Okay, I admit it. Kick me hard... I don't care. I need answers, and I'll get them. Too many people depend on me getting answers, here.

Here's the issue. I've been working in the Material Room - oooooooooo - yeah, I know, brave. Hey, it's cool, getting my head around it now, not intimidated by nodes anymore. I think I could even teach nodes.

Yeah, BUT.

I don't want to spend my youth - what little I have left - re-creating the same nodes for each material in the Material Room for like, skin shaders.

So, I got Matmatic. Cool tool by the MAN: mister Nodes Wizard himself. Yes, he's a genius, his code is exquisite AND well documented. The problem is not with HIM. I'll be the first to admit it. But, why isn't this working? All of his tutorials and discussions appear to focus on Poser 6 - from what I've been able to surmise from discussions on RuntimeDNA, he is under-impressed with Poser 7... mind you, just my impression - and V3.

I had V3. I've moved on. V3 had serious limitations. V4 still has limitations - that under-arms thingie is a shocker - but a lot of V3 issues have been taken care of.

So, yeah, V4 is a much better model. www.sharecg.com/v/28521/poser/Charlotte-for-Victoria-4.2 would not have been possible using V3.

Now, I've been studying his skin shaders tutorial. Included are some scripts - there is a V3 focus here, too. In the script, there was the following code:
def MakeCollection(skinShader):
    # Build collection
    c = V3Collection()

Which I changed to:
def MakeCollection(skinShader):
    # Build collection
    c = V4Collection()

Which generated the following error:
----- MATMATIC COMPILER -----
verbose 1
Processing script C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariespose! RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt -> pose
MATMATIC Script Error: global name 'V4Collection' is not defined
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:program filescurious labsposer 6runtimepythonmatmaticcompiler.py", line 233, in processScript
  File "C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariespose! RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt", line 42, in ?
    outputs += [
  File "C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariespose! RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt", line 27, in MakeCollection
    c = V4Collection()
NameError: global name 'V4Collection' is not defined
------ MATMATIC COMPILER DONE -----

So, it doesn't work like that. What am I doing wrong?

Quote - Okay, I admit it. Kick me hard... I don't care. I need answers, and I'll get them. Too many people depend on me getting answers, here.

Here's the issue. I've been working in the Material Room - oooooooooo - yeah, I know, brave. Hey, it's cool, getting my head around it now, not intimidated by nodes anymore. I think I could even teach nodes.

Yeah, BUT.

I don't want to spend my youth - what little I have left - re-creating the same nodes for each material in the Material Room for like, skin shaders.

So, I got Matmatic. Cool tool by the MAN: mister Nodes Wizard himself. Yes, he's a genius, his code is exquisite AND well documented. The problem is not with HIM. I'll be the first to admit it. But, why isn't this working? All of his tutorials and discussions appear to focus on Poser 6 - from what I've been able to surmise from discussions on RuntimeDNA, he is under-impressed with Poser 7... mind you, just my impression - and V3.

I had V3. I've moved on. V3 had serious limitations. V4 still has limitations - that under-arms thingie is a shocker - but a lot of V3 issues have been taken care of.

So, yeah, V4 is a much better model. www.sharecg.com/v/28521/poser/Charlotte-for-Victoria-4.2 would not have been possible using V3.

Now, I've been studying his skin shaders tutorial. Included are some scripts - there is a V3 focus here, too. In the script, there was the following code:
def MakeCollection(skinShader):
    # Build collection
    c = V3Collection()

Which I changed to:
def MakeCollection(skinShader):
    # Build collection
    c = V4Collection()

Which generated the following error:
----- MATMATIC COMPILER -----
verbose 1
Processing script C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariespose! RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt -> pose
MATMATIC Script Error: global name 'V4Collection' is not defined
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:program filescurious labsposer 6runtimepythonmatmaticcompiler.py", line 233, in processScript
  File "C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariespose! RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt", line 42, in ?
    outputs += [
  File "C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariespose! RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt", line 27, in MakeCollection
    c = V4Collection()
NameError: global name 'V4Collection' is not defined
------ MATMATIC COMPILER DONE -----

So, it doesn't work like that. What am I doing wrong?

Bagginsbill has a Versatile Shader System , cannot remember where I got it from.
He also has a site with matmatic for P7 etc etc.

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff

The variable "V4Collection" has not been defined. I'm sure python requires a variable declaration like any language. Find out where the vaiable is declared for V3 and change it to V4.

Don

yup...no expert, but reading it seems to indicate that the python script is hard coded to look for V3.

Hardware can't, software won't - the IT creed

Yep, a code error searching for V4 collection.  IDonnO is correct, you have to check that reference.  And mariner has a point concerning the VSS by Bagginsbill.  That would be better for shading your V4 character than the Matmatic.  I have been playing around with VSS using the Nybras character from DAZ and I'm impressed with it.  When the VSS Pro is officially released, it will intergrate matmatic.  There is a VSS thread located elsewhere in the forum.

I wrote an abbreviated version of the V4Collection class (see attached file) and embedded it in the Shader script. Generates an error I can't sort out, because I used the same syntax and everything as was in the docs. Also, I'm still running into the same problem with references to P6 showing up.

