bagginsbill opened this issue on Apr 23, 2008 · 2832 posts
bagginsbill posted Fri, 04 June 2010 at 8:21 AM
hawarren probably has the problem cornered.
When you synchronize, VSS has to look at the target figure's existing materials and try to figure out what the various images are for, since Poser doesn't have any way of recording that. It tries to do this by looking at the names of Image_Map nodes - not the file, but the node itself. A node called "Bump Map" is clearly a bump map.
If a node isn't named anything but Image_Map_4 or whatever, then VSS tries to figure out what it is for by examining how it is used. It doesn't do this in a super artificial intelligence way, because that would be extremely difficult. But it does a credible job of guessing what an image is by looking at where it eventually plugs into the Poser Surface. If something plugs into Dispalcement, it's probably a Displacement Map. If something plugs into Alternate_Specular, then it's probably a Specular Map. There are more rules to it, but that's the general idea.
Sometimes a map is used in a strange, and even wrong way in existing shaders. Often these "wrong" connections don't matter because they lead to a multiplication with zero or near zero. An effect, no matter how stupid, that is eventually turned off via other arithmetic can lay about lurking in the shader and causing no actual harm. But VSS can't tell that it isn't really doing anything, and may pick it out as a key element of the texture set. It will then go ahead and use it in its own shader and cause grief.
After synchronizing, look into the resulting figure materials where the eyebrows are. Look for a Specular Map node in the shader. If it is there, have a look at what file it picked for that. If it was the bump map, that would be a problem.
As for solutions, the best is not to load "stupid" shaders on a figure before synchronizing, so that VSS doesn't get fooled. The best shaders to pre-load before synchronizing are ones that just connect each image map to the appropriate place on the poser surface.
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