The Rules for Poser 5 and above, The Texture Edition

1.  Character texture creators who use Photoshop (or other layer-capable program), when creating textures for Poser 5 and higher, shall:
a) Create the base skin layer with no makeup, no hair (including eyebrows and pubic hair), no tattoos, no highlights...nothing but skin.
b) If they wish to provide makeup, hair (including eyebrows and pubic hair), tattoos or other such details, they will do so via Material Room and the Blend node.  The tutorial on how to do so has been here for nearly a half-decade already, people.  You will damn well learn it.
c) This is true for bump/displacement maps as well.

2.  Any person who adds highlights or reflections to a base eye texture will be taken out and shot.  The eyes of the Gen 3 Unimesh and up characters all have a material to which reflections can be added if it turns your crank, and no, it is not called "iris" or "pupil".

3.  "Variations" of skin tone or eye colour or hair colour created by adjusting hue/saturation values in your graphics program--and doing nothing else--shall be grounds for immediate flogging.  If you wish to provide those options, it can be done through materials or MAT files using the Material Room, not "new" maps.

4.  Unless someone has hacked Poser 5+ to run in DOS or Windows 3.1, for the past 13 years file names can have up to 256 characters.  While anyone attempting to use that limit will also be taken out and shot, it does allow textures to have more descriptive names than "Head1" and "Head2b".  Especially given their other textures that also use "Head1" and "Head2b".

5.  And while we're on the subject, all texture creators will place all their textures in a folder with their name, a subfolder with the character the textures are for, and a sub-subfolder for variations if required, and so on.  If there are common files used for several of their texture sets, they will be placed in the primary folder, not with multiple identical files floating around in the character subfolders.

6.  And while we're on the subject, anyone...ANYONE!...who uses exclamation marks or other symbols to try and get their folder up near the top of the texture directory will be hung, drawn, quartered, and their dismembered remains stuck on pikes to be devoured by scavengers as their rotting flesh falls on signs saying "They wanted to be noticed, so notice them".

Well buy my product and quit your complaining

When you start paying me a salery OR are willing to pay upto $100 per item to pay for the time to do all of that I'll listen. Until then sorry, I'll make it my way and you can elect not to buy it.

There are only two rules.

Rule #1
The customer is always right.

Rule #2
If the customer is wrong then Rule #1 applies.

One can try to gently educate the customer so that Rule #2 needs to be applied less often but when all is said and done, as a content provider, do you want to be right or rich?

Quote - When you start paying me a salery OR are willing to pay upto $100 per item to pay for the time to do all of that I'll listen. Until then sorry, I'll make it my way and you can elect not to buy it.

And under my beneficent reign, you'd get paid well anyway.

As I said, if you are working in Photoshop (or similar) this takes no time to do.  Have your base skin texture.  Create layer.  Draw on your body hair, tattoos, whatever on the new layer.  Copy that second layer, convert to black and white to use as a mask.  Save the base layer as one file.  Save the skin decorations as a second file.  Save the mask as the third file.

Start Poser, load figure, go into material room.  Create a 2D image node, load the skin texture.  Create a 2D image node, load the hair texture.  Create a 2D image node, load the mask texture.  Create a blender node.  Attach the mask to the blending level and set it to "1".  Attach the skin image to the first part of the blender, attach the hair to the second part, then attach the blender node to your diffuse, bump or whatever.  Save as a material and paste it to the other materials that use the same maps.

I can see why this might be a lot of work.  After all, that process takes, what, 30 seconds longer than just using a merged texture map?  Sure it's a lot more flexible for the content creator and the user both but hey, 30 seconds, man.  Given the material setup in V4, let's see, face, torso, limbs all use different maps...why, that's a whole 90 seconds of additional effort!  Per character!

Well, not really.  Once you have that basic material set up, for new characters or different hair colours, you just have to change the image name in the appropriate node, so it takes almost exactly the same amount of time as doing it the old fashioned way.

My heart bleeds.  Really, it does.  I mean, spending hours slaving over a tablet to get a perfect texture, and then some ungrateful twit asks you to spend an additional 90 seconds?  I'd be mad at me to.

And as for adjusting the hue and saturation, I really can feel the pain of people not wanting to so through all that effort.  I mean, who wouldn't want to keeping saving the same file over and over again with different names in Photoshop instead of adding an HSV node in Poser and do their adjustments right there using one map?

With some, it might be kind to point out that while they may be very familiar with photoshop, they may not be so familiar with the materials room and how to set all that up.  Not to say the information isn't out there if they should want to learn but it could be that is just beyond some skill sets.

The eyes I totally agree about.  It is an absolute pita to have to go through every single eye texture I purchase and remove the lights.  So much so that I don't buy character sets at all anymore. 

I have participated in creating a character set - Still not up here at renderosity but it is up at the bad place "Bargash"  anyway - we took great pains to do alot of what you have said here.  I think it shows through in the quality of the Character.