----- MATMATIC COMPILER -----

verbose 1

Processing script C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariespose! RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt -> pose
MATMATIC Script Error: invalid syntax (SimpleShader01.mm1.txt, line 23)

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "c:program filescurious labsposer 6runtimepythonmatmaticcompiler.py", line 233, in processScript
File "C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariespose! RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt", line 23
Skin = None
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

------ MATMATIC COMPILER DONE -----

You can see my dilemma. I have no such folder or file, even... my compile.py is in:
:runtime:Python:PoserScript:ScriptsMenu:BagginsBill:Matmatic

This is so that I can run it from the main Poser system menu at the top as opposed to the Python Scripts thingie - mine is chockers.

i think perhaps you're misunderstanding what these different tools do.  Matmatic is a mathematical interface to the Poser material room.  it helps you to create relationships among nodes programmatically.  so if you wanted to create a perfect skin shader, Matmatic is the perfect tool .   VSS or the Versatile Shader System, is an interface for controlling materials.   so if you want to actually control how the skin shader is applied to the figure, you should use VSS.  Matmatic came before VSS, so it does have some material control, but much less advanced.  iirc, bagginsbill has said he is building Matmatic support into VSS. 

at least, i think that's correct.  i could be totally wrong.

perhaps i've misunderstood (completely possible), but i think you shouldn't be using the collections to manage materials any more.  i believe that bagginsbill's intention is you should use the VSS control prop to control them.

I need to look at the V3 coding to compare but you are aware that the matmatic script generates material based on node setting encoding.  And certain references to one character may not match another (i.e. material naming convention).  If you are interested in creating texture, matmatic may help.  But if you are interested in controlling texture output (regardless of model, prop, clothing) then I would highly recommend Versatile Shader System by Bagginsbill.  You have direct access to node manipulation with far better results and less time.  Once VSS Pro gets released, you never have to enter the material room again!

Also, maybe you can elaborate further what your intent to accomplish using matmatic.  It could help isolate your problem.

Quote - i think perhaps you're misunderstanding what these different tools do.  Matmatic is a mathematical interface to the Poser material room.  it helps you to create relationships among nodes programmatically.  so if you wanted to create a perfect skin shader, Matmatic is the perfect tool .

Yep, that's pretty much what I thought it was, too. I want to use it not just for skin, but also for other surfaces. When I look at what face_off's tool creates but also the complexity of those nodes... ewww, too much work manipulating them manually. I want to do it programmatically.

Quote - VSS or the Versatile Shader System, is an interface for controlling materials.   so if you want to actually control how the skin shader is applied to the figure, you should use VSS.

Quote - ... perhaps i've misunderstood (completely possible), but i think you shouldn't be using the collections to manage materials any more.  i believe that bagginsbill's intention is you should use the VSS control prop to control them.

I was following the www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php Ultra Basic Shader tutorial on the Nodes Cult forum on RuntimeDNA and went aground trying to create a class based on the example in the documentation on creating Collections. In the error message generated by the compile.py script I see a reference to Poser 6 and can't help but wonder if therein lies the problem.

I haven't found the thread where BagginsBill suggests using VSS instead of creating a Collection - you wouldn't know which one that was, do you?

Could you post the complete txt file?

Quote - I need to look at the V3 coding to compare but you are aware that the matmatic script generates material based on node setting encoding.  And certain references to one character may not match another (i.e. material naming convention).

Yes, I am aware of that, thank you. That is precisely what I am after. Perhaps my material naming didn't follow convention, but I would assume that compile.py would have spat the dummy as soon as it encountered that, wouldn't it?

Quote - If you are interested in creating texture, matmatic may help.

I am interested in creating and managing textures and nodes programmatically.

Quote - But if you are interested in controlling texture output (regardless of model, prop, clothing) then I would highly recommend Versatile Shader System by Bagginsbill.  You have direct access to node manipulation with far better results and less time.  Once VSS Pro gets released, you never have to enter the material room again!

Also, maybe you can elaborate further what your intent to accomplish using matmatic.  It could help isolate your problem.

Based on what you've told me, I am quite interested in having a play with VSS... I'm quite sure it will be useful. However, one of the directions I do want to take it that of face_off and that Realism Kit, and from what I've seen of Matmatic, it looks like it could fill the bill.

I will give VSS a try - I might be trying to use a Mac truck to bring home a spool of thread.

Umm, I did... or I thought I did... in the post above with the error message... I'll post it again...

Attached Link: RDNA Link

Also your paths are different than mine.

Matmatic runtime/python/matmatic

and the txt file and compile is runtime/library/material/matmatic demo

respectively

ok, i think, again, you're conflating stuff. maybe you should be more explicit about what you want to do.  the whole point of VSS is to do what collections do.  i don't believe bagginsbill has explicitly said, "don't use collections," but it does seem obvious.  if you look in the VSS thread, towards the end somewhere i think he mentions Matmatic support.

in case you aren't aware, because i think many aren't, VSS does much more than work with skin.  it comes with a default skin shader, but that's just one possible use.  at one point bagginsbill was talking about selling it with tons of other default shaders.

so, once again, Matmatic is optimized for making a single material.  like a skin shader, a wood shader, a patterned glass shader, etc.  VSS is made to manage materials.  if you are managing materials with Matmatic, you are trying to get it to do something it wasn't optimized for,  and that VSS was optimized for.

no, Matmatic is not the equivalent of face_off's realism kits.  neither is VSS.  face_off's realism kits are something like VSS, but more like Parmatic.  and really, they're all just different.  but, either way, just to say, while i believe bagginsbill said you could distribute materials made with VSS, Matmatic and Parmatic, i do not believe he said you could distribute tools based on those utilities.  and face_off's kits are tools, not shaders.

Quote - Also your paths are different than mine.

