Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3551

I've been testing it, and it's really cool. It's so much easier to create partial shading nodes, save them, and then copy them to specific mat zones, and it's even intellegent for many characters, to copy your curent skin setting to all skin zones. I think it'll be another "must have" tool like Particles 2.3, and wardrobe wizard.

What's the learning curve like?

I'm interested in the partial-shader function, myself. I'd had no luck at successfully creating displacement MATs in P5. Here's the help page: http://www.poseworks.com/help/ss6/

It's actually pretty easy. Let's say you want to change the heavies skin in Hippolicious, which has many mat zones. They all have "skin" in the name somewhere. Make your changes (I alays kick up the specualr a little), and then select the new wacros he's provided. Enter "skin" as the search criteria, and then "apply", and that's it! All the mat settings are copied to all the material zones with "skin" in their names! I badgered Poserworks to make a few things easier/make more sense, and he exceeded my expectations and suggestions every time. What I REALLY like, if all those uber cool node based shaders can now be saved in a unique new format, and shared! So instead of trying to duplicate some of those scary looking node based shaders, we can now share the image, but also the partial shader as well! Let's say you have armor with different mat zones.. you could copy the slime shader to each one, or select zones now. Or maybe you've created a great node based water texture.. that can be shared as well now! For my developement purposes, it saves a LOT of time, and I was VERY happy to be asked to run it through the wringers.

"I'd had no luck at successfully creating displacement MATs in P5." yeah?..why not?

I use Mat pose edit to make P5 mats all the time.. it works fine, but has a learning curve.

Definitely, Gareee. I've already added it to my Daz wishlist just after reading the blurb about it there. :) The Poser (aka Pixels3D) shader node system is feature-rich and very flexible, but it is also ridiculously complicated. What little time I've had to experiment with it has not been enough to plumb the depths of its mysteries (and CL/eF have done little in the manuals to illuminate any part of it). For instance, the best reference that I found to these nodes is actually a textbook, "Texturing & Modeling: A Procedural Approach" (which is about $70 - being used for development of course). This is a collaborative effort from some of the greats in the field: Perlin, Worley, Ebert, Musgrave, and Peachey. Some of those names should sound familiar to any of you!

yeah?..why not?

Because partial shader-tree MAT poses don't quite work properly. If I strip out everything except the displacement channel info, the pose will apply the map to the material as expected, but the diffuse and specular channels change also. I always ended up with a shiny blue (albeit displaced) material.

That book does sound cool. When Poserworks OPM'd me about it, and wanted to know if I thought it would be a valuable tool, I said HELL Yeah! Have you seen some of those node setups Ockham and Ajax and Oliver over at RDNA come up with? It's great that they post pics of the connections, but it takes forever sometimes to hook them all up properly. I'm hoping his new partial shader format is adopted by the comminuty, and when we see things like the slime shader announced, that we see a pic, but ALSO a link for the partial shader. It's also very nice to have a built in mat writer, as opposed to having to do it the hard way, from a saved prop or figure. It sounds like he's going to do an update (he did 3 for Particles in like 3 weeks, and has released a whole pile of freebie effects settings for it as well), so I'm sure as good ideas pour in, he'll adopt them. I originally asked him if there was a easy way to build in wacro creation so we could make wacros for partial effects like specular ansitropic for "wet" surfaces n such, and he expanded on a whole system to save them, and load them without having a few billion wacros hanging around. IMHO like WardRobe Wizard and Particles 2.3, it's one of those must have base utilities fo P6 owners. (It's probably the first I'd recommend adding.) He's still bug squishing the Mac version, but once its done, he mentioned adding suggestions people are coming up with. Poserworks is up there with PhilC in my book, and utilities like this are just making P6 better every day!

">> yeah?..why not? Because partial shader-tree MAT poses don't quite work properly. If I strip out everything except the displacement channel info, the pose will apply the map to the material as expected, but the diffuse and specular channels change also. I always ended up with a shiny blue (albeit displaced) material." Hmm never noticed that, but I really haven't gotten into using displacements much yet. (another trick on my learning list!)

I have sent an IM to Poseworks, but does anyone know how to get partial shaders to work on props? It only works on figures for me, and tells me that it can't find the geometry file when I try to apply partial shaders to props, even if those props have external geometry. If you can't apply it to props, that will make writing partial shaders for things like slime and rust a bit useless.

Thanks for the good word, Gareee! (But stop calling me "poserworks" :-P) Saving a MAT pose (or MT5/MZ5 file), and stripping out much of the shader tree so that you only have something like displacement left doesn't work--it ends up just wiping out all shader info when it's applied. That's where partial shaders (FX6 files) come it. You can use partial shaders to save and apply settings for specific branches of the shader tree, leaving the rest of it intact. This makes it easy to store the displacement effect for future use. Helgard, I don't think I got your IM. ShaderSpider is designed for figures, but I'll definitely add a "Load Partial Shader" wacro designed for props in the update. Thanks for the interest and feedback!

Pose(r)Works ;), you are my type of developer! :) You not only create a useful, well-thought out product, but you listen to users and continue to improve functionality. This is how I work. Time for a little tab over to Daz! Keep up the excellent work. Robert

Ah, Poseworks.. sorry for the mis-typeing.. if I knew yer real NAME it'd be easier.. LOL!

Hmmm interesting, and just when i needed...

His name is Dan Nichols. He has been using Poser for way too long ;-p Glad to see you've gotten this thing out the door after all the work you've put into it :D

Attached Link: ShaderSpider 1.1 Update

The update includes the new features that have been requested, and a bug fix for a problem that came to my attention during the ShaderSpider Mac testing.

NEW FEATURES

• "ShaderSpider for Props" wacro. This wacro loads up a menu of ShaderSpider functions specially tailored to props. They are:

• pCopy to All which copies the current material to all other materials on the selected prop.

• pCopy to Specific which copies the current material to materials that you choose from the selected prop.

• pCopy to Matching which copies the current material to materials on the selected prop whose names match keywords that you enter.

• pCopy to Hierarchy which gives you several different options to copy the current material based on parenting:

• All props parented to the current figure.

• Children of the current prop. (Copies the material to all objects/figures parented to the selected prop)

• Parent of the current prop. (Copies the material to the figure/object to which the selected prop is parented.

• pSave Partial Shader Lets you save a partial shader from the selected material.

• pLoad Partial Shader Lets you load a partial shader to the selected prop (either all materials, matching materials, specific materials or current material.)

• Save MAT Pose Options pops up when saving a MAT pose and lets you choose exactly what you want to save:

• Create PNG Thumbnails

• Create Poser 4 PZ2

• Create Poser Pro PZ2

• Create Poser 5 PZ2

• Create Poser 6 MC6

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug related to saving complex shader trees to MAT poses (only affected MAT poses that would be in excess of 500K).

:)

Thank you very much. This has cut my work on texturing 50 props to about one tenth of the time. Amazing. Thanks for listening to your customers.