Attached Link: Fire Demon

Loaded the Freak.
Applied the Fire Shader.
Messed around with turbulence and clouds and math nodes and whatnot... whack in some displacement and bump with a granite node...

The result is in my gallery. :)

I'd love to see what other people have come up with, but unfortunately something like that I can't search for. So if anyone has a nice example of what the shaders can do... please post a link. :)

Just do a search for shaders.. there are some amazing ones available for free.

Attached Link: Vicky, ewww !!!

I made some rotting skin shaders quite some time ago. One version is available in my Free Stuff (Icky Skin Shader)

Examples in THIS THREAD

You said "So if anyone has a nice example of what the shaders can do... " - is this unqualified, meaning you want to see and play with all kinds of shaders?

Playing with Poser shaders has become a seriously time consuming hobby for me. I am building shaders with many many nodes now on a regular basis.

The best one I've come up with is demoed in this attached image. This is 147 nodes. It implements a loom. See those little black-and-white insets? Those are the loom weave patterns. You can make those yourself or download them from the net. Then you load that image into my shader and it takes care of the rest, working out where the threads go and so on. The colors can be procedural or come from swatches - the shader makes it all come out right. In the end you can convert a render to a seamless tile, and toss the shader tree after that. And it can do plaids quite easily.

The hardest part was the fuzzies - it's not easy to get those right. 

I made a tool called Matmatic to do these giant shaders much more easily. It's been beta testing five months now.

If you want to learn more about how to do these, or just want to see some wierd stuff like Jessi as Goldfish, follow these links.

Matmatic Announcement and discussion:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=228105

Matmatic Download:
http://loftydesigns.net/Beta/Beta/MatmaticBeta1.zip

Parmatic:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=226110

Parmatic SR3 Issues:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=234750

Threads where I've used these for special effects:

Plaid, Linen, Denim, Houndstooth, Herringbone:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=244503

Fur:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?forum_id=43&ShowMessage=255463

Car Paint:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?forum_id=43&ShowMessage=255239

Deep Ocean Water:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=226110

Bricks:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=240354

Incidence SSS on Jessi:
(although I think I did that one wrong)
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=229578

Eye Makeup (no texture map):
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=229726

Reptile Scales:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=228528

Goldfish Scales:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=233907

Procedural Bruises:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2760455

Polka Dots:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2774035

Bagginsbill - you were kind of my inspiration :)
I saw some of the neat stuff you did and that's what got me to fiddling. I haven't really tried out your Matmatic yet (Installed it tho!) but it looks pretty dang nifty!
So now you got me playing heheehehe.

One thing I was battling with was that for some odd reason I was getting almost something like Seams, but I think that was caused by using a gradient in my math node. I can't claim I have a single clue as to what I'm doing, but I figure you don't try, you don't learn.

BTW - that entire shader kafuffle has point lights in it. There's only one very dim light in the render, and that's only to get some shadows on the ground. (Visible in the original render, but not in the postworked one)
And tell a lie! I used an eye texture. :P Couldn't get them to look like I wanted so I caved in and used an iris texture. :)

Couldn't get rid of the "glow" in the nose tho, but hey... he's a fire demon. He... glows. :)

Those are some seriously wonderful shaders there, bagginsbill!  You have an amazing grasp of the material room. 8-)

Bagginsbill, I'm playing with your mats atm. Can you tell me what displacement you use on the renders?
I tend to set it to 1.0, but it usually is too low, yet when I put it higher... it usually gets messy.
Any recommendations?

*One thing I was battling with was that for some odd reason I was getting almost something like Seams,

*Some noise-type nodes (clouds, tile with turbulence) follow the figure's UV map, others follow it's coordinates. When you have a figure or prop who's UV map does not completely fill the space from 0 to 1 (true of all creatures I've seen so far) then there are areas where the UV space on the figure are discontinuous. Any effect driven by UV will form seams in those areas.

The solution for seamless procedurals on a figure is to turn on a node's Global_Coordinates option if it has one - this changes the node's internal driver from UV space to 3D space. No more seams.

I'm always dealing with inches. Whatever numbers you see me use, they are inches. You should change your poser units to inches when entering my numbers. Or if you're using Matmatic it doesn't matter - all displacments/bumps are in inches in shaders. It's just the Poser UI shows you other numbers, but the internals are always inches and Matmatic deals with internals.

