Do you find various material zones on figures usefull? Do those help you create second skin textures?

I like em, and that's why I almost always add more on morph sets...

On morph sets? I am talking about the material zones to make a figure look like it wears a catsuit or a shirt etc...

Yep.. if you look at Hippolicious, Griffin PLUS!, or Rhinolicious, you'll find MANY more mat zones then the original figure. When i do a morph set, I don't add just morphs, but try to add anything the original figure should have had (or that I wish it had.) In Griffin Plus, I also added additional erc posing controls, and in a package I finished for Daz recently, and a second expansion set I'm finishing up, I'm adding more erc interal posing as well. It doesn't take much memory, and can really make using a figure much easier, and fun.

But then you must add those material zones on the figures obj right?
This can be done with Mat poses?

I dislike them on human characters, especially the number of them on V3. What's next: skinArmpits and skinChin? For non-human and mechanical figures, they're definitely a good thing.

I dislike them! I tend to fiddle a lot with the material settings and, even with appropriate tools, all that material zones just add a hassle. Everything that can be done with material zones can be done better and with more flexibility with some alpha maps.

I don't use them much on people, but for toony creatures (HouseMouse, ScareBear) it's a real blessing - there's not much of real clothing for such figures (if any), so one have to use second skins instead.

I dislike them a lot - they are a nuisance if you want to render the figure outside Poser. They really aren't needed. You can achieve the same effect with more control using masks and the Poser blend node.

The problem with alpha maps is that they are a HUGE resource hog. Load 4 of 5 2000x2000 maps onto any figure, and you reduce poser to a crawl. You can do simlar things with mat zones with no memoery use at all, allowing you to load more content. It's a workaround, or "cheat" for sure, but having glove mat zones comes in very handy, as long as you also have a "no fingernails" morph as well. The gallery renders I did with RoboGirl are also achieved with Mat zones, a smartprop belt, boots, and heart locket.

But there is no need for the alpha map to be this huge. If they are comperable to material zones, they have no detail at all. So a low res map is no problem.

The reason I am asking for is for Domus 3, I'm working the uvs at the moment, I was thinking givings some extra material zones but not overdone it, Also making some morphs to make a fake finish of a very tight cloth at the edge of the material zones...

IMHO, I develope for POSER content, not for other applications. For poser use, having aditional mat zones is very beneficial, andf you'll notice all newer generation figures use many additional mat zones. I would follow the lead of the best professionals in this field.

I don't mind the multiple material zones so much now that I have Shader Spider to copy one material tweak across to all of the other materials that need it, but before Shader Spider came out, I used to curse DAZ every time I had to make a slight change to a skin shader. You should be able to adjust one material and be done with it, not have to go through Poser's slow interface making adjustments to 10 or 20 of the bloody things.

If you are just changing a skin tone, its an issue. If you are creating "quick clothes" like gloves for figures that do not have them, it's a "feature". Without the mat zones though, end users cannot do quite a number of things for a character (like the Heavies) that have gotten little support.

Just my small thought.. Would it be possible to distribute two versions? One with all the groups (for those who want to use the figure "as-is", but apply different textures to the obvious parts) and a second which only had the minimal groups (for those that were more interested in either applying clothing or wanted to use their own textures easily..) Just wondering (OK - it'd make the downlod somewhat bigger, but even that could be overcome if there were 3 download options: "Minimal grouping", "Maximum grouping", "Both"...) Cheers, Diolma

Actually, yes it would. As a matter of fact you can easily edit the cr2 in the hippolicious set to look for th eoriginal obj file, and then you would have a version with the extra mat zones, and without. That's why i spend the time to add them.. its VERY easy to get rid of them if you like, but if you do not have a 3d modelling application and skill set, then adding them is very difficult.

Yeah, but many people don't even know what a uvs file is, let alone how to use one. I'd just supply both obj files, and cr2s that reference the different objects.

I vote for more material zones There are a lot of static props with only a couple material zones which stinks for hiding walls of a room - because since there's only a couple material zones you can't just hide one wall, it hides all the walls, etc. In ShaderSpider can you select specific material zones to make transparent? Instead of having to select each one one-by-one? That would save time for Poser users. Even if not, it's worth the time just to have more control over what you can make visible and invisible as well as applying P5/P6 shade mats to replace the cheap textures that come with some well made props. ram

I always think more control is better, even i it sometimes is not used.

pitklad - nice material zones, placed in critical areas for making secondskin clothing. These are basic and while there could be more of them (but not necessarily !), there shouldn't be any less. I still opt for nice material groups in toon/less realistic figures - usually they don't get any support at all or very minimal, and second skins are great to use on toonies (example - my freebies for HouseMouse :P). Better to have more possibilities than less.

