Ok I have bought 2 sets lately that are white the V4 Trousseau from DAZ & the A3 Blossom set from 3D Commume.

With both sets I have had problems straight out of the box, as both sets look plasticy whatever light set I use.

I have tried numerous tweaking in the material room, changing spec colour / value / diffuse colour etc with no success. They either look white & plasticy or dull grey & matt. I cannot get them to look white & matt.

Could someone with more experience than me please show me some material settings that they have had success with for white clothing. It does not have to be these clothes just how I can render anything white with success.

This is frustrating the hell out of me & am about to give up on using anything white.

I am using P5 or 6 by the way.

Thanks.

If your textures look like plastic, it doesn't sound like a lighting problem: it sounds more like the lack of a bump map problem, either "bump" or "gradient bump".

Can you post a screenshot of your material room with the outfit nodes showing?  It would be easier to pin point the proper help. There are a few ways to achieve better looking textures.

Steve, I have to go to work now, but I will try that tomorrow.

Don't know if this will work for you or not, but I would try the following:

**For Blossom:
**
1.  Go to your graphic program and make a grey scale image of the texture and save it to your texture folder.
2.  Right click on a blank area of your material room and pick "new node" and "2d Image" and "Image_node".  Browse to your grey scale texture.
3.  Connect the grey scale texture to the "Bump" node and play with the settings.  Start low with something like .003 and work your way upwards.

For Trousseau

I would try moving the bump file from Gradient Bump up to Bump. 

  If that doesn't work, then I would try doing what I suggested with Blossom. Make a grey scale image of the texture and connect that to the Bump node.

Another thing I've done that has sometimes worked for me, at least with skin textures, is to use a math node.

• I create a math node.
• Change the argument to  "Add"
• Connect the texture file to not only the diffuse and specular nodes of the Poser Surface, but also to the Math Node too. 
• Connect the Math Node to the Bump Node of the Poser Surface and then play with the setting of the bump. I start with .003.

Those are my trouble shooting things. Sometimes they  work, sometimes they don't.

Oh, you might also try working with white lights so that the clothing doesn't take on the colour of the lights in your scene.  If I'm using a premade set of lights I go and change their colours to white and sometimes have to adjust the intensity.

for the first settings you show, i would darken the "specular colour" or lower the "specular value" with that setting being anything other than black you are gonna get a sheen to it, if you were to apply that to a skin texture as it were then you would get a wet skin effect.

For the second one, if you want to mat down the reflection effect, i would "uncheck" the "reflection lite mult", and either lower the "reflection value" or detatch the relection node altogether if you don't want any sheen, the reflection node is gonna be being affected by the lights in your scene a lot also, so if you have the default three infinate lights on then the clothes will be very shiny with those settings you have there. changing your lights to "spots" might help lower the glow effect, i'm guessing from those settings that they are supposed to be a bit latexy.

"Gradient Bump" is only for the old P4 .bum bumpmaps, and rendering with the P4 render engine. At least, that's what the manual says. One of the problems with white (or black) is that you don't have any room for the render engine to add highlights (or shadows). I'd take the base colour on the diffuse node down a step. Also, the highlight size can make a difference. Alternative Specular, and the different types of reflection shader, can make a difference, but it's not something I've ever fiddled with. I am led to understand that DAZ have officially dropped the requirement for P4 support, but on what I've seen I think they are still struggling a bit to do more than convert a P4 textureset to P5.

I've found that white clothes with nearly ANY reflection setting on it, turn out looking like plastic or way brighter than anything else in the sceen.  I always turn the highlight color to a dark dark grey and turn reflection off.   Unless you are looking to create the look of latex or satin/shiny, it tends to make white look "off"...... and glaringly bright.

Ok thanks, I will try all these.

Cloth (as in stuff made from flax/cotton/wool etc.) does NOT reflect direct light at all wavelengths in equal directions. It is made up of an extremely complex surface that scatters light all over the place, so does NOT show highlights as computed by (most) render engines, not just Poser.

"Specular" is a method that is used by render engines (be they Poser4, Firefly, Vue, Bryce et al) to introduce the something that resembles direct light reflections at a low render-time cost.

So, for cloth, specular should be turned off completely. Even Satin doesn't have highlights, although it can change colour and brightness depending on the angle of the light (which is where the "Edge Blend" node can come in useful)...

I wish I knew more about this subject tho'...

(OTOH, using specular on clothing in some circumstances can produce very good effects - as long as the object is not in close-up)

Cheers,
Diolma

Heh. As it happens was just listening to the head costumer for Lord of the Rings on the extended DVD...she speaks of making sure that every item worn by Saruman the White had deep textures in it...in our terms, not just bump, and subtle difference in the diffuse color, but also specularity maps. All of this was to make it possible to photograph this white costume without it looking like a big white blob.