Quote - Some noise-type nodes (clouds, tile with turbulence) follow the figure's UV map, others follow it's coordinates. When you have a figure or prop who's UV map does not completely fill the space from 0 to 1 (true of all creatures I've seen so far) then there are areas where the UV space on the figure are discontinuous. Any effect driven by UV will form seams in those areas.

The solution for seamless procedurals on a figure is to turn on a node's Global_Coordinates option if it has one - this changes the node's internal driver from UV space to 3D space. No more seams.

I was a bit puzzled by that, since I've always thought the 2D texture nodes and some of the variable nodes (u, v, du, dv etc) were the only ones that took any notice at all of the UV map, so I did some tests.

I built a cube, mapped it one way to take up all of UV space and mapped it another way to take up just one small patch of UV space with a 180 degree rotation and then also built a version with no UV map at all.  I put the three versions in the same position and rendered them one at a time, using the render wipe to compare the renders.  The was no difference whatsoever for the noise or clouds nodes (the tile node is a 2D node, so it is UV mapping dependant).  Moreover, noise and clouds rendered seamlessly even though I had all six faces separated on the uv maps.

Those nodes, like the other 3D nodes, always use 3D space.  What the Global_Coordinates option does is switch between local 3D space (which follows the object around when you move it) to global 3D space, which stays put, even if you move the object.  If you have that option off, the texture will always look the same no matter how you scale or move the object.  If you have it on, then the texture you see corresponds to the particular bit of space the object is in at the time you render.  If you animate an object moving slowly with global coords on, you'll see how the object moves through the texture, while the texture stays put.

As far as I know, there are no nodes that offer a choice between UV and 3d coords - just a choice between local 3d and global 3d.

So where are the seams coming from?  Well, if there are any 2d nodes in the material, such as tile or the UV variable nodes, that will cause UV seams.  Also, the noise, granite and cellular nodes have striations in them oriented to the three coordinate axes.  That can give a seamlike appearance, although where it shows up isn't related to UV seams.  

BTW bagginsbill, I love matmatic.  It's absolutely brilliant.  It's made it possible for me to quickly put together really complex things I might not have been able to do at all otherwise.  Brilliant work and thanks very much.  It's been the best addition to my Poser tool set in a long time :-)

The Noise node uses world coordinates by default.
You can of connect U or V or something else to the relevant inputs, but the effect on the output is subtle.
The FBM, Fractal_Sum, and Turbulance nodes do respond much more noticably to having other values feed to the position inputs.

Attached Link: Power Balance

Ajax,

What was I thinking? You're right and I do know better. I think I was drunk when I wrote that. Ok not drunk at 7:30 AM. I can't think of a good excuse - had a total brain fart there. Not enough coffee? Yeah that's it.

Glad you like MM. I figured you would, being one of the more prolific and talented shader gurus. I'm curious to see what you've done. Care to post at RDNA? Lots of shader talk over there. Also no annoying 200K limit on attached images. Rendo makes me crazy with that. Like my uploads aren't worth 300K of storage?

Attached Link: Fire and Water - (abstract nudity)

11/20/06

Arrrggghhh!

This thread has my head spinning. Is there a "Nodes for Dummies" reference or VERY basic tutorials to introduce novices. The Poser 6 documentation is criptic not sufficient. I have a basic Poser 6 book (Poser 6 Revealed: The Official Guide), but it does little more than tell me what is in Poser, but no real explaination of what most things do, or how to use them.

Nodes look powerful and diverse, with the potential to unlock an artists indiviuality and originality (so that everything does not look alike).

Thanks,

LMK

The best way to learn node basics, if to load a materal someone else did that looks cool, or look at the various picture posts here of node setups, and then just play with them to see what they do.

At least that's how I've learned, but I'm NO BagginsBill, the shader hobbit.

Attached Link: http://www.castleposer.co.uk/my_tutorials.html

My buddy JohnRickardJR has been posting an ever-growing collection of tutorials. Many of these are on the Poser material room, with lots of gentle introductions to the nodes.

You learn what they do one at a time, and slowly learn how to put them together into bigger shaders.

Attached Link: http://www.castleposer.co.uk/articles/maths_chart.html

Ajax mentioned the matmatic program in another forum too.

Can someone post a link so I can check it out?

Seems like a really great program.

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=228105

See attached link.
Look at earlier posts in this thread for other links.

Thanks noel, got it.

Cheers,

BluesDragon

BTW Baggins - your tutes are so bookmarked it's not even funny! Do you have any idea how long I've been hunting for something like that? LOL

grins