I want to be able to make 'materials' for the material room in Poser 6. Can anyone give me some advice on how to do it?

You mean how to save a set of nodes?

 I guess so.  I want to be able to make  mz5.
I know how to go in and change mc6 to pz2, would it be something like that?

An MZ5 is the compressed version of an MT5 which contains a single shader tree.
You can create one by saving just the current material when in the Material room (if you really want a compressed file, you'll need to have compression turned on in your preferences).

An MC6 is what you get when you save more than one material.

 oh yes... I forgot that 'z' meant 'compressed'.. no that's not what I want.  smiles
So, say I made a material (png or jpg)in photoshop, I would then go into the material room in Poser.... apply the material onto something, say a dress,.. play with all the different settings (nodes?) until I had something I liked and then save it?  What do I do with the dress that I applied the material to, as I don't want that?

The MC6 will apply to any figure that has the same material names.
So let's say your dress has "cloth", "belt", "ruffles" in its material list.
You assign colors to those materials and then save an MC6.

You can then apply this MC6 to any other figure that has "cloth", "belt", and "ruffles".
If the figure is different, it won't necessarily look right, but it will take the colors.

 O.K. I think I understand. I'll give this a go later and see if it works.... as I understand it.  I do know that I can put other 'materials' on to different things, as I have done that, and I must admit with my latest faerie picture, it didn't turn out too bad, but that's what got me thinking. 
Thank you everyone for your help, but no doubt ...... I shall be back.  smiles

Hmmmm, I hope I understand it right.

You want to save one material and not a colection?

One materia is a set of nodes to create that material.

Step 1: create the material you want (make a set of nodes to get the result you want)

Step 2: At the bottom of the material list in the material room you see a + Click on the + and you get a pop up screen.

Step 3: In the "New Material Set" screen, type in a name you want to give to your set and than select "Single Material" , this wil save only the nodes used for that material.

Step 4: Click OK and your set is saved. Now you can use that material on whatever you want to use it on.

If you click on "Material Collection" than you can choose and save a set of materials.
This set is using the names on the model/prop where the materials are applyed to.
In order to use a set of materials, you need a model/prop with the same names to apply the materials to.

I hope this is what you wanted to do.

 Thank you. That works... now all  I have to do is learn how to make a jewel look like one. I'm guessing it will be the same way.

Why reinvent the wheel?  There are tons of free materials all over for poser.

RDNA has many free packages in their free area. Just search for material and  textures

Mapps also has several free materials, including some gem ones

http://www.freewebs.com/mapps/

And a search for materials here yields a number of pages.

Renderosity free stuff search

 Ahhh.. thank you Acadia, but one..... I want to learn and two.... don't you have to make your own if you are wanting to 'upload' a texture? One day I would like to try selling, and for that I will need to know how to do these things... won't I??

Not necessarily. If the readme says that you can use the item for both personal and commercial use (and RDNA allows both), then you can use it in your commercial uploads, or in your freebies.

I can't remember what Mapps' terms are, but you can check his site, or send him a site mail.

 Thanks, will check them out... that would save a lot of heartache, but I'm still going to have a go, just for myself.. who knows they may turn out alright.  

Only 93 days to Xmas? Oh My God....LOL

I find it usefull to learn how to save materials.

Like Acadia say's, there are free material shaders out there.
But sometimes I find interesting shaders/materials settings in the forums which I can create and/or tweak for my own use and save them for later use.

 So much help and suggestions, thank you so much everyone

wait a sec.  allowing commercial use is not the same as allowing distribution.  commercial use is  making images with something and selling it.  not distributing it as a part of your own material pack.

that would be a merchant resource, and really, i don't know the stance on that. 

in my opinion, materials are a very grey area.  i'm very comfortable in the material room, and i think i'm OK at making my own materials.  but what i'm doing is applying knowledge i've learned from others who have posted to the forums.  unlike advice on texturing, this means actually posting node combinations.  accurate solutions in the material room are specific.  i'm not sure if one can distribute anything with parts of other people's materials without their permission, but who can say their material is completely without basis on anyone else's work?

 O.K.... made a 'material' that I am happy with... finished adding all the other textures, but can't get it to work.
The original is a 'prop', and I have been trying to save it as a prop or pose.. neither seem to work.
I did the same as I would a piece of clothing eg... getting rid of all the :Runtime and leaving it from :textures. I'v changed the 6 to 4.01 and mtlcollection to figure. The only thing I can think of is that I have made and saved the 'material'..... is there something else I should have done.... and half way down the page it started coming up with the owners name  which I left. 
I know this isn't very clear, so what parts should I take a snapshot of to show you what's happening?

It is not realy clear indeed

If you saved the material in the material room you just can load the prop/figure etc you mant to use.
In the material room click on the part (select it) you want to aply the material to and double click on the material icon on the right.
Now Poser should aply that material to the part you selected.

Oh and you need to be in the advancet settings of the material room.

Edit.
I just see that you talk about textures.
If the prop is UV maped, it needs specific textures for that part.
Using other textures might result in some weard effects.

 Yupp... knew I hadn't made myself clear smiles.   I can do all that but.... I am trying to save it into my library so that all I have to do is 'double click' on the 'mat' in pose and it will be changed. I can do it with clothing (and have even uploaded some freebies), but for some reason this isn't working and I am wondering if it's because I have added the 'material'. Now that I have made and saved the 'material', do I not try to add it in the .pz2.... but just add it after when I want to use it? 

Ok, you talk about "mat" in Pose while your in the material room.

I think that you want to make a material pose.
And that is something I did not do so far.

I just save the material settings under "Materials" in the material room.

You can do a forum search about how to make a material pose.

 O.K. thanks for your help.

Your welcome.

If it still dont work, keep posting and we will figure it out.

 Thank you... but not today, have to go out now. We will work it out as I have always found the people here very helpful.

Attached Link: Download Zips

[Mapps_268_Materials.zip

](http://webzoom.freewebs.com/mapps/Mapps_268_Materials.zip)[Mapps_54_New_Mats.zip

](http://webzoom.freewebs.com/mapps/Mapps_54_New_Mats.zip)[Mapps_MTC_Poses&Mats.zip

](http://webzoom.freewebs.com/mapps/Mapps_MTC_Poses&Mats.zip)Preview

http://www.freewebs.com/mapps/materials.htm
http://www.freewebs.com/mapps/materials2.htm

These make a good starting place to study them and take them apart to see how they are made, plus you have my permission to make your own using mine as a starting point and then do what every like with them including repost them or use them on market projects.

mat poses in the Material room are easy, just save the mat as normal (poser 6 or 7 only)  and look at the bottom of the save window. Gives the option of "Single Material" or "Material Group" to make a mat pose choose group and it will save all the mats for the selected object or character.

 Thanks Mapps, have had a look around your site and booked marked it. Will come back to it when I have more time. smiles

You are very welcome, feel free to shoot questions my way, I have a pretty good handle on how the material room works :-)

 ahh.. yes..I'm trying to work out how to make the skin on V4 to look wet. Don't mind putting in the post work for the drips, just trying to find a glossy/wet look..... any suggestions?  huge smile

Well the higher the gloss the wetter it will look. This is done using "Specular_Colour" and "Specular Value". The lighter the colour and the smaller the value the more glossy or wet it will look. Try a light grey for the colour and a value of 0.2 or 0.1. it is a good place to start. You can try playing from that point and see what you like more. You can go to white and 0.1 for the highest gloss.

Hello Mapps

I have a question for you, and thank you for making your stuff available for use etc.

I understand how and why I would create my materail files and matt pose files.

But what I stuggle with is this:

If I want to use a seamless texture  (what size should it be).

What should the set up be in the material room. as from what I see no .jpg textures are used in many free materials just nodes with no seamless tiled jps.

Thanks Rowlando

 Ya most of the freebies are 100% math no textures.

Well the size of the tile depends on what you are gonna tile it on and how many times it will be tiled. I don't much care for the tile value since it is a decimal number not a multiplier. For tile to work best they should be tiled and even amount, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, etc. Well as a decimal this requires a bit of math. 2x2 = .5, 3x3 = .333, 4x4 = .25, 5x5 = .2, 6x6 = .166, 7x7 = 142, 8x8 = .125, 9x9 = .111 and 10x10 = .1 (this is the value for the U&V sizes) the main thing to remember is to not over size the tile. If the tile is 1000x1000 and you tile it 6 times the equivalent texture is 8000x8000 if this is being used to detail say a sweater on a full body render that is 2000 pixels high you will never see the detail in the texture since the program has to down sample the texture by about a factor of 8 (since the sweater area in the final render is likely 1000 pixels or less). If you have a matching bump map you likely will not even see the effect of the map. Now for the same render done at 10,000 pixels high, the tile settings would be about right.

As a rule I make 2 tiles, one small 256x256 and one large 800x800. If you find the res is a bit low increase the number of times it is tiled as this will increase the resolution.

Hope that helps some :-)

And you are welcome for all the freebies :-)

I don't usually type in scale values directly. I plug a math node into the scale values and use the math node to compute the 1/X where X is how many times I want the tile to repeat. Not only does this avoid me doing the math, it also makes it so when I want to change X, I only have to do it once.

This is particularly helpful when you have to coordinate the scales of two or more texture maps. For example, here I have a diffuse color map and a bump map. They need to be at the same scale all the time.

I use a Math:Divide node to enter the repetition factor. The value you want goes in Value_2. In the render, I showed two walls, one at X=4 and one at X=10. It's very easy to change this way and also to get precise number of copies, if that's what you need.

Note: When you use seamless repeating tiles on clothing (for example, a woven knit fabric pattern) it really doesn't matter whether or not you repeat it an integer number of times. The "edges" of such UV mapped items are not the edges of the image anyway. You'll get seams no matter what, because the cloth item is "cut" from the texture and wrapped around in quite arbitrary places.

 I just find it renders better if it is an even division, perhaps that i just me and not factual. Thanks for the math node tip, I honestly hadn't thought of that :-)

Thanks Mapps and Bagggins your so helpful with this info.

Regards Rowlando

 you're very welcome :-)

Rowlando,

I'm not the expert but 1000x1000 always works for me.

Mapps,
 
Is there anyway to use your other mats in P5? I have some of your other materials for poser 5, and love to use them, I do so all the time.

chaylastorm,

Matcreator has some really good materials out there too. They were in the freestuff here, just search for his name, or use the drop downs and go to poser/materials.

Hope this will help you.

Thanks,

Daidalos

By the way mapps, had I noticed before and understood you're usage terms correctly, my freebies would have had textures. I guess now I'll have to go and redo them. LOL

Thanks again for the materials.

Daidalos

Daidalos - "Is there anyway to use your other mats in P5? I have some of your other materials for poser 5, and love to use them, I do so all the time."

Not sure what you mean "other mats", they should all work in P5, that is where 99% of them were created.

As for the mat sets in general, I  have had a few folks ask me to clear that up. For future reference for one and all. My Materials can be used to texture freebies and market sets also additional mats can be included as options for both free and market sets.

The only exception is that they can not be included in a set just Materials for sale unless they have been edited to create new mats :-) Otherwise use them to death and no credit needs be given for where they came from in the first place but can be given if you want to :-)

OK, came in here looking for tips on how to make something look wet (which I found one page one), but the real score was reading Mapps' comments. Thanks! Both for the comments/advice and the materials.

Glad it helped :-)