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If anyone is interested to be part of the Domus beta testers and development group just join Domus3D yahoo group

I'll upload the current Domus beta version the next days!

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Message edited on: 11/23/2005 04:47

Gareee, you should be aware that many people prefer to render outside of Poser, and it's responsible to keep that in mind. Particularly if you want happy customers.

There should be a way of adding and subtracting unnneccesary material zones with a nice MAT pose or Python script if you ask me. That would make everyone happy!

I think there is a way to load new material zones via a MAT pose but for groups not specific polygons.... I'll have to search my tutorials archives...

"Gareee, you should be aware that many people prefer to render outside of Poser, and it's responsible to keep that in mind. Particularly if you want happy customers." I do. But the majority of poser users render in some flavor of poser itself. And as I mentioned, it is very easy to remove all the additional mat zones, with 2 simple text edits to the cr2. it is NOT easy however, to be able to create a lot of mat zones without 3d skills, and familiarity with a 3d modeling application, which is over many peope's heads. If some is using another application with a better rendering enginbe, they also probably have lite cr2 editing skills, and the knowledge to reference the original obj as opposed to a new ones with additional material divisions. Cr2 files can get VERY bloated with a big new morph set, and a lot of injection channels, so it makes more sense to provide the additiona mats in the obj, and the cr2 that references it, rather then including a whole new cr2 in a download. And honestly, this is the first thread I've EVER seen in over 2 years complaining about additional mat zones. Every time I release a product with additional ones, I get many emails and posts thanking me for including them in a morph set, which is uncommon. I've never ever seen one complaint at all about me adding additional mat zone in any of my products (and there were noe specfic in this thread), so I do have to go with what looks like my customer's wishes. Hope that makes sense to you?

What problem multiple material zones will create when use in a different program?

I believe I'll go with the multiple material zones and I'll add an alternative uvs file with very detailed step by step instructions...
This figure is based on Dork and will be encoded already so having 2 obj files will double the size...

I think it depends what you use it for. I almost never use second skins, but I spend days to tweak skin shaders consisting of dozens of nodes. For this kind of play, the multiple materal zones ar just a pain.

Unless of course, you use Shadrer Spider, and then its a 1 click solution.. ;)

There is a way to get the cloth-edge, besides a morph on the figure (which depends a little on polygons in the right places).

In P5 and P6 you can use a displacement map.

P4 bump maps can be used, but they're not as good for this.

Attached Link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Domus3D/

Please everyone interested on this project you are welcome to join the beta team!

:^)

On humans - NO!! On clothing -- Yes, up to a point. I re-map my V3 and A3 characters to reduce the amount of material zones. On clothing, I often map my own zones.

I have to agree with Gareee :) Having done a good bit of grouping and regrouping myself (in Poser and others), it is far easier to remove excess material zones than to add them. What would probably help would be to include a mini-tutorial with the figure for those who need help.

I think it depends on the level you're working at. If you just want to click on a MAT Pose, the extra zones don't make much difference, and can allow more flexibility in what the MAT pose can do. If you're creating something which might be a MAT pose later. or otherwise working in the Materials Room, then there are ways of making things easier, but more zones does mean more work. (Obvious Hint: Save as a Material.) I think the market is stuck with the Material Zone pattern of the Unimesh figures, and the extra leg zones on Aiko/Hiro have their uses, such as socks. It would be hard to convince me that a figure needed more, but I can see how more could be used. As for what I'll call Control Maps, feeding into displacement or transparency or into a Blend node, they do hit memory, in a way which just using a Material Zone doesn't. If you want to displace a cloth surface, give it an edge, for a whole Material Zone, just use a Simple_Color node. But, while you can be careful about bitmap sizes, I'm afraid that people with only 512M of RAM should think really hard about getting more. Win XP and Poser itself don't really leave enough room for the data on a scene of more than trivial complexity.

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Piklad - every mat zone has to be retextured individually in the rendering program. Twice the number of zones = twice the amount of work.

Actually, in Lightwave, yo can copy a texture onece you had it setup, and right click paste. you can even make mulitple selections, and right click paste the texture settings. In lightwave at least, once you have one set up, makeing the additional changes is VERY easy. (I do it all the time in developement work.)

"every mat zone has to be retextured individually in the rendering program"
This is something I didn't knew!This happens on poser or on all rendering machines?