To the merchant who got all uppity about it, LOL, me -personally I will gladly take the advice and I imagine those that purchase my products will in fact be paying my salary so - Thank you to them!

Not all poser things are rendered in Poser - I don't really want to be faffing around needlessly with textures if I can avoid it (some tweaking yeah but I'm buggered if I'm going to start faffing around in the node editor just to put a texture together - sorry)

I take it back, I do have eyebrows and pubic hair on my textures

Well I was just trying to be a smart alec. Sorry. No oneis mad on this side of the keyboard. I appologize.

anyone failing to display the mandatory black Mexican-style painting of President Quayle on their living room wall will... be... shot - Jello Biafra, A message from our sponsors...;)

What about people who don't have Photoshop?

I can agree with some of the above...;) just not sure about the 'motivational' aspects....;)

I think the textures Keith are referring to would come pre-assembled, so no faffing about required. If one wanted to faff one could, or presets could be included to accommodate auto-faffing.

The point being that if all the bells, whistles hairs and highlights were baked into a single layer than faffing would be impossible whether one wanted to faff or not.

When I put content together I try to make it instantly usable to the Poser novice but I do not dumb down my work to meet the lowest common denominator. Where options exist I aim to make them clearly understandable. I feel that a little "gentle education" can go a long way to enable the user to get the best from my products and Poser.

Highlights on any texture should be banned. Still don't understand why some are still getting away with that one. All apps except P4 don't need it and look worse with them than without them. Nothing worse than having the light coming in from one side of the scene and having those baked on highlights showing in shadowy places.

As for makeup on textures as different layers, It does make it easier to use in other apps. Not many apps use the poser material room nodes but most still can do layers.

Now the hue thing, that's another issue. I bought 3 textures once and found that they were the same texture with the hue changed. NOT impressed with that one. To late to get my money back but will never buy from that merchant again. Same goes for merchants that do all those highlights.

They might well be preassembled in Poser but Vue doesn't always use the Poser shader tree.  (I rarely do - it takes far too much RAM) so I'd still have a fair bit of work to do on them (at least more than sorting out the specularity and occasional reflection map overindulgence)

thats fine, until your product goes into Daz Studio, or max , or lightwave , or carrara , or vue, or well lots of things really that dont use posers nodes setup.  I do agree on painted highlights on skin textures.

A question for Keith:  If a person were to learn how to do these things you mention would you be willing to beta test their products?

If the layered PSD file were included would that get the best of for all views?

"If the layered PSD file were included would that get the best of for all views?"

I guess that would be ideal, Does anyone have a paint program that can't read PSD? You could merge or save out the layer as a PNG to use in other apps.

What are the compression sizes, can PSD file be at reasonal sizes?

If you do not own Photoshop then go with the free alternative, Gimp.

http://www.gimp.org/

That's what I mean. There should be no problems for someone to be able to read them.

I don't have PS but I have PSP, Painter and gimp and they all read PSD.

What I mean by file size was how big would the be to DL.

Quote - They might well be preassembled in Poser but Vue doesn't always use the Poser shader tree.  (I rarely do - it takes far too much RAM) so I'd still have a fair bit of work to do on them (at least more than sorting out the specularity and occasional reflection map overindulgence)

Not to be snarky, but there's three solutions that pop up instantly: one, supply the old-fashioned single-texture maps as well, just not plugged into the figure by default.  Hell, provide a standard MAT pose for it.

The second?  Well, if you have a texture map, an overlay, and the mask/alpha of the overlay, then you're all set up for Vue, or just about any renderer, as well.  Just do the combination there (or in whatever rendering program) instead of using the Poser shader tree.

Remember, I'm not saying that a complicated shader tree, like, say, the one Bagginbill's VSS creates, or the one that comes with a character like some of Morris's, is part of this.  Only a very basic separation of elements, two texture maps and an alpha mask.  Or more if there are more overlays.

The third?  Tough cookies.  I don't expect shaders from Vue or Max or Cinema4D to be used in Poser (or each other) without adaptation, so why should everything in Poser automatically be set up to do so?

Quote - A question for Keith:  If a person were to learn how to do these things you mention would you be willing to beta test their products?

Depends on the product, but sure, and I know I'm not the only one.  Beta testing, in this case, would simply be to see if the masking and such looks okay.  The texture itself (seams matching, whether it looks good, mediocre, or crappy) isn't the issue, because there's absolutely no difference in that case from the standard texture map people put out.

And this isn't an example of not putting my money where my mouth is (well, metaphorically, anyway).  This image uses a mask to isolate the face texture and bump from the rest of the skin, which is a procedural.  The face texture map itself is unchanged: it's the same one I bought and downloaded, no difference at all from what the original creator produced.  If I want a different facial texture (say for a different character), all I do is change the texture map in question without any alteration.  If I want to change the "robotic" texture, I can do that as well without worrying about the human skin component.  If I want to change the transition from skin to robot,  (say I want to get rid of the peaks on the cheek and have a straight line from temple to chin), all I have to do is change the mask and not touch anything else.

