Is this possible? I've searched high and low, no tutorials appear to address it.

I've got a node named Lips_Blender in this 1_SkinFace material: I want to give the user the means to manage the input 2 (colour) and Blending (colour intensity) of that Blender node without having to enter the material room, using a Parameter Dial.

On the node itself is what looks like a key: clicking the key animates (animated) it. However, how to manage that for a given material, say 1_SkinFace of my character is beyond me. Where is it animated? Did it create a dial somewhere, and if so, where?

This would, in my thinking, also expose those parameters to Daz Studio users, who, at this point, only have access to a very rudimentary (Poser 5) pseudo-material room via a plug-in.

So, yeah, can this be done?

Quote - Did it create a dial somewhere, and if so, where?

The dial is created on the Body actor.
Animating colour parameters will create 3 dials, one each for the RGB components.

Quote - This would, in my thinking, also expose those parameters to Daz Studio users, who, at this point, only have access to a very rudimentary (Poser 5) pseudo-material room via a plug-in.

The dials created by animating material room inputs won't help D|S users, as the nodes must be there for the dials to have any affect.

Quote - The dial is created on the Body actor. Animating colour parameters will create 3 dials, one each for the RGB components.

Thanks for that: found them!

Quote - The dials created by animating material room inputs won't help D|S users, as the nodes must be there for the dials to have any affect.

Dang! Well, according to that plugin, some material room nodes are at least emulated, aren't they? Guess I'll have to have a look to see if PoserSurface is and what options exist.

Thanks very much for your reply, NRuddock!

Quote - Well, according to that plugin, some material room nodes are at least emulated, aren't they?
Guess I'll have to have a look to see if PoserSurface is and what options exist.

While the nodes may be emulated, I don't think the plugin is capable of reading the shader trees from Poser.
I think it's unlikely that animated material dials will hook up to Eilir's nodes.

Do you think it's even worth trying to emulate the shaders Poser users enjoy? I understand that what available in the plugin is roughly that of a subset of Poser 5's nodes... sound right to you?

Quote - I understand that what available in the plugin is roughly that of a subset of Poser 5's nodes... sound right to you?

That's about right

Quote - Do you think it's even worth trying to emulate the shaders Poser users enjoy?

For anything that doesn't use some of the more exotic nodes, then recreating most of what's left should be possible.

IIRC, Eilir use RSL (see -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RenderMan_Interface_Specification) so it maybe possible to do some things that Poser can't (and new nodes get built for the effects).

...and from what I've heard, the 3Delight render engine gives Firefly quite the run for the money because of it's RenderMan compliancy (if that's the word I want)... that's if I understood it all correctly. This opens an entirely new range of possibilities.

Thanks, nruddock...

Hi !

If i understand you want modify your materials room parameters only with the window properties on the Pose page !

May be i'm in the error but i think the ApolloMax BB shader use that, ask him !

Well, I had a bit of a stick-beak on the RuntimeDNA Node Cult forum to see if someone was doing something of that nature, but got bogged down in the Matmatic code thingie. I mean, if I was a Python programmer, I could possibly create an interface to manipulate those nodes, but can I expose and manipulate user-defined nodes like Blender in Daz Studio?
I know for a fact that BB's most recent Template_Skin_PR3 shader doesn't get used properly in Daz Studio. Besides, the Firefly renderer expects a somewhat different shader system than does the Renderman-compliant 3Delight.

It all gets a bit hard.

Quote - Well, I had a bit of a stick-beak on the RuntimeDNA Node Cult forum to see if someone was doing something of that nature, but got bogged down in the Matmatic code thingie.

BB did a script for this called "Parmatic".
It looks for patterns in the node names (which are easy to generate with Matmatic) to provide dials you can adjust.
You don't have to use Matmatic shaders with it, provided you use the correct naming conventions.

yep - you're talking about Parmatic.

That's why my "special" nodes in the VSS shader begin with PM: - that's the key to make Parmatic aware of them. PM:Whatever makes a dial called "Whatever" and even if there are 30 copies of this node, there is only one dial. It synchronizes the dial changes across the entire figure - all material zones.

Parmatic is a precursor to VSS. But you can still use it with the shader I gave with VSS. The shader is written in matmatic, and works with either synchronizing strategy.

By the way, no released version of Parmatic supports color nodes - the PMC: nodes. That's a future release.

Note: While VSS is rights reserved, I placed all the code of Parmatic in the public domain from the beginning. It says so right at the top of the script.

Hate to bug you with silly questions, Bill - and I've been known to come up with some corkers! - but I'm trying to create character files that will work in Daz Studio as well as Poser. Given the fact that Daz Studio doesn't recognize a lot of Mat room nodes (seems to recognize some, otherwise why would face_off have put 8 other-than-textureMap nodes into V4?) and so a lot of elaborate shaders won't work in Daz, would one have to re-invent the wheel using the Eilir plugin?

And would this have something to do with the 3Delight render engine which does things somewhat differently to how Firefly does it?

*Napoleon Dynamite: Do the chickens have large talons?
Farmer: Do they have what?
Napoleon Dynamite: Large talons.
Farmer: I don't understand a word you just said.

Heheh. Like the farmer, I don't understand a word you just said.  I'm afraid that until this moment I never heard of Eilir. And I'm pretty certain when you install V4 for DS, you don't get the Poser face_off shader at all, but something different and specific to DS. But I'm just guessing. I know next to nothing about Daz.