I had paid for and downloaded a commercial costume for V3, only to have the textures not work. Problem was, that the MAT pose files were listed in the ReadMe as "p4, pp".

Did a bunch of research last night and got those MAT files made for Poser 4 or Poser Power Pack to work in Poser 6. As a Poser newbie, the change in Poser 6 to Material Collections (shaders), instead of MAT files threw me for a while.

Anyway, the fix was simple. Copy each MAT file (probably in the Poses library) and rename the 3 letter file extension part of the filename from *.pz2 to *.mc6. No need to alter the *.png thumbnails or the obsolete *.rsr files, for Poser 6 use at least.

Perhaps you Poser veterans have something to add?

_ jc...'Art Head Start' e-book
'Art Head Start.com site Digital Art skills. Free lighting chapter, tutes, Vue models, tex pix.

The extension just determines where in the Poser library structure a file will show up (i.e PZ2 in Pose, CR2 in Character, etc.) An old trick to avoid Pose library bloat was to move MAT poses to the Camera library and change the extension from PZ2 to CM2.

You can change the extension and it will work, but it doesn't alter anything in the file itself, of course. A true .mc6 is quite a different animal to a .pz2 MAT file, because it sets up a proper shader node tree. You can convert .pz2 to .mc6 by applying the .pz2 to the relevant object then saving it back out to the Materials library as a materials collection. Unfortunately, it doesn't convert everything - for example, bump maps are still applied to the Gradient Bump channel, rather than the Bump channel as they should be. Presumably this is for backwards compatibility with Poser 4, as the old-style .bum format maps should, if I've got this right, be applied to Gradient Bump channels.

Thanks for the expertise. As a Poser newbie, i'm happy to just get a decent looking result from an older costume product. But i certainly appreciate learning the details and "gotcha's" too. What happened in my case was that when i double clicked on the renamed MAT thumbnails, Poser 6 (SR2) offered to create new materials, and when i okayed that dialog, i got a shader setup automatically. No doubt it didn't convert everything, but the material looks quite good, without further work in the Materials room. This is a far foreground figure, so doesn't need the perfection a closeup might.

That's interesting. I didn't know it would do that. That would potentially be quite a shortcut, and it looks as if you have the true .mc6 rather than just renaming the extension. I'll have to give that a try, because I'd like to convert a bunch of .pz2 files and move them to the material library.

Cool Steve, looking forward to learning more about this. Hope i gave you the right info. You now it is, stumbling around when you don't truly understand what you're doing - trying several things and not know for sure which ones did what. Maybe you could clarify something. The manual seems to say that the mc6 file is a "collection", but it handled each MAT file separately. Where does the collection aspect come in? I wouldn't mind making all those mc6 files into a collection, although they are already in their own folder. Thanks!

Poser 5 introduced MT5 files to store a single material. Poser 6 introduced MC6 files to store a collection of materials as an offical version of MAT poses (which are officially not supported). When saving to the Materials library you get the choice of saving just the current material (as MT5) or all the materials for the current figure/prop as as collection (as MC6).

Quote - "You now it is, stumbling around when you don't truly understand what you're doing - trying several things and not know for sure which ones did what."

I know that feeling well enough! I can't reproduce the double-click behaviour you describe at the moment, but I'll have another look tomorrow. Right now, if I rename a .pz2 to .mc6 and move it to the material room, it works fine but Poser doesn't offer to convert the file. Maybe there's something else to try, so I'm not giving up on it yet!

Maybe some detail on what i tried will help. First: Copied all the files from the product folder in "Library > Poses" to a new folder i created in "Library > Materials" and renamed only the files in that new folder from .pz2 to .mc6. I think i was in the materials room when i then double-clicked on the .pngs for the previously non-existent files (not sure if i exited Poser while creating the new folder and renaming, but i think so). The message was like: "Material does not exist, do you want to create it?" . And i did "yes". But i was still unable to get the textures to show on the model (got a 1-2 second hourglass, then no changes) Later, i realized that i was probably just doing the wrong workflow order when i couldn't get either the new or the old textures to apply to my figure. Also, forgot to go to a display mode that would show the textures in "Preview", even if they were correctly applied, nor had i rendered to inspect that way (groan). Anyway, when i did start over and do the right workflow and display settings, i first renamed copies of the files in the original "Library > Poses" folder from .pz2 to .mc6. Then was able to apply materials in the material room (and got no further messages). But from what i've learned here today (thank you very much), it was prolly the files in the materials folder that worked. Did quite a bit of looking at various tutorials. Most Poser tutes seem to be aimed at specific detailed methods. There are very few that lead a newbie by the hand and pose/clothe/texture a figure, step-by-step. Certainly the Poser 6 manual is opaque to the newbie - like so many other CG program manuals, "How to do's" are scattered around with few connections to any workflow concepts and "When to do's" or "Why to do's" are non-existent. In e-Fronteir's defense, i admit to not trying their built-in tutorials yet.

What I would add is that I use Poser Pro Pack for EVERYTHING with V5I, except for P6 SPECIFIC models, like Miki (Specifically Posermatic's Miki Doll and Olivier's Toon Materials- the MAIN and PRIMARY reason I bought P6) Otherwise- all DAZ stuff, which I buy lots of, works great in Pro-Pack and I never have any problems with PP-2-V5I!

BTW, here is a WIP Vue sketch, with the completed (and converted to .vob) figure. Title: "1492 - Winds of Change". Have already drastically changed the composition in some pencil sketches, and reflection was off for this quick render (so no waves or cloud reflections show yet). And much detailing remains. Anyway, any suggestions are welcome...

Wonderful tips........thx

Jim, you might want to try the book 'Practical Poser 6' by Denise Tyler (Deecey here@Rendo) which has much more of the kind of tutorial you're after. I agree that the Poser manual is impenetrable until you get the hang of Poser, which is kind of self-defeating! The P6 tutorials which come with P6 in .pdf format are quite good, though.

Much appreciated, Steve - have been wondering which Poser book to buy. And i'm overdue for a study of the built-in P6 tutes for sure.