Matmatic runtime/python/matmatic

and the txt file and compile is runtime/library/material/matmatic demo

respectively

I'm not following what you mean with respect to paths... I'm running version Poser 7 of Matmatic. In the error, there is a reference to a file in Poser 6. I do not have Poser 6 installed, so that path is invalid - indeed, that statement is invalid for my version of Poser. For the Poser 7 version, the right place for the Matmatic files is :runtime:Python:Matmatic... or so I thought. I might be mistaken.

Quote - > Quote - Also your paths are different than mine.

Matmatic runtime/python/matmatic

and the txt file and compile is runtime/library/material/matmatic demo

respectively

I'm not following what you mean with respect to paths... I'm running version Poser 7 of Matmatic. In the error, there is a reference to a file in Poser 6. I do not have Poser 6 installed, so that path is invalid - indeed, that statement is invalid for my version of Poser. For the Poser 7 version, the right place for the Matmatic files is :runtime:Python:Matmatic... or so I thought. I might be mistaken.

Yes you are correct and your text file goes in the 2nd path as I satated.

Don

You load your matmatic file in the material room so it must be in the materials path right?

Don

Quote - ok, i think, again, you're conflating stuff. maybe you should be more explicit about what you want to do.  the whole point of VSS is to do what collections do.  i don't believe bagginsbill has explicitly said, "don't use collections," but it does seem obvious.  if you look in the VSS thread, towards the end somewhere i think he mentions Matmatic support.

in case you aren't aware, because i think many aren't, VSS does much more than work with skin.  it comes with a default skin shader, but that's just one possible use.  at one point bagginsbill was talking about selling it with tons of other default shaders.

so, once again, Matmatic is optimized for making a single material.  like a skin shader, a wood shader, a patterned glass shader, etc.  VSS is made to manage materials.  if you are managing materials with Matmatic, you are trying to get it to do something it wasn't optimized for,  and that VSS was optimized for.

no, Matmatic is not the equivalent of face_off's realism kits.  neither is VSS.  face_off's realism kits are something like VSS, but more like Parmatic.  and really, they're all just different.  but, either way, just to say, while i believe bagginsbill said you could distribute materials made with VSS, Matmatic and Parmatic, i do not believe he said you could distribute tools based on those utilities.  and face_off's kits are tools, not shaders.

Thank you for your clarification. I am not up on the latest on skin shaders - there is a gif file on that stickied thread that prevents me from accessing it as it freezes my browser up solid. What I did do was follow the threads on RuntimeDNA: one discussed setting up a simple skin shader using Matmatic and the other discussed the similarities and differences between what face_off created and what BagginsBill has accomplished.

My objective is to create a variety of content and to experiment with shaders and nodes. The impression I got was that Matmatic would allow me to manage nodes programmatically. That appealed to me. In none of the threads that I read was there any mention of VSS, so I stand not corrected but finally informed.

Fine. I still want to have a play with Matmatic. Is that a bad thing? I will use VSS - it comes strongly recommended - but would really like to sort out why I'm getting a syntax error in my Collection class. I followed the example in the docs. Is there a problem with the program itself? Is that why everyone is trying to dissuade me from creating Collection classes instead of having VSS manage it?

Quote - You load your matmatic file in the material room so it must be in the materials path right?

Don

Ah! The great light goes on. lol

Um, Don, what I do is this: I have the additional path
scan :runtime:libraries:Pose:!Robynsveil*
in my config.txt as an additional path. I go into the material room to run compile.py. So, you're saying the additional path should be to
scan :runtime:libraries:Materials:!Robynsveil*

k... I'll do that and see if it makes a difference.

Still don't know what that reference to Poser 6 shows up, tho....

I don't think anyone is trying to talk you out of doing what you want ( I hope not anyway). As I understand matmatic it aloows you to create a complex shader network and it can then be applied to one or more materials in your scene. Either you can define each material manually in your mm.txt file or you can apply it to several material groups at once by creatin a collection.

Don

Quote - > Quote - You load your matmatic file in the material room so it must be in the materials path right?

Don

Ah! The great light goes on. lol

Um, Don, what I do is this: I have the additional path
scan :runtime:libraries:Pose:!Robynsveil*
in my config.txt as an additional path. I go into the material room to run compile.py. So, you're saying the additional path should be to
scan :runtime:libraries:Materials:!Robynsveil*

k... I'll do that and see if it makes a difference.

Still don't know what that reference to Poser 6 shows up, tho....

Hmmmm I wonder if you did what I did when I realised I needed it for Poser 7 and didn't remove 6 completely first? I had to remove everything and then just install 7.

Don

To be honest, what started this was texturing Charlotte with just the skin textures and being very unhappy with the resulting render - so I realized skin shaders was what was going to make Charlotte more appealing.
I had purchased face_off's tools (Real Skin Shader bought on Daz and Occlusion Master here) but understand that the product of applying these tools cannot be distributed, so I thought I'd have a play with other tools out there - one that don't have that restriction - to see if I could put something together that would be better than what I had. Not a hope in hell of reproducing what face_off did, but at least gain a better understanding of shaders and the material room and all that.
I have no intention of distributing any part of Matmatic or VSS with my content. However, my understanding is from what he wrote in his Conditions of use is that the product of running Matmatic - the resultant shaders - can be distributed. Does that hold true for VSS as well?

Quote - Hmmmm I wonder if you did what I did when I realised I needed it for Poser 7 and didn't remove 6 completely first? I had to remove everything and then just install 7.

Don

Ther is no Curious Labs folder in Program Files, nor any references to that folder or files that would have been in it in the Registry. My system had caught a nasty virus, so I had to re-install Windows and all my applications, So I didn't bother installing Poser 6 at all - just installed Poser 7 straight-up.