While the shader I used for this is a bit more complicated than what I was talking about earlier (it's on my home computer, while I'm at work, so no screen shot, sorry), it's that way because the mask is not only controlling the diffuse texture, it's controlling the bump map, glossiness, reflection and displacement.  If it was just a simple image overlay, it would be much easier.

In fact, for some things like eyebrows, you don't even need the overlay texture map:  the mask in combination with the skin texture and simple colour would give you, say, black eyebrows using a simple colour.  or white, or blonde, or red, or bright fuschia.

It's such an incredibly powerful and useful method of working with textures that I'm at a loss why people don't take advantage of it more.  The only thing I can figure is that people are afraid of the material room, and/or think other people are afraid of the material room, and/or are just too lazy to do it.

Quote - That's what I mean. There should be no problems for someone to be able to read them.

I don't have PS but I have PSP, Painter and gimp and they all read PSD.

What I mean by file size was how big would the be to DL.

I had thought about suggesting the original working image, but on reflection I thought it wasn't useful.  Size is one thing.  The other is that while the method I like makes...what's the word...blatant copying, I guess, easier (since you can take off the tattoos or whatnot, stick your own on, and then try to flog it as an original creation), you're still dealing with jpgs or the like.  An original psd would simply make it too easy.

On the other hand, the overlay method gives people a business opportunity.  Say you want to do a neat Polynesian tattoo texture but aren't interested in the skin.  You create a blended texture, but leave the skin texture node blank.  That way the user can pick whatever texture they like to be used as a base.  They don't need to load Photoshop, they don't need a third party program.

Layers is what I said in the first place but it does not matter if the layer is in PSD, PNG, jpeg, tiff or what ever. A layer is a layer and if someone wants to rip it off, file type does not matter.

I think Phil was asking if PSD was usable for a larger variety of users. No need for merchants to limit the buyer base. As you say a base texture and bump/displacement map and PNG masking/image would work in all my apps.

I agree about the burned-in eye refl., but ya gotta remember that most poser users
don't set up a proper scene with anything to reflect off the eyes, hence they may have
little or no choice.

The "When I Rule the Poser World This is What Content Creators Will Do" List :

Allrighty! Let's be radical:

1. will create female characters who have have humongous boobs,
2. Create an Alan Alda morph
3. Sell shaders so realistic and complex they will bow up poser if you try and render em. Ha!
4. make fashionable clothing that no person over the age of 30 would ever wear.
5. create characters with boobs that can float airships.
6. make twilek characters and call em swileks.
7. make fun of George Lucas.
8. create celebrity morphs that all look like Alan Alda and pretend they are Angelina Jolie clones.
9. create 5d celebrity called  "Angelina Jolie" that looks like Alan Alda.
10. create background for faes. Subject matter; Moons and big moons, Use Vue or Bryce for the backgrounds.

All slain enemies will be creamated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of a cliff. The anouncement of their deaths, as well as the accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

Oops! Wrong list. 

Quote - All slain enemies will be creamated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of a cliff. The anouncement of their deaths, as well as the accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

Oops! Wrong list. 

Ooh! That's either your supervillain to-do list or, Bond villain to-do-list. In either case that's mondo cool! I mean cremating plucky heroes...Thats mighty original. Carry on sir! bows

Interesting Topic ...

Ive been monitoring several poser contents market place from 2004 . I save info and pictures for later refference which one my studio should buy to fit my studio`s story project . ( my bos.. also member here... Sudy ...  actually had purchased several items from here , DAZ , RDNA and Poser pros )

But later weve drop poser items idea because weve tired to finding  another items which we think would be fit or had correlations with our projects

For portfolio or short animation its ok .. but  for complete comic story or animation project  i doubt it except you change the rule like ill trying to do now  = Story generate by  items in Poser world .. so  well never worries about not finding items we need .

I dont blame content creators for this situations  but i think its more fun if they make complete theme  , so peoples can use it for making complete comic or animation series  . Like we `ve seen in Toonimal products

Cheers .. thanks

When I rule the Poserverse...

 -- there will be a five-year moratorium on ANYTHING even remotely involving Vicky. Punishable by drowning in six week old, room temperature milk.

I'm glad I'm an anarchist....

Quote - I'm glad I'm an anarchist....

I am glad I don't do textures for figures or I would be the first to go!

I would like to add that 7 conforming clothes props with 4000x4000 textures is a bit overkill and enough to kill my computer to the point where I either give up on trying to render it, or go into PS and reduce all the textures, bumps and add ons for the character and all the clothes!

Quote - When I rule the Poserverse...

 -- there will be a five-year moratorium on ANYTHING even remotely involving Vicky. Punishable by drowning in six week old, room temperature milk.

Breast milk?