Okay, truthfully it frustrates the heck out of me, and I'm using ready made materials that others have made, but I'm loving it anyway!!!!!!!!!! hehe I find myself putting on the figure's clothing and leaping right into the Material Room. I've been colouring all kinds of things, lol. I even managed to make some transparent glass for Sam3D's Pumpkin House. Okay, I cheated a little. I applied a ready made one...examined what they did, deleted their nodes and found the same ones and reapplied them and then used my own settings and colours!!!!!! Yippeeee!!! No I haven't been drinking! LOL And I shocked myself by surfing the net and coming across some nice, but rather plain shiney textures for some outfit I have, and the first thing that entered my mind was "I can do that myself in the Material Room!". *shocked* Anyway, here are my pumpkin houses. I'm sure that others might be able to get better looking glass, but I'm pleased with these for my first attempts!

WTG Acadia! I agree the MR is the best thing about poser5/6 - gives you loads of scope, particularly if you're still learning (as I am) about making your own stuff. Well done

MR is the main thing I use while working in P5 :)) Regular textures are soooo 20th century ;) It's amazing what you can do to a simple texture by messing with nodes! Pity that the markets are mostly oriented to P4/PP stuff, being a bit too conservative.

4be

Lots of items in the marketplace have pro pack and the node option, which I think is great. I have all versions but there are still those who are using pro pack, I would hate to see them left out in the cold by merchants who only use nodes with their products, especially as Acadia pointed out, we can do a lot of it ourselves. I still use pro pack for projects that are just jump in and get them done, so I do like the regular textures for that. Marque

Well my latest prop (the men's room) uses texturemaps because I want it to be compatible with P4 as well, BUT I also use the node setup together with the texture maps. So hopefully P5/6 people will get an even better result, still with the texture maps, but with added reflections and such. One of the truly GREAT things about Poser is that the older versions simply skip stuff they don't understand so you can set up something with P6 nodes and P4 can still render it. Not as good, but it doesn't balk over it either. And the Material Room is the main reason why I have never really taken Daz Studio seriously... not as a place to render my stuff anyway.. I MISS the Material Room too much there...

Hey, I'm surprised by how cool the material room is too. I haven't tried to make my own, but have tried nodes made by other people. It really is impressive. =D Have you snagged Mapps and RDNA's materials yet? Are there more out there? Know where to find them? Thanks. bB

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=4blueyes&Topsectionid=0

Yes, I have Mapps' and RDNA's materials. I also picked up some great ones that 4blueyes made. Gorgeous stuff. See above link for them. I also bought ShadowDaleCreations Magic Touch (I think that's what it's called). There are some great fabrics like sequins and velvet etc. I also have templargFX car materials. http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=templargfx&Topsectionid=0

Thanks for the links. :D I looked found a few more at the wonderful Mystic-Nights' list: http://mystic-nights.com/directory/index.php?logic=and&maximum=&term=japan&&sr=20&pp=10&cp=3 bB

I too, love the Mat Room (as well as the Cloth Room)..:-)

Using other people's materials is all very well and good, but all it does is show you how a specific effect is created. Very helpful, but doesn't tell you why that specific set of nodes/settings was chosen. Although it does usually start pointing you in the right direction, and sometimes leads to that wonderful sound of the penny dropping.:-))

I can heartily recommend spending a few days, yes DAYS (errm.. in my case months, and I'm still not all that good at it) playing with the Mat room applying textures to just a sphere and/or box, exploring its possibilities...

It's the only way to really learn, getting hands-on and dirty...:-))

Cheers,
Diolma

Message edited on: 10/24/2005 15:52

Try TrekkieGrrl too (not sure I have that spelled right) but she did a couple of cool sets too that may still be available. If you have never used node shaders before the easest way to make your own is to take someone elses apart. My free sets total to about 340 materials. They cover all the everyday stuff. You can use them as is or load them an modify them for use in any project, personal, freebie or even market items. As long as the market item isn't a set of materials. In that case they must be modified and not used as is.