nabob21 opened this issue on Nov 11, 2009 · 9 posts
bagginsbill posted Wed, 11 November 2009 at 8:48 PM
No, there is no problem with Poser files being interpreted differently.
This was a case of people sharing numbers and typing them into Poser, but having Poser set up for different UI display units. When, for example, I show you a shader screen shot, and you copy my displacement value, you must also be using my display units at the time. If my value is inches, and you type it in while feet is active, it will be 12 times bigger.
But values stored in Poser files are always in standard units, regardless of what you see and type on your screen. If I save a material file with 1 inch displacement, and you load it into your Poser and you have feet selected, you will see the number .083333333.
In shaders, the displacement and bump values are always recorded in inches and Poser knows that when it reads these files.
Nabob, I believe you were in a situation where you did not know what was going on, and didn't realize what you were or were not doing. Above, you said you switched units and saw no change unless you saved preferences and restarted. But either you didn't do what you said you did, or you were doing something you were not aware of, because if you change display units and then type in .01 again, it will be different, even if you do not exit Poser.
When you type a value in, it is converted to the internal standard unit, regardless of what you see on the screen.
If you enter .01, and then you change your Poser Display Unit (PDU) and go back into the material room, you'll see the .01 is not there anymore. It is some other number, based on the new PDU. If you go back to your original PDU and go into the material room, it will be once again showing .01. This means as you change PDU, the interpretation of the numbers is not changing, only how they are displayed.
If however, you choose a PDU, enter .01, switch to another PDU, then enter .01 again, the value is now different. If you return to the original PDU, the value will not be .01.
Is this clear yet?
Reading/typing these numbers means PDU matters. Once they are entered, changing PDU does not matter.
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