Sorry - I'm around, just really busy at work. :)

I read the recent posts. Very interesting about the path separator. I'm trying to understand what I really should do about it. I don't want to use a "poser" style portable path, since that only works if the item is in your runtime. The whole point of what I was trying to do was that you don't have to put my scripts in any runtime whatsoever, let alone the main runtime.

With regard to the replaced displacement map:

My intention was that if the target shader already had a map, it should use that one. The idea that the template shader actually has maps in it that should take precedence seems slightly wrong to me. Here's why. We have a template for all skin in Template Skin. That includes face skin, lip skin, etc. How can you put a body displacement map into the Template shader and expect it to be used correctly for the face? It would not. The target shader is supposed to supply all the maps.

However, I have included in the design of VSS that there are distinct map templates, for the different UV zones. I have not shown anybody how to use these, but the feature exists. So the idea is, the Template Shaders define the shaders - skin, eyewhite, cornea, etc. These are the various material models. The maps that control them, such as diffuse color, specular amount, displacement, bump, etc. are coming from your target figure at the moment. However, if we enable the Map templates in the prop, then the target figure does not define anything at all. VSS would then combine a set of shader nodes, and a UV area specific set of image maps, to build each particular target shader.

This way, you can use the prop to control both the shader model, and the control maps if you want. For the time being, I was only showing everybody the easy one-click solution. The assumption in this case is you pre-load the target figure with colors and bumps using existing mat-pose files or whatever, and then VSS rewrites the shaders.

For tricky complicated maps, such as a vein displacement map, and a hair map, and a suntan map, which may all need to be used at the same time, we'd want to use the Map template scheme.

Does that make sense?

What are your new questions?

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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)