I made some tests and the way Dorks polygons are does not allow the shorts material zone,so what renains are:

SkinBody (torso)
SkinLegs (including feet probably)
SkinArms
SkinHands
SkinHead

I always think more control is better, even i it sometimes is not used. In this case (and IMO), I have to disagree with that statement. Material zones have (like most things in life) both upsides and downsides. And in this case (for me) the downsides far out-weigh the upside. The "even if it's sometimes not used" is 99.999% of the time. Which means that I have to friken deal with those extra material zones 99.999% of the time when I DON'T WANT TO. That's not better, for me. As quinlor says "Everything that can be done with material zones can be done better and with more flexibility with some alpha maps". Sure, they eat more memory than NOT having them, but that's a trade-off I'm extremely happy to make. I'd also stress that 'more flexability' part. Material zones are restricted to the topology of the mesh polygons (the way the polygon lines cut across the mesh layout) and are therefore very 'limiting'. You get far more control/flexability (to the pixel level) using alpha map + texture overlay in P5/P6. If you hadn't seen these type of opinions expressed about V3's oh-so-many material zones in the forums before, you must have missed them - they're there :). >> I would follow the lead of the best professionals in this field. I only follow folks who have 'good' ideas :). My personal preference would be: SkinHead, SkinBody. (<---period) But beyond that I'd go for some comprimise... SkinHead, SkinTorso, SkinArms, SkinHands, SkinHip, SkinLegs maybe (that's already more than I - and a LOT OF OTHERS - want to deal with, let alone SkinScalp, SkinFeet, SkinButtocks, SkinNeck, SkinShins, etc. etc. etc.). Having said all that, I do acknowledge that there's two types of Poser users: One that likes all the zones they can get and One that hates them with a passion. It's probably wise to aim somewhere in the middle with your products.

So Spanki, what is your arguement if it's so easy to change the cr2 addressing to the original mesh, with less divisions? I do expansions for existing figures, while the original poster is developeing a base figure. Just curious...

I'm not opposed to providing a second .cr2 file (along with a second .obj file) that has a bunch of zones. Personally, I'm pretty proficient in Poser, modelling apps, programming etc. and have no problem hand-editing .cr2 files (I do it every day), but I wouldn't expect my customers to have to do that (ie. better just to provide two versions of the .cr2/.obj files). BTW, I'm not familiar with your products, so I certainly am not trying to knck them... I was/am just trying to provide an equally adament flip-side of the argument here :). - Keith

No argument,this is just opinions!

I myself don't like many material zones but for a figure like Domus who is based on Dork ,I guess he will be used for background figure having multiple mat zones and morphs to fake clothes will be a great resource saver!
Also this is not a product this is a free figure for every P4> user and I would love him to have success but I don't have illusions! He is a male figure and based on Dork!!!
So I'll try to remove anything old and add some new ideas...

Thanks everyone for your opinions they are highly apreciated!A tread live after a week is not very common on this forum! :^)

Message edited on: 11/27/2005 19:49

Spanki, you have to add them to the obj file, or provide a new uvs file to impliment them. I wasn't considering you knocking anything at all, but was curious as to your opinion. If you read up, there are only 2 small edits to make a cr2 reference an original obj file, but creating addition mat zone requires a LOT more work on the developer part.

Gareee, yes, the material zones are defined in the .obj file, but there are also references to those material zones in the .cr2 file. If you take a V3 .cr2 file (for example) and 'just' pointed it at a V3 .obj file that only had two zones, when you loaded that into Poser, you 'still' have all those zones (they'd just be 'broken' at that point). So to really fix the .cr2 file, you'd need to go down and edit the material section as well. Again, it's not rocket science, but it would just be less confusing (I think) if you provided 2 separate .cr2 files, if you had two separate .obj files.

So when I create new Material Zones using Poser's Group tool does it create a new OBJ file with these material zones when I save the new CR2? I'm only asking because I've got an animation rendering and am too impatient to wait for it to stop to test the answer myself. LOL!

Message edited on: 11/27/2005 21:10

Uhm.. the answer to that is yes and maybe no... I don't have the thread handy right now, but I just read something back towards the top of the forum a page or two about problems with alternate-geometry figures related to this. Normally, I'd say yes, it will make a new .obj file with the zones. But if that figure has swapping geometry (or maybe just those groups that are swappable), then it doesn't, or at least doesn't work as expected.

Actually the best solution for me would be a second UVS file and instructions.
A double cr2/obj would also double the download size without reason since it is not very hard to do that.

Doubling up cr2 files and obj files increases the file size to huge for dialup users. some cr2 files even zipped I've done are 8 meg.

What's so hard about just making both and giving the downloaders a choice between two different downloads? Sheesh! A lotta fuss about nothing if you ask me. If you want mat zones download option A if not grab Option B! See? Simple. No muss, No Fuss and no need for this pointless drivel of which is better or what I like to call "My Daddy can beat your daddy" nonsense.