I know this might be stupid, but I can't find any decent materials for Victoria 4 in Poser. I've been using DAZ Studio for a long time now before I started working in Poser just recently. There are native D|S materials for Vicky which I've been using all along. Now I'm trying to set up a scene in Poser with Victoria instead. I go to PosesDAZ's Victoria 4MATerials Standard-Res and select !All_Natural.

And now she look a bit like she's made out of clay or something. The skin look dull, faded and slightly tinted gray. There is simply no depth, everything simply look wrong somehow. Am I selecting the wrong material for Victoria? I've been looking around in the material folder but couldn't find anything related to Victoria so I assumed I have to use the above MATs.

I'm using Poser 7 by the way.

look in Freebies for characters 'for Victoria 4'. They often include textures that are more lifelike. I haven't seen all that many free ones yet, but there's probably some in the Marketplace. I've managed to use V3 textures, on a really hit or miss basis, but it's not as well done...;)

JIC - you'll find the textures for characters in the Pose directory.

 Are you sure you're looking at the textured preview? I think Poser defaults to no texture map.

How does it look when you render it? Still flat and dull and claylike?

The MAT you're loading sounds like the correct one :)

You can also try using the "Use Subsurface Scattering" wacro on her materials.  This is meant to replicate the semi-translucent nature of skin.  (Kind of a pain to change one material at a time, but might be worth doing if you feel she's looking flat.)  The wacro adds SSS effects by adding Edge Blend, Fastscatter, and Blin nodes to the skin textures. It also changes the lights in your scene to produce Depth Map Shadows.  For Victoria, I'd use the wacro on all materials numbered 1, 2, and 3.  (Face, body, and limb.)

Be aware that poser's default lights suck.  Lighting will change Victoria's coloring a LOT.  Gimme a few minutes, and I'll throw together a few sample renders of what V4's mats look like with and without SSS...

Here's what I came up with:  I used hard lighting from the figures' right and an IBL light. (Depth mapped shadows on hard light.)  I also added ambient occlusion nodes to the skin to add contrast.  The figure on the left has the sss wacro applied, while the one on the right does not.  I'm not especially fond of how pink  the sss wacro makes her look, but she sure isn't dull and clay-like!  With a little better lighting, and perhaps some fiddling with the colors in the material room, this might be what you're looking for.  Though, for the record, finding a good freebie texture might be much easier.

Of course, you could use BagginsBill VSSProp to breathe realistic life into the V4 Texture.  This is not something a newbie should undertake unless you are willing to read tons of pages posted here in the forum.  But it is well-worth looking into if you are in the mood to experiment with shaders.  Search the gallery for anything using 'VSS' and you will find excellent examples of what this tool can do.

Thanks everybody for all the tips and trix! I guess I actually am using the right materials for Victoria after all. I remember actually having the same problem when I started out with D|S once upon a time using exactly the same materials. But people told me to use the special made native D|S materials for Victoria instead, they're being installed with Victoria if you have D|S installed too. Same thing when I started using Carrara, people laughed at me when I used the defualt materials for shaders. There are native shaders in Carrara for Victoria that look more realistic than real women. Well, not exactly but close.

I then thought that these materials were for Poser instead, and that they would look super in Poser. But they actually look, well, a bit awful compared to the native D|S material. So now I exported the D|S materials to .mc6 and guess what, I'm all happy now.

But then again, I've been using D|S for a very long time before I got Poser. Maybe I at some point screwed up the defualt materials by fooling around too much before I found the native shaders.