I'm working with Smith Micro to bring the tutorials into the current century (LOL), so what do you need to learn?  Beginner topics, Intermediate Topics, and Advanced Topics suggestions will be welcome.

BEGINNER TOPICS

Think about what you needed to learn most when you first started with Poser. OR, if you ARE new to Poser, what is most confusing and needs more clarification?

INTERMEDIATE TOPICS

Once you get the basics out of the way, what do you need to know? Customizing characters? Changing materials? Animation? Great lighting?

ADVANCED TOPICS

Creating original Poser content, using Poser with third party applications, yada yada yada.

Now's your chance .... SPILL. 8-)

Lighting and materials are top of My list.. 

Detailed but intelligible instructions regarding the Material Room.

Detailed but intelligible instructions regarding the Hair Room.

Good instructions that cover bringing a face pic onto a Poser model, something that doesn't look incrediably lame.

IDL: The theory, the concepts and settings.

Good recommendations for hardware to use in a render farm setup. Give good examples of performance versus cost of equipment so that the end user won't have to necessarily spend tons of money to utilize the render queue manager in Pro versions of poser.

When there is a New Version   e.g.  Poser Pro 2010.
Include a detailed section of WHAT'S NEW..   And also IDL,  Basic lighting, Rendering..

Indirect Lighting features and info on how to compose a scene and light it for Indirect Lighting would probably be the single most useful new item.  I keep seeing people rendering with GI in an empty environment.

It might help to be a bit more specific, because some of these requests are kind of broad:

NoelCan: Lighting and materials are top of My list.

Lighting basics, or the newer lighting features? What about lighting has you the most stumped?

Believable3D: Detailed but intelligible instructions regarding the Material Room.

I hear you on this one. The challenge with the material room, though, is that there are SO many options and so many different uses for a material node that it's not quite as easy to deal with. The material room can be an entire book and a half in itself! LOL  So if you have some particulars that you need to learn ... skin shaders, clothing shaders, metallics, etc etc etc, that would help with a start.

Believable3D: Detailed but intelligible instructions regarding the Hair Room.

Have an example of a specific type of tutorial that would be helpful for you?

BloodRoseDesign: Good instructions that cover bringing a face pic onto a Poser model, something that doesn't look incrediably lame.

Are you talking about using the Face Room, or using some other third party application like Photoshop or one of the 3D Painting applications?

hborre: IDL: The theory, the concepts and settings.

Agreed .. and for this one I will definitely try to get some expert input.

Coop said I'll be working with you on these Deecey. I'm looking forward to it. If I can just brain-dump about lighting and materials and you do the organizing and editing, it will be awesome. I hate how I agonize over every word and picture - takes forever to do a tut.

Quote - Coop said I'll be working with you on these Deecey. I'm looking forward to it. If I can just brain-dump about lighting and materials and you do the organizing and editing, it will be awesome. I hate how I agonize over every word and picture - takes forever to do a tut.

WAHOO, just the guinea p ... ooops ... I mean "helper" I was thinking of for those two topics. LOL

If you have a screen cap program like Camtasia you can send me your brain dumps and I can make them reasonably intelligible. LOL

Thanks for the feedback on the suggestions, Deecey. Here's a start:

Material Room - a general direction on uses for the different nodes. It's one thing to experiment in a given ballpark, but knowing what kinds of nodes are going to be anywhere close to what you need is another matter. If I know that a certain math function tends to do X, I'll know whether or not it's significant to the particular sort of shader I want to work on.

Hair Room - basically, there is almost no useful info on the hair room, so almost anything would be helpful. But in particular, clearly-laid-out instructions on the Styling Tool would be a good start, along with explanation and examples of what the various settings in the Dynamics controls actually do.

Oh, this izz gonna be GOOOD. :)

Where are these tutorials going to be? Inside PP2010 Help, online, both?

I was referring to the face room because you are talking about instructional content for Poser.

But in regards to Photoshop, should would be nice if the material room nodes could be understood in a way that us PS users can grasp.

We are probably going to be putting them up on SM's site, they're gonna make space for them. 8-)

Thank you both Deecey and BB.  I truly look forward to the information both of you will bestow upon us.

For me, the material room is at the top of the list. I get pretty much everything else I need to survive, including a fair start in IDL, thanks to BB and Hborre's posts.

Those $%&# shaders, that's another story.

Specifically, what does each thing in the list do? What does it control? What do you plug into what and for what reason? What are all of these arcane things I see hooked up in some of the things I've bought? How would I do this and why would I want to?

