Hi there, I made a texture set for vickys dress and thigh highs from her clothing pak 1. What I would like to do is make a mat file for the boots, both in one shot, is that possible? There are 5 textures so it would be nice if there were only 5 boot mats instead of 10! Any help or advice would be great. In case your wondering or it helps any, I am using the mat pose edit to creat the mat files. Thanks in advance. Smiles :)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/tut.ez?Form.ViewPages=606

Thank you for the link but I think there was a misunderstanding. I guess I didn't explain to well. I can make the mat files, but the boots are not one character, each boot is a seperate character. I can make a mat file for each boot left and right seperatly. What I would like to do is make a mat pose that would load the texture onto both boots at once so that there was only one file per pair instead of one per boot.

Have you tried selecting both boots in the hierarchy and saving as a new figure? I'm not sure this will work. I know if you conform or parent items to another figure then you can add the figure with everything attached. At the very least, you could conform them to a V3 which is made invisible and save the V3 figure to your character library. I'm sure there's an easier way to do this but as least it's an idea.

I don't think you can apply a pose to multiple characters at the same time, but the same MAT file should work for both boots if the material names are the same. If you're using a sub-dividing MAT pose then you'll need two of them.

Thank you both for your suggestions! Pigfish (lol love the name) I didn't need to do that this time, but I will certainly keep it in mind to try at a later date! Scourge you were right on! I can't believe it didn't don on me that I only had to make one texture for the set of boots so they would both fit lol. Thank you for pointing that out to me. I hope I never run into a sub-dividing mat pose, because I'm not even sure I'd know it lol. Thank you both again I really appreciate your taking the time to help me out. Now as soon as I find some room on my site I will be able to offer my textures! ;) Smiles!

Attached Link: http://www.silverleifstudios.com/MATTut.htm

Yes, that's a very good tutorial, if you're interested in making MATs with a text-editor. However, there's one minor error there: the NsExponent (highlight size) value in a MAT file is not 100 - HighLightSize, it's 101 - HighlightSize. So a value of 30 in Poser would be 71 in the MAT file, not 70.

Yep, I noticed that too. Still, it's free and mostly accurate. mac

I didn't notice any other errors there. It definitely would have saved me a lot of time if I had had that tutorial as a reference when I started making MAT Pose Edit.

Off topic, since this does not apply to your post per se, and is just some general info on making MAT files. I have not looked at these tuts so I hope I am not being redundant with this method, yet in the past I have found folks do not know this simple trick. Here is an easy, down and dirty way to make a mat file in a text editor using a cr2 file and an existing pose file. Take any standard pose file, and remove all text after the header, leaving just the following (or else manually type this info in at the top of the text file you are making): { version { number 4.0 ( version may very, I always set to 4.0) } figure { [At this point open the cr2 for the item and copy and paste in the entire Material section (near bottom of cr2 file) If you want, just start after conforming 1 to end of file, this will give you the footer info. For the footer, remove all lines of text after the end of the material section, leaving only the three } to close out the file. The footer will look like something like below for the end of file.] } } } Give the file a new name and save as pz2 to Pose library. Now you can use this as a template and change any texture, transmap settings as needed, etc., or you can set up a new cr2, save it, and copy the material section again to make a new MAT file. Yes there are faster ways to make MATs once you get the hang of what you are doing and start manually editing the file by hand, but for beginners this is a very easy way to start since most the time you have the cr2 you save set up like you want it, with all textures loaded and material colors, hightlights, etc. applied as desired. Hope this helps in some small way. :O)

scourge, I didn't know you made MPE. Compliments. Although I don't use it myself, for most people it's one of the most useful Poser utilities around. shadownet, That's a pretty good method for text MAT making, and that's the way I used to do it. But nowadays, I find it much faster to do the whole thing in John Stallings' Cr2Editor. I keep a MAT basic template handy and just copy/paste the new materials from the cr2 pane to the MAT pane. Also, since a lot of the Pose files I make are SET files (for moving body parts or changing joint parameters), this method's a lot easier for me. There are lots of ways to skin a cat, as they say. mac

Mac, agreed. Many methods for doing these sorts of things. I like Cr2Editor (and there are some other utilities I have used as well that are good) but more often than not, I end up hacking the file by hand because I guess I just enjoy doing it that way. LOL! I don't reinvent the wheel though. If I have a cr2, pz2, etc. already made up I can use as a template, I start with it and make the changes needed. I like the control over how the file turns out that manually editing gives me. Plus it helps me to learn and better understand some of the inner workings of Poser. At least as far as these things go. Utilities are nice, but you often do not have to think or even really understand the process to use them. I guess that is good enough for most folks, but I like understanding the nuts and bolts of things. Best way I know to do that is just open the file in a text editor and start fiddling around. :O) Poor cat, been skinned so many times, come with a zipper now. :O)

Oh, I totally agree that everyone should start with notepad. But once you know the nuts and bolts, there are other, faster ways that can be exploited too. As long as you know what you're doing, that is. I do a lot of stuff in notepad anyway. Sometimes it's faster. And, although I've tried innumerable test editors, I still prefer basic notepad. I do all my html in it too and it works fine for me. mac

I used notepad for the longest, but have since come to use editpad lite as my favorite. Notepad would get a bit sluggish on my when working with large files, and also I like some of the multiple document features that come with editpad lite, which make it easy to edit multiple files at one time. For example, say I have 20 files I need to edit, maybe change the version number to 4.0 from a higher version to avoid the common error message. No prob, I just do a search and replace across all open documents and it is done in a snap. It has features like this that make it, to me, more useful over notepad. :O)

I have editpad lite, but the only thing I ever use it for is to convert docs from upper case to lower. I have a Search and Replace app which does entire folders (or entire Hard Drives, for that matter). Still, the TABS thingy can be useful, I suppose. I just never got used to it. LOL. mac

I think we are all that way. We get use to doing things a certain way, and since it works for us we do not go looking to change. However, changing the subject. Would you know how I could make a pose file that would parent a clothing item to the base figure (ie V3). I do not mean conform as the clothing is already conformed. However, if I parent it, any scaling I do the base figure automatically applies to the clothing that is parented. If I had a pose file that would simplify parenting the clothing so that I do not have to open the heirarch each time to do this, it would be great. Also, it might be possible to unparent it in this way but setting it back to the universe (since Poser does not normally allow for that with figures).

Thanks Mac. I've had to do a LOT of work with my text editor (UltraEdit) when working on MPE, and I also have to agree that it helps to know what's inside a MAT file. Also a tool like MPE becomes a lot easier and more powerful if you know something about the various pose files.

Heya, I figured out the parenting thing. So thanks to anyone who was about to clue me in. LOL

Yikes! Spoke too soon. I can unparent - i.e. parent the dress back to the universe using the Pose file I made, but I can not get an unparented dress to parent to the base figure, so I do need help - if anyone can clue me in. Thanks in advance. :O)