Ok, read the manual, played with the program. Now from what I understand, rendering with Firefly gets icky with .bum bump maps and if you choose "no shaders" with the Poser 4 render option, you need to go back into the material room to reload them. Question is, do bump maps need to be converted for Poser 5 like it needed to convert it to .bum for Poser 4? If so where at? One more question, of course I needed to convert bumps to .bums when I used Poser 4. If the pose loads in just the jpg/tiff/etc form of the bump will it ignore the .bum in P5 or do I need to remove the .bum that I needed before so it doesn't booger up Poser? I'm really tired right now and hope you can understand what I'm asking lol. I've been playing around alot with P5 and getting to know nodes and materials and having such a fun time playing around in there..you can just get lost for hours just playing in the material room lol. Lady Stormy

Poser 5 can use jpegs, you don't need to convert them to .bums, in fact Poser 5 doesn't even have the option of converting jpegs to bums. Just plug the jpeg directly into the bump channel (note: don't ust the Gradient_bump). Also Bump in Poser 5 is a lot more sensative so you only need to set it to around 0.03

Ok good. So P5 will automatically look for the bump map on its own? Or will I have to look for it? I literally have thousands of texture files and it's going to be a hassle if I do :/

Unfortunately, all too many products will look for BUM bump maps when you don't need them if you have Poser 5. Poser 5 is not smart enough to automatically fix these problems. The best way to headoff any such problems is to try CorrectReference, the free version here in FreeStuff. If that fixes your problem you're set. You'll find many, if not most, bump maps may need to be fixed so the bump map is connected to the Bump channel. MAT Pose Edit can fix this problem on MAT Pose files. Just run the Batch processor.

kk will give both of those a try :) Will look for CorrectReference here and Mat Pose Edit on the net.

If you've got a BUM map in the old poser 4 format (embossed images in that yucky green colour, if you open them in a paint program), it should be connected to the Gradient Bump channel. That's why P4 and PPP MAT files used in Poser 5 always connect bump maps to the gradient channel. Jpeg bump maps (greyscale images) should be attached to the Bump channel, or can be plugged into the displacement channel in P5. In either case, you don't want a bump strength of 1, which tends to be the default. In Poser 5 that's way too strong. 0.05 works for most things, or even less for close-ups.

That's the problem...for some reason NONE of my bump maps will automatically load in! NONE. Every model in the scene, I have to manually go and put the node for the bump map in! I have used the CorrectReference AND the MPE. My files are pointing to the correct bump references, they just won't automatically load in like they use to for P4. Am I the only one having this trouble?? I'm so frustrated right now that I'm ready to throw Poser 5 out the window.

It would help to have more specifics. Are you saying that no Poser items have bump maps setup? Does that include stuff that came with Poser 5? Does it include commercial items you bought? Or items you made yourself? You want to setup Poser items before you put them into a scene, and not while they're in a scene.

Um...there used to be a weird bug in P5 where the bump maps would load, but the nodes wouldn't be connected - you had to do that manually. That was supposed to be fixed by one of the SRs, if I remember right. If that's not the problem, could you try posting a screenshot of the material settings you get when you apply a MAT? It might help.

willowelf, do you have the latest Service Pack? Also, it would help to know exactly what you do when you setup this stuff.

Bobbie - yes, NO poser items have bump maps setup, includes default P5 contents and purchased items such as Victoria 3, Koshini, etc.

Eirian - I took a screen shot of an example of the material room. I even tried to apply the bump map pose and it didn't add any bump map at all. The model example I used here is the Blacker Magic Fall K hair.

As you can see, there is not even a bump node for me to attach.

Message edited on: 01/18/2005 15:12

It looks to me like you're loading a MAT Pose file (designed for Poser 4) into Poser. You need to load the actual item itself instead. If it's hair, load the hair, then go into the material room. I may be wrong, since it's really hard to read the text in your screenshot. However, one thing you can do is delete any Poser 4 MAT if there is a Poser 5 or PP MAT. From looking at your screenshot, I'd guess you have NOT used MAT Pose edit on those MAT files.

Message edited on: 01/18/2005 15:32

Thanks Bobbie, went back to work with MPE, figured out the batch conversion and what it was doing. As far as I can now see, bump maps load in now the way they are suppose to. Some files won't convert, but I can deal with that now that the majority of them do :) It looks like I have some work cut out with converting, but will be well worth the sanity after lol. I do have 2 questions tho. First, for the MPE I read the tutorial and help files and understand that I can set the bump strength for default save. I tried the -100 (50%) as most here have said that it's a good strength in p5. However after converting, saving, and then applying the mat, the strength shows lower..something like 0.00342. Any suggestion on what number is a good number for the MPE strength default? Secondly, after finally figuring this all out lol, I noticed that my newly converted files are SO much larger than the p4 files. Is this normal? they go from around 4k to 100k. If it's norm, ok. I just want to make sure that I'm not doing some silly thing that uses up extra space and can be avoided. Thanks so much guys for all the help (and patience)!! P5 is definitely a whole new world! I know a year from now (hopefully sooner lol) I'll question myself as to why I hadn't upgraded sooner..but for right now we are having a love-hate relationship haha. I know after I get over this bump hurdle, I can go back to the breath-taking "wows" ;) Lady Stormy

The best answer I have for converting Poser 4 or Poser 5 MAT files to P5 is to use the P4-P5 Batch Converter. The trick is to avoid some MATs that cover partial mats. You'll learn quickly which I mean.

For example, these are the MAT files from DAZ for V3. I used MPE's batch process utility to change these MAT Pose files, then I changed the names of the original PNG files to match. I still have some concerns about exactly what you're doing. It appears you're trying to edit MAT Pose files within Poser 5, which you should not try. Also I couldn't seem to find any hair with Bump maps. But I don't have the hair you mentioned. I'm in the process of reinstalling all my software and reorganizing my office. I don't mind taking time to try and help, but need to feel you're "hearing me."

Thanks Bobbie, I do hear you :) and you have been a major help! I'm doing exactly what you have shown here. I've gone to the MPE and used the converter. I had become a little confused as I saw the files being saved, but when I clicked on the thumbs in Poser they didn't "seem" to work. That was easily remedied after I looked directly into the directory where they were saved and saw the pz2 files that had the _P5 added, changed the thumbnail to match it and it worked fine :) Just as it shows on your last post and image.

Congrats! I'm glad to be of some help. Have fun.