See, I want a whole user's manual ON THE MATERIAL ROOM! :)

This is where I can accomplish the most even though I know the least, so if I knew what I was doing, I'd be dangerous! :) 

Please, place your priority here.

One more plea, and this is a BIG one. KISS. Don't assume I know what anything is or how to do it. Keep it click by click, and I MIGHT* be able to follow it and learn something. The threads here bog down very quickly with the jargon of the initiated and the rest of us are left scratching our plumber's cracks.

My $.02

P.S. You get virtual roses for being willing to do this!!!! (Even if Smith Micro has you on the payroll, which I hope they do!)

I'll take roses 8-)

Step by steps are my forte, it's one of the things I love to do. Been at it since 1994, content creation is a diversion now and then.

BB and I will be a good team, I think ... he's into the stuff I'm not, and I'm into the stuff he's not. It will work really well. 8-)

Heheh. I've probably already written the material book in this forum. Deecey just needs to go through all of it and assemble it. Which is what Cooper suggested to me.

Here's the first little nugget - read this.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2974586&ebot_calc_page#message_2974586

I wrote that May 9, 2007. In there is this paragraph:

Quote - A word of warning about Diffuse in Poser - it is NEVER accurate, because it only calculates for photons coming from light sources, direct illumination. It does not include light bouncing or originating from other objects. Better renders do take this into account for diffuse calculations - this is generally called "global illumination" or GI for short. It is the absence of GI that mostly makes Poser renders fail to look completely real. We work around the issue with Image Base Lights, but that's a cheat and only gets you about half way there.

But now, we have Poser 8 and Poser Pro 2010 and .. we have IDL for GI!!!!!

The Nodes for Dummies thread is full of important stuff. There is math, but it is all simple math.
The Diffuse node is fully explained by page 4. However, this was a conversation, not a tutorial. Have at it.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2761668

Thanks, I'll break both of those threads down tomorrow and see what I can do with them. 8-)

Quote - Detailed but intelligible instructions regarding the Material Room.

YES!!! Like all the nodes defined, with instructions on how to use them in a sentence.

Start off with BASICS, though... example: let's say you have a 2 in the Value_1 channel and a 0 in the Value_2 channel of the math_function Add node. This node will compute 2 + 0 = 2. Connecting this output to a channel on another node will multiply whatever the value is in that other node by 2.
That sort of basic thing. So that you know what happens when you connect the output of a node to a channel on another node.

Then, what good is that for creating effects?

Also, a more detailed description of the internal workings of the PoserSurface channels, so that we see less simultaneous connecting to Diffuse_Color and Alternate_Diffuse. So that super-colours are a concept. There are some basics buried in these threads that need this sort of exposure. That will give a material room tutorial a lot more credibility than re-hashing those "how-to-connect-an-imageMap-to-Diffuse_Color" done-to-death instructions.

Perhaps they could get together with BB for this: no one to my knowledge has a more comprehensive, intuitive sense for this than Bagginsbill.

Am I asking for a pony, here?

OOPs, should have read the thread before going off half-cocked... glad to hear Bagginsbill's on it! He's the MAN!

hehehehe, I figured you'd get there eventually LOL

Both of you deserve serious accolades and our most humble gratitude for even taking up this challenge. Yes, the mat room side of things could seriously take up a book and a half... and that's just summarising. I am on pins and needles waiting to see what you two are going to put together!

Also, your Beginner / Advanced / Expert approach to your tutorials can be extended to subjects like the mat and cloth and hair rooms...

This is like the best Christmas pressie EVER!!!! Thank you ever so much, both of you!!!

The thing is, people think each node has an artistic purpose, and some simply do not.

In your example, the Math:Add node, what's it used for? It's used to add things together. It's not used to create an artistic effect, it's used to implement adding two numbers together.

It's a little bit like asking what a screw is for in art, and I answer that it is used to hold the clasp on a paintbrush, the clasp being to keep bristles attached to a handle, the bristles being to grab some paint and allow one to apply it to a canvas.

After you understand the purpose of the screw, and the bristles, and the brush, and the application of paint, do you have any more idea how to paint like Picasso? Nope. The screw has nothing to do with it. But without the screw, Picasso couldn't paint.

Or, well, he could, because you could also make the clasp stay on using a nail, instead of a screw. But, while nail versus screw have various pros and cons and different characteristics, neither has any real influence on the painting.

