Ok, its the summer and im bored, so if any of u guys (and girls) fancy a texture, well ill be more than happy to do it, so go on put me up to the challenge, I will do my best to do ure request. Wiizie

okay i got a challenge for you how about trying to make a Clear plastic , like shrink wrap texture for whatever you like , as long as it clear and glossy

Getting a glass texture isn't difficult even in Poser 4 and ProPack. Now if he had to make it like bubble-wrap? :evil grin: Carolly

thats cool hun but i was asking for clear plastic like shrink wrap so you can see all the figures skin texture naturally through the texture , I do like how you made this look like a cool looking glass figurine. I'm not that good yet.

You don't have to be smart... just know where to look. ;) There was a glass tutorial posted a few years back (when Posette was our main figure!). Last Christmas, Westonmi made a set of glass MATs as part of the FaeryeWylde solstice giveaway. Various people have played with it, mostly when they need ghosts or statues or goddesses or aliens. The key word is "play"! Too many people use preset MATs and forget how to twiddle dials... or how much fun it is to make something new. First, using Poser 4 or ProPack, go into the Render > Materials dialogue box. On the top left you'll find a pull-down menu listing all the figures and objects you can modify. Open that and select your garment. On the top right is a list of parts for that garment. Suppose that you only want the sleeves to be clear and the bodice solid? Or the boots clear but the clasps to be metal? Easy! Select the exact item you want to glassify. You see 4 color boxes for object, highlight, ambient, and reflective? Make them: white, white, black, white. Select a highlight size, maybe start with 80 or so. Transparency Max to 100%, falloff to 0. No texture. Repeat for anything else you want to make clear, and hit OK. For Poser 5 you'll do a similar thing with the nodes for these qualities. That was the straightforward part. In my blue figure post #3 there are 2 Vickis inside each other plus the gown and the transparencies went from 95% to 98% IIRC, the object color was a blueish tint as well. This is part of where you get to experiment. The important part is the lighting. It will make or break your effect. Go to RDNA if you haven't been there before and nab a couple of Traveler's free light sets. A single spot probably isn't going to give you what you want so hunt for ones with lots of colors: vivid, corpse, daylight, hell, spring... whatever strikes your mood. Play. Throw some lights on the figure and see what colors work for your scene. If you are using ProPack or Poser 5, you can run Ockham's python sript to delete lights. Play some more. The factors which distinguish various materials (glass crystal, plastic) are brightness/color of highlight and size of highlight and whether the object color comes through the highlight. This takes experimenting. When you get a setting that you like, write it down. Old glass on a seashore is going to have more natural color than a new glass, depending upon the metals in it. But these are subtle points... first go make some glass critters and props and then when you are confident that you can turn anything into glass, start playing some more. Carolly Here are 6 samples showing what various lights do for the same setup. The quiet one is Anton's moonlight, everything else by Traveler, with some tweaking.

next 2...

... and final 2, with brighter colors. If you want neon, you'd go even more colorful. The key is to have fun! Unless you absolutely have to match 24% lead crystal for a Waterford ad, go ahead and play until you get something which pleases you. OK?

Very cool thankyou, I learn more everyday definately going to use this technique .

Good! Once you have the settings for making things invisible, you can control how much of a highlight and how many colors it will take to reveal the form. And sometimes things are better if they aren't totally invisible... so you nock down that number to 98% or whatever. You expect saranwrap to be clear, but a ghost that nobody could see wouldn't be nearly as scary as one which is almost there. You can also use this to hint at other types of vision. Doesn't Superman have x-ray vision? I can't remember if x-rays are at the lower end of the spectrum or not (damned migraine has short-circuited my memory banks), but shifting all the colors towards red and making certain things invisible might reveal the world from alien eyes. :) A neat technique is almost like a hammer in search of a nail, but when you need the hammer you need to know how to use it, too... and that takes practice. Carolly

Wow, am I ever impressed with this one -- good ideas here! Thanks for telling me, Carolly. Runs off to render and play and play.......

I've played and had fun for years with some programs, and never figured anything out. Then I get the right book, ask the right questions, and suddenly things make sense. In otherwords, "play, and have fun" are not always any real kind of solution.

Ron (aka Bobby_Boucher and 13 other aliases), I am on record as having told many, many people to read the manual... as you very well know. However, there are times when experimentation and practice are the key to using a tool properly. If practice isn't fun, it becomes onerous drudgery, and the mind balks at retaining information gained through work. With something as complicated as effective lighting, only practice (or a huge wallet) will yield the desired result. Not everybody wants to use default lights. Carolly

Well, judging from the lack of quality in both the Poser 4 & 5 manuals, I wonder why some people still persist in recommending their usage. The problem with relying solely on practice or playing is that you can continue to do the wrong thing or be totally lost unless you have proper insights.

Did you ever hear that chinese probverb about the blind men who examined an elephant, each from a different part, and each came up with a different description of the elephant? That's the kind of thing I ran into while "playing, practicing..."

(Please try to avoid any personal insults or "name playing here." I do believe it's not appropriate to the discussion.)

Message edited on: 09/29/2004 21:15

Carolly, that's not fair, AFAIK ron has only used 7 different aliases here, (of course I may have missed a few :-) and to speak to the discussion... "In otherwords, "play, and have fun" are not always any real kind of solution." I don't see anywhere in this thread where anyone said "play & have fun" are always a solution. Ron, not everyone learns in the same way or at the same rate. Some people pick up a program & something just "clicks", others need to rely on a manual/tutorials, and some people need to be spoon fed information until it "takes". Just because one method doesn't work for you doesn't automatically mean it won't work for everyone.

Although it's known that I have a low enough regard for the P4 and P5 manuals, I do have to point out something rather important. The manuals do teach you te basics. Although a typo is int he p5 manual and it's fairly useless regarding the functions of different specific things within the program, it's very much a usable work in terms of learning how to get around in the program itself. The manuals failures are in giving a user a grasp on workflow, basic metaphors, and in the ideas of how to do things beyond the basic functions (load a figure. Load clothes. Conform clothes. Pose figure. rant. 00 you know, essential stuff). So while the manual may be a bad user's guide, it's a good tool for getting the hang of using the basic functions in poser. Given the nature of the Shade manuals, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the manuals that come with Poser 6 are of considerably greater usefulness -- and not just to poser 6 users, either. but I am crazy. So there may not be a great deal of value there.