Here I am willing to veer off into severe off-topic land in my own thread, but be that as it may...

Names for castrated males of all kinds seem to be very important. One of the earliest I learned of, as a child in a boychoir, was "castrato" - a man with the singing voice of a soprano, because he had been castrated just for that purpose. INSANITY In the boychoir, the best singers were threatened with castration, as a complement.

Found this via Google:

Dutch

[Latin, English, male - castrated version]
Sus scrofa f. domestica / Domestic pig: beer - barg/borg/berg/schram
Bos taurus / Cattle (Cows): stier - os
Ovis aries / Domestic sheep: ram - hamel*
Capra hircus / Domestic goat: bok - weer/hamel*/kapater
Equus caballus / Domestic horse: hengst - ruin
Equus asinus asinus / Donkey: hengst - oen*/kluns*
Felis silvestris f. catus / Domestic cat: kater - gecastreerde kater
Canis lupus f. familiaris / Domestic dog: reu, rekel - ??
Oryctolagus cuniculus f. Domesticus / Domestic rabbit: rammelaar - ??
Camelus sp. / Camel: ??
Elephas maximus / Elephant: ??
Homo sapiens sapiens / wise human: man, castraat (singers)/eunuch (at a court)

Domestic birds:
Gallus gallus f. domestica / Chicken: haan - kapoen*/Engels haantje (lit. English cock, or should I say English rooster?)
Meleagris gallopavo / Domestic turkey: ??
Anser anser / Domestic goose: ganzerik, gent, gander - ??
Note:
The words marked with an * are often used in connection to people. E.g. 'oen' is used for 'idiot', 'kluns' for somebody who's very unhandy, etc.

Sorry BB, I didn't want to spoil your thread, but I saw it and typed and reacted without thinking.
Oen was a favourite word for my father, when I did something stupid again, so I don't like it at all.
But sometimes I'm still an Oen.

best regards,

Bopper.

Hey  I love all those Dutch words :) I must say I only know a few of the equivalents in Danish and I've never heard them used as something you'd call people :)  (vallak is a castrated stallion in Danish and kapun is the same as the Dutch kapoen)

LOL are we getting WAYYY off topic or what?!

We sure are..., I'm surprised we had so much words for castrated animals.
I'm always a bit sensitive when it comes to castrating pets: we had a tomcat, and my wife wanted to castrate him, I refused untill he peed against my base-guitar. That was his last macho-action, It's been 25 years ago but you still can smell it!

best regards,

Bopper.

Hey Bopper, you don't castrate pets... You merely "spray" or "neuter" them.:lol: (SPCA).

Since we're still far in OT-land: It's bordering to cruelty NOT to neuter (castrate or whatever you want to call it)  a cat, be it a male or a female cat. Female cats are prone to uterus cancer if left on P-pills, and having a cat in heat every 3 weeks can drive the sanest person batty. Tomcats either pees on everything or get into fights (if let outside) and are in danger of being severely hurt.

Also there is far too many unwanted, stray cats as it is. DON'T let fertile cats roam free, please! 

A neutered cat is a cat that doesn't spend 95% of their waking hours thinking of SEX! But.. cats are ANIMALS. They do not have a conscious feeling of LOSS. That is just humans anthropomorphising them. A cat that is bred indoors won't be pining for the fjords either. It doesn't miss getting outside because it doesn't KNOW that it's missing anything.

My cats are all neutered, indoor, lovely, sociable pets ;) - WITH their claws. Contrary to neutering, de-clawing is cruel. It's like amputating your fingers! If people want a cat that doesn't shed hair or claw the furniture, they should get a stuffed one ;)

gets off soapbox

All my cats are too since then, We should have a sticky thread about cats and dogs. But every good thread has some cats in it.
But to get back ot topic: I'm wrting a tutorial how to make a shader with different materials in it. First I want to show how to make a simple shader without, later on I can show how one can make simple additions to VSS. I hope it finished by the end of the weekend.

best regards,

Bopper.