Yup, which is what I was saying earlier. An Add node can be used in multitudes of ways. A Blender node can be used in multitudes of ways. And so on, and so forth.

That's why specifics might be better. How do I create a good skin shader, how do I create a good metallic shader, how do I create a good reflection node, how do I create a good fabric or velvet, or enhance hair shaders. Those types of things would probably be more useful than "What does this node do" (even though there SHOULD be additional info about that as well).

Coop and I have been kicking this around for a while as I've been pouring through the Poser 8 and PP2010 manuals among other projects. He deserves somma dem accolades too. 8-)

I should also add ... this WILL take time. Practical Poser 6 and Practical Poser 7 averaged about 4-5 months apiece working on them at 12 hours a day. So this will probably be done in spurts and put up once they get the thumbs up. But we will be working on them. 8-)

Do you think there is a place for concepts like super-colours, though? Like, multiply two colours together and you might end up with a super-colour? Blender two colours and you won't. (hoping I'm right on that... I guess as long as you keep the blending - that 3rd channel - value <= 1 )

It's a bit like me using one of my heels or a crescent wrench to put a nail in the wall: should have looked just a few minutes longer for that hammer (not sure if that's a good analogy... clunky heels actually work pretty well as a hammer :m_blush: )

I actually think there is a place for node basics... I don't see that information covered anywhere. Seriously, how many people know what math process happens when you connect a node output to a channel input? Seriously? True, it could be like in a reference section, but it is essential to have a basic understanding of some of this stuff, don't you think?

I actually tried to play with the nodes one by one, and compare them to how they worked in Photoshop ... then when I saw how long it took me to play with ONE node I figured I'd never make the book deadline if I tried to cover them all. It's a good long-term project, though, given the number of nodes there are to cover.

At the Node Cult at RDNA, we had many discussions of how to catalog the nodes. JohnRickardJR took on the challenge of documenting many of them. I worked with him on creating graphs of the functions generated by many of the nodes. He also made an attempt to justify each node, even the math nodes, in terms of how you might use them.

Have a look.

http://www.castleposer.co.uk/my_tutorials.html

As an example, there is a whole page on the add node.

http://www.castleposer.co.uk/articles/maths_add.html

But does it really convey what it is for? No because it isn't "for" anything other than to add two numbers. He shows a few examples, but they don't even begin to cover the topic.

Adding bumps, adding fractals, adding images, adding displacements, adding diffuse and specular effects, etc. And really, the add node is a subtract node, if you set either value to a negative number, so you can use an add node to subtract, but what does that tell you? Similarly, the multiply can be used to divide, the pow node can be used to calculate roots, but what are roots for?

And he doesn't even begin to cover the fact that A + B = B + A, so that Value_1 and Value_2 are not really distinguished and are interchangeable. But A-B != B-A, so V1 and V2 are not interchangeable in a subtract node.

These nodes are math. To know what they are for, you have to know what math is for. Which is what I said like 20 times in the nodes for dummies thread.

I haven't seen John around for ages. He certainly hasn't added anything to this page for a couple years.
 

I always loved this page.

http://www.castleposer.co.uk/articles/maths_chart.html

It tells me everything about the math nodes. It doesn't tell you a damn thing about how to use math.

An interesting thing about this page. All the graphs are Poser renders. I gave John a shader that plots a graph of any node you plug into it.

So - what are math nodes for? Clearly they are for documenting themselves, because that's how we used them there.

Hehehehe

And an artist would look at that and say "Say what?" LOL

I left the engineering world in 1993. I think like an artist now. LOL

Then to be specific, yes I would like to learn how to create metallic shader/nodes. I've seen the thread by Baggins at RDNA for metal and though that shows a metal shader I unfortunately am not that thrilled with it's outcome (not to be taken personally Baggins). I would like to know how to incorporate a image map with nodes to create a metal surface, smooth, slightly rough and rough.
There must be a way to incorporate maps and nodes together???
Just my thoughts.
Missy woot!

The merest of mere suggestions, here. Feel free to shoot it down.

Would a Wiki approach to cataloguing this sort of information - like the node basics I touched on earlier - be reasonable? In that way, the work would be readily available (published) on an ongoing basis, as opposed to some time in the future. This is the approach they took with Shader Mixer, which is I believe what answers for the mat room over at DS:
artzone.daz3d.com/wiki/doku.php/pub/software/shadermixer/start

I'm not trying to upend the apple-cart... just an idea, easily discarded.

Another interseting concept I haven't discussed is the idea that two functions are "isomorphic". This is fancy math speak for "they have the same shape".