Quote -
My objective is to create a variety of content and to experiment with shaders and nodes. The impression I got was that Matmatic would allow me to manage nodes programmatically. That appealed to me. In none of the threads that I read was there any mention of VSS, so I stand not corrected but finally informed.

Fine. I still want to have a play with Matmatic. Is that a bad thing? I will use VSS - it comes strongly recommended - but would really like to sort out why I'm getting a syntax error in my Collection class. I followed the example in the docs. Is there a problem with the program itself? Is that why everyone is trying to dissuade me from creating Collection classes instead of having VSS manage it?

ok, i'm going to be as specific as i can, but i'm going on a limb because i'm not an expert when it comes to these tools.

collections are not what you should be using.  the figure should be completely irrelevant for using Matmatic.  sure, you could spend ages fixing the collection problem, but it doesn't make any sense to do that.  because collections manage groups of materials.  which is precisely what VSS does, only better, more easily, and over multiple figures and props if you want.

nobody is saying don't use Matmatic.  the point is don't use it to control V4's materials.  use it to generate a single material.  just one.  then use VSS to apply that material appropriately to a select number of V4 zones.  how to do that is in the VSS thread. 

as far as i can tell, trying to figure out how to get collections to work properly is like trying to get the can opener on your swiss army knife to work right when you've brought along a modern one.  yes, it will work, but what's the benefit of putting yourself through the trouble when you can spend about 2 minutes and get better results with a newer tool?

edited to add:  i was asking for you to clarify and be specific because you keep seeming to conflate the two functions.  you talk about controlling nodes programmatically, but then go on about collections, which means controlling materials programmatically.  those are two entirely different functions.

Quote - To be honest, what started this was texturing Charlotte with just the skin textures and being very unhappy with the resulting render - so I realized skin shaders was what was going to make Charlotte more appealing.
I had purchased face_off's tools (Real Skin Shader bought on Daz and Occlusion Master here) but understand that the product of applying these tools cannot be distributed, so I thought I'd have a play with other tools out there - one that don't have that restriction - to see if I could put something together that would be better than what I had. Not a hope in hell of reproducing what face_off did, but at least gain a better understanding of shaders and the material room and all that.
I have no intention of distributing any part of Matmatic or VSS with my content. However, my understanding is from what he wrote in his Conditions of use is that the product of running Matmatic - the resultant shaders - can be distributed. Does that hold true for VSS as well?

My understanding like your is yes you can. Again VSS is NOT a shader but a way of applying shaders if that makes sense. I now see what you want to do and it makes perfect sense to me. Face-off would not work for you anyway as it is dependant on the main light in the scene for it's calculations. You would have no way of knowing where a user may put the lights. Matmatic doesn't have this limitation and should do what you want :) VSS can and is used in conjunction with matmatic. I have a Vargas shader that is compiled with matmatic and then loaded into the VSS probe and it works great.

So if I understand what you want to do is, creat a shader network for your character by using matmatic and then distribute it along with your character in final form? This should be ok to do and a great idea btw :)

Don

Good point, CobaltDream. I did try to control materials programmatically. This time I stand corrected. Thank you for your explicit explanation.

I'll have a good look at VSS then, and see how the two (Matmatic and VSS) can tie in.

Quote -
Face-off would not work for you anyway as it is dependant on the main light in the scene for it's calculations. You would have no way of knowing where a user may put the lights. Matmatic doesn't have this limitation and should do what you want :)

that's inaccurate.  face_off's script was more specific than Matmatic, that's all.  Matmatic is just a programmatic interface.  it is entirely possible to make light specific shaders with Matmatic.  if one isn't careful about one's initial suppositions, one could easily find oneself making completely light specific shaders.  face_off knew his shaders were light specific, and made a script to account for that.  anyone else will have to do rigorous testing to make sure their shaders are not actually light dependent.  just by eyeballing, i'd say most i've used are, and either work in very light settings, very dark settings, or very extreme settings.  very, very, very few actually work independent of lighting.

anyway, when you're defining relationships in your initial equations, you have to be careful that you're defining them generally enough.

sure you can distribute the results, but you couldn't distribute your own realism kit. face_off's realism kits worked on any texture and bump map.  that's very different than your own V4 material.  or room material for that matter.

Quote - My understanding like your is yes you can. Again VSS is NOT a shader but a way of applying shaders if that makes sense. I now see what you want to do and it makes perfect sense to me. Face-off would not work for you anyway as it is dependant on the main light in the scene for it's calculations. You would have no way of knowing where a user may put the lights. Matmatic doesn't have this limitation and should do what you want :) VSS can and is used in conjunction with matmatic. I have a Vargas shader that is compiled with matmatic and then loaded into the VSS probe and it works great.

So if I understand what you want to do is, creat a shader network for your character by using matmatic and then distribute it along with your character in final form? This should be ok to do and a great idea btw :)

Don

That's exactly right, Don. Once the right set of shaders has been arrived at, I can save this as my material in pz2 format (a pose file, generated by Hogsoft's brilliant little utility) which the user can apply along with my Inj/Rem face and body morphs.

So, okay, I'll need to reference the material as managed by VSS. I'll have a look at VSS and try to get as comfortable as I can with that tool before I bug any more of you fine people again... and a heart-felt thank-YOU to all of you for taking your time to ponder this little problem of mine.

