One thing to be aware of on the image map gamma settings. Once you set the gamma for an image, it changes in every zone in your scene. The settings is associated with the specific file, even though it looks like it is associated with a particular Image_Map node. So it is easy to correct a bump map or hair map once. All other occurances in your scene will have the selected gamma. Also, even if you open a new scene, if you need that file during that session, the chosen gamma value is remembered.

But!!! In my opinion, there is a serious problem related to this Gamma setting for the images. I had an email exchange with SM about this early on, but they did not seem to grasp the significance of what I'm saying. Perhaps even you, dear reader, will not think it important either, but wait till it bites you in the butt.

Here's the problem.

Poser does not save your setting, anywhere. Are you with me? It does not SAVE it.

When designing a material. you must adjust blending maps or bump maps (anything you're using for its numbers, not perceived color), otherwise these things are inadvertantly altered by the gamma settings.

Now suppose you save the materials in a material collection or individual material files. Where are the gamma settings stored? They are not stored with the material, therefore your material file says nothing about what the gamma should be for each image.

If you give or sell that material file to somebody else, they will load it and will NOT have the correct gamma value for numerical image maps. They will have to edit the gamma themselves. This is not good.

But it gets worse.

Even YOU will have to edit the gamma every time you start poser. That's right, as far as I can tell, Poser does not store your per-image gamma settings anywhere at all. Nowhere. Not a single file changes when you edit the gamma. Not the scene file (pz2), not material files (mc6, mt5), not anywhere.

Whenever you set the per-image gamma, its going to work only as long as you keep Poser open. Once you close Poser, all your settings are lost FOREVER.

I scanned the Poser Python manual to see if there was a way I could solve this with a script. Well, the word "gamma" does not appear in the documented Python interface at all. Nowhere. The per-image gamma settings are impossible to get or set from Python. So it appears that I can't even fix this issue with a plugin.

Again, I was unable to make them see the problem.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)