When we look at two nodes they sometimes are the same underlying math, but with different parameter meanings. For example, the Pow function and the Bias function are the same shape. Any shape you can make with one, you can exactly make with the other. But the values you use to create the same shapes will be different values.

This is a hard concept at first, but once you get it, it's a big time saver in learning the nodes. This is because when two nodes are isomorphic, they are actually the same, just using different control parameters, so once you understand one, you understand the other.

Example:

Definition of the add node: Value_1 + Value_2

Definition of the sub node: Value_1 - Value_2

Claim:

Add and Sub are isomorphic.

Proof:

Take whatever you're using in an add node, and negate the number in Value_2. It is now the equivalent subtract node.

Add(a, -b) = a + -b = a - b = Sub(a, b)
QED

Mul and Div are isomorphic:

Proof:
Mul(a, 1/b) = a * 1 / b = a / b = Div(a, b)

if stefan has a free moment, see if youse can get his input on the IDL/GI variables/tone-mapping section.

AND NOT = NOR?

Quote - AND NOT = NOR?

What are you asking there?

Quote - Yup, which is what I was saying earlier. An Add node can be used in multitudes of ways. A Blender node can be used in multitudes of ways. And so on, and so forth.

That's why specifics might be better. How do I create a good skin shader, how do I create a good metallic shader, how do I create a good reflection node, how do I create a good fabric or velvet, or enhance hair shaders. Those types of things would probably be more useful than "What does this node do" (even though there SHOULD be additional info about that as well).

I'm all for specifics. Do the lessons with specific goals in view.

However, I think the old saw about giving a man a fish vs teaching a man to fish holds true here. If you show me how to create a good skin shader without exposing the principles of the nodes... well, you may as will just give me a file to plug in. But if you teach me principles about the nodes you're using, I can understand why you chose a given node to build the skin shader, and put it where you did... and then just maybe I'll have some insight into creating a shader for something completely different.

So by all means, keep it concrete and specific. Otherwise, only geeks will read it. But as you're dealing with specifics, lay bare the principles of why you're doing what you're doing. Teach us how to bait the hook, at least. Please. :)

Yes, while creating, say, a skin shader, I would probably do it step by step and say "Now ... you want to add some shine to the skin. One of the ways you can do that is to take such and such a node, and plop it in between this and that. Then you have to adjust this setting because it will create less shine.

I take it that is what you mean. 8-)

Yep, something along those lines. At the end of the day, I'd like your skin shader tutorial to give me insight into creating a shader for the appendix of a rhinocerous (okay, maybe not).

Quote - Then to be specific, yes I would like to learn how to create metallic shader/nodes. I've seen the thread by Baggins at RDNA for metal and though that shows a metal shader I unfortunately am not that thrilled with it's outcome (not to be taken personally Baggins). I would like to know how to incorporate a image map with nodes to create a metal surface, smooth, slightly rough and rough.
There must be a way to incorporate maps and nodes together???
Just my thoughts.
Missy woot!

Are you talking about the thread that AerySoul started, about heavy metal? Or another one?

There are an infinite number of ways to use nodes driven by a color map. Whatever part of the shader defines the color, plug the map into there. For the heavy metal shader, I included an ImageMap where you load the color you want. That will be used to drive the diffuse and specular reflection colors of the metal.

Roughness comes from adding bump. If you want a surface to look rough, you add bump. What kind of bump depends on what kind of roughness. It can be simply from a bump map, or from various noisy nodes, or combinations, involving math, in ways that depend on what you're trying to do. It involves math. If you want areas to have different kinds of bump, it would involve masking and Blending, which is just math, actually.

Thing is, one man's "good skin shader" is another man's crap.

I've written dozens of skin shader tutorials. The simplest, which I now consider crap. was the UBSS (Ultra Basic Skin Shader). But it was easy to build - less than 5 nodes.

The real issue of a good skin shader is GC, not how skin works. For P8, a good skin shader is way more nodes than for Poser Pro 2010.

The tutorials I've always found most useful for learning (amongst the many different educational approaches) are the step-by-step ones that show you a cool end result (i.e a good render) and the process(es) involved in achieving it - covering many smaller challenges along the way.

I think this is particularly useful because it places all the technical stuff in some kind of context, forming a base on which folk can expand their 3d learning. Ideas and priciples can be introduced along the way.

I like the really detailed guides, but I know they can take an age to put together.

Anyway, just a thought.

edited - you all must have started to talk about this as I was typing (slow typer here )

Actually, you could probably write a whole book on how and why any given render was made in a particular way, and other ways it could have been done.

Exactly, Carodan.

Bagginsbill, I understand what you're saying re the different versions. However, it does seem to me that if the tut is written in a way that shows what each node is doing, the semi-intuitive reader would least be able to have an educated guess what nodes may be deleted (or alternatively, given more accent) in a given situation. On the one hand, a non-specific shader tutorial is going to be abstract and unusable to most type of users; a specific tutorial that doesn't uncover the principles involved is going to be too narrow and even dated.

In-depth tutorials on using the cloth room. I'd love to use dynamic cloth, but up til now have been kinda stymied by what's needed to get good results. The most I've been able to make is a mooshy puddle of polys ;o).

Laurie

For a true "step by step" it seems to me that video tutorials would be the way to go. That way you see every step right in front of you. But I know a lot of people don't like video tutorials.

Thoughts?

STEP by STEP tutorials as if we are dumb and can't follow directions.lol.. But serious. Better step-by-step tutorials as if the person that's reading it doesn't know anything about Poser. The tutorials should show artistic rendering techniques instead of the very basics which usually results in a render that looks nothing like the renders that we see on Renderosity.  Nothing big, just some good samples. Like the one you did with the primitive square to make a hall way.

I think tutorials like that would help give beginners as well as experienced users a better understanding how the features on Poser can be used.

Frederick
Poser By Design

Quote - However, I think the old saw about giving a man a fish vs teaching a man to fish holds true here. If you show me how to create a good skin shader without exposing the principles of the nodes... well, you may as will just give me a file to plug in. But if you teach me principles about the nodes you're using, I can understand why you chose a given node to build the skin shader, and put it where you did... and then just maybe I'll have some insight into creating a shader for something completely different.

Precisely. That would be the most important thing to emphasise: how to avoid making a bogus shader through an understanding of what things do what. If a person doesn't understand the concept of super-colours, how are they going to avoid them?
All these concepts have been discussed... a number of times. The problem is accessibility / visibility. If I'm a new Poser developer and I want to make my material more outstanding than just plugging a colorMap node into Diffuse_Color, do I look for a mat room tutorial?

Okay, so IF I actually do look for some reference material for the material room nodes, what do I find on here? Reams and reams of examples and discussions and some of it I'll copy down somewhere or bookmark but given most people's attention span being what it is, I'll soon give up on finding something and will start experimenting. Going for an effect. I'll have a play and if it looks okay, I'll save it.

So, if you could, if the wiki idea is not a good one, could you have a section in your tome about things to avoid, Deecey and BB? Core concepts like: plugging the output of a node into an input of another is math(multiply).That kind of stuff.

these are all great ideas!

i second the notion for a wiki defining nodes.  i've been the the CastlePoser tutorials several times, and i still have no clue why Bias (x, y > 0.5) makes x = black into a grey, but Bias(x, y < 0.5) leaves x = black and x = white untransformed.  what equation does Bias actually apply mathematically?  and Gain? 

and that doesn't even touch on the black boxes of things like "skin," "velvet," etc.  i don't touch those any more, but lots of people do, yet there seems to be no clear understanding of how they transform their properties.  there are a lot of nodes with internal functions that would be easier to use if how they operated were actually available.

i think a series of tutorials on making different types of materials would be very different and also beneficial.  personally, though, i'd love having an accompanying script for each tutorial.  now that i'm into Matmatic, it's much easier to keep track of what someone else is doing (or even what i'm doing).  the structure and notes just work wonders.  considering something "wear" or "grain" is easier than following connections to from a group of 4 or so nodes to find out they're affecting color, reflection, specular, bump and displacement. translating nodes is a lot harder than translating code written in English, imho.

I'm following that other thread on that IDL wall of Bill's and I realised something: my focus is more general than what is being looked at here. I'm looking at alerting people to concepts that are far more basic than when to use an Add vs when to use a Pow... that's further down the pike.

I remember a very interesting discussion on here about what PoserSurface does with Bagginsbill explaining the behaviour of a lot of the channels. I've had brilliant discussions with CobaltDream (very illuminating discussions!) about the process the renderer takes. This is all fundamental stuff anyone going into the material room needs to have a solid grasp of, or bogus shaders will happen.

THAT is what I'm on about. This needs to be absorbed before discussions of maths nodes and texture nodes and all the stuff you can do with them makes any sense. And if I can propose that GC be included in that basic discussion, my work here is done.