Quote - > Quote -

Face-off would not work for you anyway as it is dependant on the main light in the scene for it's calculations. You would have no way of knowing where a user may put the lights. Matmatic doesn't have this limitation and should do what you want :)

that's inaccurate.  face_off's script was more specific than Matmatic, that's all.  Matmatic is just a programmatic interface.  it is entirely possible to make light specific shaders with Matmatic.  if one isn't careful about one's initial suppositions, one could easily find oneself making completely light specific shaders.  face_off knew his shaders were light specific, and made a script to account for that.  anyone else will have to do rigorous testing to make sure their shaders are not actually light dependent.  just by eyeballing, i'd say most i've used are, and either work in very light settings, very dark settings, or very extreme settings.  very, very, very few actually work independent of lighting.

anyway, when you're defining relationships in your initial equations, you have to be careful that you're defining them generally enough.

sure you can distribute the results, but you couldn't distribute your own realism kit. face_off's realism kits worked on any texture and bump map.  that's very different than your own V4 material.  or room material for that matter.

Your contradicting yourself. Matmatic is NOT light specific and Face-off skin realism kit IS. Now could an image be better or worse under different liughting conditions? YES of course but matmatic does NOT depend on a light being set a specific way to work.

For the perposes of this thread VSS is of limited value anyway.

Don

Quote - face_off's script was more specific than Matmatic, that's all.  Matmatic is just a programmatic interface.  it is entirely possible to make light specific shaders with Matmatic.  if one isn't careful about one's initial suppositions, one could easily find oneself making completely light specific shaders.  face_off knew his shaders were light specific, and made a script to account for that.  anyone else will have to do rigorous testing to make sure their shaders are not actually light dependent.  just by eyeballing, i'd say most i've used are, and either work in very light settings, very dark settings, or very extreme settings.  very, very, very few actually work independent of lighting.

I suppose I wasn't clear about what I was hoping to accomplish. I realize that Face_off's realism kit is light-position/intensity/colour/etc-specific, so there would be no way for me to predict that. However, face_off also added textures like spots and freckles that Matmatic seems to be able to do as well. Upon reflection, however, I really shouldn't be using face_off's tool as an example of what I wish to accomplish, since it's much more an end-user tool rather than a development tool (to a point).

I guess what I need to say at this point is: I see Matmatic merely as a programmatic node-management tool. You still have to set the parameters of the shaders yourself. Matmatic simply gave you a programming means of accomplishing that, and over as much of the object and addressing as many materials as needed or desired.

no, i'm not contradicting myself.  face_off's  skin realism kits took into account lights.  Matmatic generated materials can also do this.  they are not automatically light independent.   if you are using equations to generate any lighting effects like SSS, you could find your setup is light dependent as well. 

if you use Matmatic to generate a light specific effect (as opposed to something like wood grain or fabric texture), you need to actually go through your initial suppositions and then test to make sure that your effect is not light specific.   and gives results that are just better and worse, not accurate and inaccurate.

for instance, let's say you have some sort of shader involving AO.  you're going to make some equations involving distance and  position.  if you're not careful, your initial equations describing the relationship among items might not be general enough.  when you're setting up those equations and imagining the variables, you have to make sure you're not taking something important for granted.

the point being, using Matmatic does not mean you don't have to think about your materials being light independent.  you actually have to think about it more , because you are determining the material.  

Quote - no, i'm not contradicting myself.  face_off's  skin realism kits took into account lights.  Matmatic generated materials can also do this.  they are not automatically light independent.   if you are using equations to generate any lighting effects like SSS, you could find your setup is light dependent as well. 

if you use Matmatic to generate a light specific effect (as opposed to something like wood grain or fabric texture), you need to actually go through your initial suppositions and then test to make sure that your effect is not light specific.   and gives results that are just better and worse, not accurate and inaccurate.

for instance, let's say you have some sort of shader involving AO.  you're going to make some equations involving distance and  position.  if you're not careful, your initial equations describing the relationship among items might not be general enough.  when you're setting up those equations and imagining the variables, you have to make sure you're not taking something important for granted.

the point being, using Matmatic does not mean you don't have to think about your materials being light independent.  you actually have to think about it more , because you are determining the material.  

I think were talking in circles here. Yes a shader, if specific enough, needs to then look at the specific lights used. However that is not what is being done in this discussion. She simply wants to give her customers a better looking character and is trying to use matmatic to help her do that. It's a great idea and I wish all vendors were as thoughtful.

Don

That's a very good point, cobaltDream - one that I didn't really consider. Thanks for the heads-up. I'll apply shaders with light-prejudice... and test the final shader set under a variety of lighting conditions just in case.

Now, it's head-down, bump-up in CastlePoser for a while. Got to get very familiar with those nodes - a lot more than I am currently, and that's not from lack of playing in the material room, either! I have access now to information I didn't before, so it's time to go back and re-look at things...

Quote - I think were talking in circles here. Yes a shader, if specific enough, needs to then look at the specific lights used. However that is not what is being done in this discussion. She simply wants to give her customers a better looking character and is trying to use matmatic to help her do that. It's a great idea and I wish all vendors were as thoughtful.

Don

Why, thank you, Don - that's very sweet of you to say!

RobynsVeil - you're welcome.  sorry, i should speak more nicely and smoothly.  i'm just not very eloquent at the moment.  it sounds like you're doing cool work, and learning tons.  good luck with it!

IDonn0 -  if she's using matmatic, not VSS, then she's using some other skin shader than the default one in VSSb2.  it's faking SSS, but i don't know how.  that means it's probably light specific.  iirc, the simple shader from the RDNA thread just uses the diffuse node.  also iirc, bagginsbill in a thread discussing skin shaders with face_off, showed that using just the diffuse node produced completely inaccurate results in certain lighting conditions, and those conditions were why face_off used his more generally accurate solution that actually used light position in its equations.  by explicitly accounting for light position, it was actually more light independent as a technique, though light dependent as a specific material.

lots of vendors are as thoughtful.  in fact most are nowadays.  they produce what bagginsbill calls "naive" skin shaders that don't produce accurate results, or if they do, it's only in a few lighting conditions.  they didn't mean to make light specific shaders, and they probably don't even know they have.  so they've done a whole lot of work making skin shaders that suck eggs in a lot of  lighting conditions.  personally, i messed with skin shaders a lot myself (for months, that was mostly what i was doing), and had significantly different results in different lights, though i wasn't explicitly using the lights in any calculations.  

you don't need to purposefully make a shader light specific.  when producing lighting effects, you mostly have to work at making them not lighting specific.

personally, i just want good diffuse, bump, displacement (yes, both) and specular maps.  i've had to wipe most of shaders provided with the characters i've bought so i could use my adjustment of the one included with VSSb2. conversely, i believe i have no more than two characters who've come with a specularity map. i have zero who have maps that can do regular skin and hands and feet well. 

just to clarify, my point is not, "don't make your own skin shader."  my point is, "if you're going to make your own realistic skin shader, or any shader involving a lighting effect, you need to make sure it works in a variety of lighting conditions."  many merchants have failed at this, so i'm trying to give a useful warning.

I understand what your saying. It's complicated for sure. If you look at most character mats they have shadows already in the texture and specularity is a real can of worms because you don't know what kind of lights will be used. It seems to me that in a proper environment you wouldn't need spec maps. except maybe in areas we know to be more shiny and then only sparingly. I didn't mean to suggest that vendors don't care but as you said don't know.

This discussion is beginning to illustrate why the nodes that load with V4 high resolution maps do not look good in all lights. <Bright_Light_Illumination> Which makes the challenge to create a naive, all/any-lighting-friendly shader set quite daunting. Not that I'm not willing to try, but the challenge is huge.
And it's not like I know what I'm doing.

So, what I might do is: learn from the experts. See what they've done, and pick their nodes apart brick by brick. I see no other option. use only those bits that will look half-way decent in most lighting conditions.

I might even include some lights...

I have already tried Matmatic in Poser 7 on V3 without any modification to the script at all.  It runs fine, at least, with those settings.  The concept of VSS came in after Matmatic and has been under development for quite some time.  If you want to do node manipulation then VSS is the way to go until the Pro version is released.
The problem with the Basic Ultra Shader for Matmatic is that it lacks the necessary nodes to control AO, texture shades, etc.  For the stark realism you see in Face_Off's product, you will see in VSS.  Reading closely the posts, if you were inclined to, you could strip out the node arrangement from Face_Off and apply it in VSS.  The versatility is to control the shader nodes to apply more realism and apply to multiple models in a scene at once.

Quote - I have already tried Matmatic in Poser 7 on V3 without any modification to the script at all.  It runs fine, at least, with those settings. 

I suppose that it would have been smarter of me to recreate the conditions - installing Poser 6, installing V3, etc - and then running stuff just to get a feel for how it all works before trying to do mods and using non-supported figures. This I will do. I think I have enough room on my drive for that - I'll just install the bare-minimum Poser 6 with only V3 in the runtime.

Quote - The concept of VSS came in after Matmatic and has been under development for quite some time.  If you want to do node manipulation then VSS is the way to go until the Pro version is released.

So, from what you are telling me, VSS can be used as a shader development tool of the sort I've outlined above. What I think I'm reading here - correct me if I'm wrong - is that VSS is the more polished, task-focused skin-shader tool, where Matmatic is more of a lets-have-a-play-with-making-shaders-by-writing-code sort of tool... I think.

Quote - The problem with the Basic Ultra Shader for Matmatic is that it lacks the necessary nodes to control AO, texture shades, etc.  For the stark realism you see in Face_Off's product, you will see in VSS.  Reading closely the posts, if you were inclined to, you could strip out the node arrangement from Face_Off and apply it in VSS.

 
I am studying the product of applying face_off's Realism Kit (ignoring Occlusion Master, since that is by definition going to be highly light-specific) but the challenge is to determine which nodes are the most generic and hence applicable for my purposes.

Quote - > Quote - I have already tried Matmatic in Poser 7 on V3 without any modification to the script at all.  It runs fine, at least, with those settings. 

I suppose that it would have been smarter of me to recreate the conditions - installing Poser 6, installing V3, etc - and then running stuff just to get a feel for how it all works before trying to do mods and using non-supported figures. This I will do. I think I have enough room on my drive for that - I'll just install the bare-minimum Poser 6 with only V3 in the runtime.

Quote - The concept of VSS came in after Matmatic and has been under development for quite some time.  If you want to do node manipulation then VSS is the way to go until the Pro version is released.

So, from what you are telling me, VSS can be used as a shader development tool of the sort I've outlined above. What I think I'm reading here - correct me if I'm wrong - is that VSS is the more polished, task-focused skin-shader tool, where Matmatic is more of a lets-have-a-play-with-making-shaders-by-writing-code sort of tool... I think.

Quote - The problem with the Basic Ultra Shader for Matmatic is that it lacks the necessary nodes to control AO, texture shades, etc.  For the stark realism you see in Face_Off's product, you will see in VSS.  Reading closely the posts, if you were inclined to, you could strip out the node arrangement from Face_Off and apply it in VSS.

 
I am studying the product of applying face_off's Realism Kit (ignoring Occlusion Master, since that is by definition going to be highly light-specific) but the challenge is to determine which nodes are the most generic and hence applicable for my purposes.