 Looking forward tot hat, Bopper :) I've only just begun to scrape the surface of VSS, that is, apply the default settings to my figures. But I'm so in love with the result, I doubt I'll ever render anything without it again. The added brightness (gamma correction I suppose) is such a huge improvement to Poser's usually murky renders :)

Quote -  Thats good and all for personal projects, but not practical for creating packages for sale ;/

I use VSS extensively in all my products for sale: it makes the process much less painful. Since I write my own (much less clever) skin shader, it would be ever so painful to distribute shader over the 29 material zones every time I make a change. So, VSS is particularly useful for developers.

I do use Ockham's Texture filter script against the VSS materials (setting to none) but the new version of matmatic will expose that aspect of the ImageMap node.

Quote -
...
I have to say, though that I really do not think hair on the skin color map is a good idea at all.
...
The hair should be on a transmap, which I can layer on top of the skin in the shader, or even better on another prop above the skin.

This is how it is done with Apollo Maximus. Because of this, I can change the hair and keep the skin, or change the skin and keep the hair. We can adjust the hair color, thickness, all sorts of things. We can do this in the skin shader, or with a prop.
...
They use the same skin and same hair, but the hair is on its own image map, not painted on the skin.

I layer them together in the shader. How I layer them is adjustable. By tuning one number, we can change how thick the hair is.

I also have made the hair 3-dimensional, using displacement. I cannot do that if it is painted on the skin.

Bagginsbill, on page 12 you mentioned transmapped hair on the skin.  I read all 86 pages of this thread but did not see a post showing how to put the hair map together with the skin map.  I have an eyebrow mask which I would like to plug into your VSS PR3 AO shader but I do not know how.  I bought several skin textures with eyebrows painted directly on them.  I can remove the eyebrows from the skin textures, bump maps, and specular maps via Photoshop.  However, I do not know how to plug my own eyebrow masks into your VSS PR3 AO shader.  Any advice you can give me will be much appreciated.

 where's auto rename at?

The autoname is on the python script palette under design, IIRC.

 cool found it - thats what i was looking for!

So I hate how dependent shaders are on lights.

I work on skin shader all day, switch out lights, and it looks like total poop.

How can I make something and market it when chances are the consumer won't get as good of a result because they don't nerdfest read forums and technical crap like i do ?

Supply the lights you use in promos, so they see what they're supposed to do with lights. VSS shaders are far less dependant on lighting than others. But you can't make shaders that don't pay any attention to light levels. If people are going to be stupid and put 250% intensity lights on, then it will look bad. You can't design for them - you simply have to educate them that such lighting is like a blast furnace. And you * could* adjust the shader to work with the blast furnace, but then 90% of other people will complain your stuff is too dark.

Heck, I could make a shader work with 2000% light intensity, but then at 75% intensity it will look like it is lit by a candle 60 feet away.

 I know. Its a no win situation LOL. I opted for going with the 'this is how i rendered these promos' explanation instead of including 400 mat versions.

Also BB - I noticed that if you plug your standard VSS into Normal Diffuse instead of Alt_Diffuse it kills the GC network.

I'm sure its written somewhere - but why use the Alt_diffuse node instead of normal ??

Quote -  I know. Its a no win situation LOL. I opted for going with the 'this is how i rendered these promos' explanation instead of including 400 mat versions.

Also BB - I noticed that if you plug your standard VSS into Normal Diffuse instead of Alt_Diffuse it kills the GC network.

I'm sure its written somewhere - but why use the Alt_diffuse node instead of normal ??

Ummm, let's see if I learned my lessons properly...

Because Alt_Diffuse accepts and processes only shader information.
Diffuse_Color does calculations on what gets plugged into that channel for each light in the scene. Essentially this, according to BB:
**The Diffuse node formula (roughly) is:

Diffuse_Color * