is NO schism as far as I'm concerned, I've seen a lot of people post both complaints and praise of P5 (and I read most P5 threads). I also bought it when it was released and for a whole string of reasons, have not installed it. I've nothing against P5. I don't even know the app. I just haven't installed it... yet. Re DAZ|Studio - I have no opinions one way or the other on that - DAZ broker or not. If it works, great, but what can I say? It hasn't hit the market yet, so what do I know? Just one point for mickmca though. I suggest you update your info sources. DAZ does support P5 and has done for several months, ever since Curious dropped their outrageous demands for money and they came to an agreement. I said it before, but evidently it needs repeating. The title thread did NOT convey a P5-specific request to ME. Maybe everyone else is smarter. It sounded p5-ish, but I clicked on it because newbies frequently misword their requests for infomation. I then suggested it might be better to include 'P5' in the title. Now was that really enough to set off a P4-P5 war? If it was, then this ain't the place for me. Sheesh! mac

The Poser PNG file is a thumbnail for the library, not a texture per se. To use your PI textures, you would go to the Materials room, select the object and material you want to apply the texture to (top menus on the shader palette), then create a new node (click on the outlet for, say, Diffuse color). Select as the node's type 2D Textures > Image Map. This will give you a chance to load your texture. I'm skipping all the complicated stuff like connecting it to Specular, and maybe to Bump, changing the attributes for the map, or tinting it with color, and so forth. That's the "book" referred to above. Once the texture is loaded and set up as you like, open the Library palette. The Materials library is displayed. Find the folder you want to keep your shader in and click the + sign to save the entire palette for that object > material. MAT Poses are a completely different way of handling this, by the way, which results in "poses" that create nothing but shaders. They are created by hand-editing your Poser files, or with add-on tools. The advantage of a MAT file is that a saved shader is only good for one material (Nude Judy, for example, has around 20 materials). This problem exists in P4 as well, in a different form, and MAT poses were invented as a solution. In general, reserve library shaders for things that might be of general use (an oak plank, for example, which you might use to shade a fence, a wall, a tree, or a baseball bat) rather than very specific things like a carefully constructed individual "skin" for a face. For the RuntimeDNA materials, choose Downloads > P5 Stuff and browse. They are excellent examples as well as great resources. You can also learn quite a bit from loading the Materials that come with P5. For example, the laconic bits of information on reflection make a bit of sense if you compare the Chrome shaders with the instructions.... Have fun.

madkat - I think part of the problem is that you may be confusing "textures" (image bitmaps in any number of file formats - .JPG .PNG .TIF etc.) with Poser materials (which are complex mathematical procedures which may or may not include bitmapped textures). The term "materials" as used in PhotoImpact has nothing to do with the Materials in Poser, and cannot be directly transferred. You can make images in PhotoImpact and apply those images (JPGs PNGs BMPs etc.) as textures in Poser (using a Image_Map node), but you cannot transfer the material attributes which PhotoImpact uses to generate the various effects - you can only create an equivalent material in Poser (for example brushed gold or green glass) but you must do so using the Poser nodes. Each 3D application (Bryce, C4D, 3D-MAX, TrueSpace Poser etc etc) has its own proprietary "Materials" format, and as far as I know there is no way to translate a material in one application to an equivalent material in another format. Tirjasdyn's post above explains how to apply an image (texture) created in PhotoImpact to your model in Poser, but there is no way to transfer the material attributes or processes (such as copper, plastic, glass etc) used in PhotoImpact. I think a lot will be explained for you in the manual.

Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com/support/index.php?id=65

Cross-posted w/Tirjasdyn. Between us, I think we got everything. =============== DAZ "supports" P5? I'll bite. How? Their FAQ provides a great answer (see link). DAZ supports P5 to the extent that it is backwards compatible with P4, and therefore they only test for P4/PP functionality, and they do not create products for the P5 figures, dynamic hair, dynamic clothes, or shaders. If it works in P4 but not in P5, that's CL's fault for "introducing an incompatibility. (Ironically, one of the most talked-about "incompatibility" is the fixing of the crosstalk bug!) If it's a new Poser feature, they don't support it. They "highly recommend using P4." This all sounds great. The bugs that were exploited to extend P4 (crosstalk, for example), are fixed now, and that's CL's problem, not the problem of the folks who decided to "make lemonade." The MAT/MOR pose kludge that became an extension doesn't work right in P5. CL's problem. The Material room doesn't put up with some of the tricks that created great hair. You guessed it: CL's problem. It's a bit like complaining because a new version of Excel no longer allows you to use it as an address book. In the immortal words of somebody or other: Whatever. M