Yikes!!! This thread has gone way way off course. Let me see if I can straighten it out.

1.) Matmatic is character specific.   NO matmatic can be used on ANY object (yes including characters like V3, V4, M3, and any other character)

2.) Poser 6 and 7 versions are different only because Poser 7 uses a slightly different Python language.

3.) VSS is a shader development tool and more powerful than matmatic. NO again. VSS is used to propagate any shader including those created by Matmatic over an object or objects. VSS DOES NOT make shaders.

Face-offs Occlusion master is specific to a scene light like His realism kit is. NO. Occlusion master simply allows for AO to be applied to part or all of any object and has a couple of adjustments built in.

4.) you are hung up on creating a character collection. Try down-loading the Vargas shader for Matmatic, it is very simple and a good place to start with Matmatic for characters.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

Don

Thank you, Don... obviously still a bit unclear on what does what, but I think it will all gel once I have a decent play with each of the tools... and I'll have a look at the Vargas shader first (on RuntimeDNA, right?)...

Quote - Thank you, Don... obviously still a bit unclear on what does what, but I think it will all gel once I have a decent play with each of the tools... and I'll have a look at the Vargas shader first (on RuntimeDNA, right?)...

Everything you need is here:
http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/matmatic

Quote - What I think I'm reading here - correct me if I'm wrong - is that VSS is the more polished, task-focused skin-shader tool, where Matmatic is more of a lets-have-a-play-with-making-shaders-by-writing-code sort of tool... I think.

no.  it's what i was explaining before.  the only reason you need Matmatic is if you want to start defining a single material programmatically.  if you want to make a single material manually, it's not helpful.  depending on the number of nodes in your intended material, your experience and comfort with programming, and your comfort in the material room, Matmatic may or may not be helpful to you. 

as i believe i stated previously, VSS has nothing to do with skin.  what VSS does is help you manage material zones. a human is just an example of where you might need this feature.  for example, there's lots of different material zones on most figures that all get similar treatment even if they have different maps.  and you might want a fingernail shader and skin shader to have similarities.  teeth should have a certain treatment, and corneas should have another.  but the same is true of a house.  walls should have a certain treatment, and moldings, and windows, and window frames.  VSS allows you to manage all of those materials.  to apply a transformation to multiple material zones, and taking into account that they all have different maps.  VSS just happens to have default content for working with a human  figure, much the same way Poser as a default comes with a human figure.  if the community and tool were more focused on architecture, VSS would probably come with building shader defaults.

Quote - You load your matmatic file in the material room so it must be in the materials path right?

Don

Once you have Matmatic correctly installed, You can choose if you want Material Files or MAT Pose Files generated and where you want them to be located.

Hi folks. Wow. Bad timing on my part to go away on vacation. LOL I just got back from the Dominican Republic - and I have a tan!

Anyway, there's a lot to clarify here. I'm about 20 threads behind on responding, but this one really needs help, so I'll start here. (Unfortunately, I am in a conference call at the moment and am supposed to be paying attention, so I won't write a big response yet.)

Matmatic is a for creating nodes using language instead of pictures.

Matmatic generates shaders as materials, or collections, or mat pose files. I included a "class" to define a V3 material collection. At the time, there was no V4. That is why there was a focus on V3 in matmatic. Others have since published V4 collection class definitions and matmatic does produce V4 collections or mat pose files. I also have a V4 collection in matmatic but never published it.

The big problem with matmatic and collections is not the collection itself. It does that just fine. The problem is how to map a set of various material shaders (skin, sclera, cornea, fingernail, etc) onto all the nearly infinite variety of material zone collections, and to do so in such a way that is independent of the grouping of those collections with respect to UV map.

This gets complicated.

For example, for any given figure, there is a set of zones that should be "skin". There is also a set of zones that should be the UV map for head. Not all head zones are skin zones. Not all skin zones are head zones. Basically, the appropriate groupings for material type don't line up nicely with the appropriate groupsing for UV map zone. (head versus body versus limbs)

Trying to tie all that together in matmatic is confusing and requires a lot of code, often character specific code. So I invented VSS. VSS does not create shaders. It copies shaders, and combines them with image maps it already finds on the target figure or prop.

So the ideal solution is design a skin shader, or cornea shader, or fingernail shader in matmatic paying zero attention to UV zones or target figure. Then use VSS to distribute all these shaders to all the right zones and plug in all the right color, specular, bump, displacement, hair, mole, freckle maps in the right places into those generic shaders.

If you try to do it all in matmatic (and it can be done) you have to make all the methods that generate materials take additional parameters to define what image maps to plug in, and then you have to use a "Collection" object to map the resulting materials to the various target material zones. Using matmatic for this is better than doing it all by hand in the material room, but not nearly as easy as using VSS.

VSS and matmatic have nothing to do with skin, per se. I do car paint shaders, rubber, plastic, and glass shaders with matmatic and VSS just as easily for vehicles. I also do rocks, bricks, stucco, grass, and dirt with matmatic and VSS for arch-vis (buildings and such). I also do slimy slugs. :)

Regarding the light-aware shader concept, the main thing being addressed there is "where should the subsurface scattering happen"? Face_off used math and you have to take into account the position of your main light source. I tried a dozen other things and came up with a way to do it abusing the lighting nodes until they cried and moaned and complained but did what I wanted. Yes the Ultra-Basic skin shader used Diffuse. That was a 3-node solution and it's easy to make and gets you 80%. My newer techniques (included in the demo VSS skin shader) use many many more lighting and math nodes and get you 95% of the way there.

I have a work-in-progress matmatic script for skin that is even better, uses even more nodes, and gets you 99% of the way there, while also doing water droplets, glitter, pores, and other cool tiny stuff that is hard to draw in your color map.

More later.

Oh - and those error messages about "Curious Labs" and Poser 6 are talking about the location of the original source files ON MY COMPUTER, not yours.

When you get an error, Python tells you the file in which it happened with respect to MY SOURCE CODE. I keep all of matmatic in Poser 6 and comipile it using P6 and P7 to give you the two versions. But both come from the same location on my hard drive. Those paths are my paths not yours. Ignore those.

Wow, thank you, Bagginsbill!

First off, congratulations on your tan :D - good ON ya... hope you had a wonderfully relaxing time down there in the Dominican Republic - 'course, for me, it's up there (being in Oz). I imagine the food is similar to what might get in New Orleans: spicy, rich, YUM! Lots of fresh fruits, too...

To put it mildly, I'm totally obsessed with your brilliant tools. What got me realizing that something other than the skin texture maps we needed to make decent, somewhat believable skin renders was pulling up those characters that did render well in the Material Room and having a sticky-beak at what else was being done. When I got into face_off's stuff, I fully realized that nodes and shaders were the key to accomplishing this.

However, from reading the node-cult thread on RuntimeDNA, it became clear that creating a set of nodes that would work in most lighting situations was going to be a lot more difficult than it first appeared. I actually even studied the shaders that load with V4 HiRes to see what they did, and then, have been spending a lot more time at CastlePoser to get my head around what each of the nodes do... that's really a key component in all this.

Your description just now pretty much summarizes my understanding of what your tools do. I was focusing on Matmatic because I wanted to be able to make a change in one node - make it programmatically - and have that change be reflected across the range of that particular body part type for a quick render. I find Python a pretty straight-forward language to code in, and am picking it up pretty quickly. Besides, there's heaps of examples out there on writing shader scripts, and hey, examples was how I learned VB, FoxPro and php.

Your point about how different body parts - like eyes, scalp, facial skin, eyebrows and lips - all belonging to the same essential body part, yet each requiring different handling is a good one... but then, I'm happy to pass parameters, I have no issue with writing a collection that could manage that, although it would be a complex one, because certain nodes would NOT be addressed because of a parameter and yet others WOULD, and how to parse it all out - maybe a whole series of distinct functions doing just one node, detects whether it exists and manipulates based on a passed parm... not sure yet how I would do it. Actually, the collection would merely be a "set up" and the manipulation in the shader script would then take stock of the distinctiveness of each body part as well as what group it belongs to, depending on what node is being managed.

Sheesh. I'm not very good at explaining myself. It almost sounds like spaghetti code, but it wouldn't be... it would be very part-specific, node-specific.

Right.

So, what I have done is what I should have done at the outset: load your favourite working environment (Poser 6)... check... use your favourite model (well, not favourite maybe, but a lot of the examples are based on her) V3... check... installed Matmatic and Parmatic - going to install VSS next. I realize that Parmatic wasn't the next logical step, but I was curious to see how it worked. Got a bunch of errors initially and since then, it does nothing, so I stuffed things up somewhere, somehow - that is just so me to do that... :/

I will learn these tools, Bill, and thank you SO much for providing them. When you finally feel they are ready for market, know that I will be your first avid customer!

Quote - Oh - and those error messages about "Curious Labs" and Poser 6 are talking about the location of the original source files ON MY COMPUTER, not yours.

When you get an error, Python tells you the file in which it happened with respect to MY SOURCE CODE. I keep all of matmatic in Poser 6 and comipile it using P6 and P7 to give you the two versions. But both come from the same location on my hard drive. Those paths are my paths not yours. Ignore those.

Does the compiler keep compiling after it encounters those issues? I kinda thought they were a show-stopper... but you're saying no. It tells you it ran into a problem ...

BUT

the main error - the show-stopper - was a syntax error. I surmised from discussions on the Node Cult forum that Python itself had issues with the naming convention Daz had adopted for V4 (and A4, presumably): number and underscore prefix. Found the hack, inserted it, and got this error - forgive me if it's one of those Geez-if-you-were-a-Python-Programmer-you'd-know-what-this-is type of issues

----- MATMATIC COMPILER -----
verbose 1
Processing script C:Program Filese frontierPoser 7RuntimeLibrariesMaterials!RobynsveilSimpleShader01.mm1.txt -> material
MATMATIC Script Error: unindent does not match any outer indentation level (SimpleShader01.mm1.txt, line 26)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:program filescurious labsposer 6runtimepythonmatmaticcompiler.py", line 233, in processScript
IndentationError: unindent does not match any outer indentation level (SimpleShader01.mm1.txt, line 26)
------ MATMATIC COMPILER DONE -----
==================================================================

I've learned that when debugging often-times that the error is caused by something other than what you would think based on the error and that you need to be barking up another tree, and I would suspect that to be the case here.

Heh. I suppose from looking at so many of my posts on matmatic you might think that I favor P6, but actually I never use it at all anymore. P7 is much better. Matmatic works fine with it.

Nor do I ever use V3 anymore - I like V4 much more. Well "use" is meaningless - all I ever do is demonstrate shaders for the most part, and I do that with Simon as often as V4.

Your latest error message is one of those GIYWAPPYKWTI errors:

MATMATIC Script Error: unindent does not match any outer indentation level (SimpleShader01.mm1.txt, line 26)

In Python, indentation indicates grouping of statements into compound statements, unlike most other languages where we use curly braces. You have screwed your indentation up and it can't figure out what you mean.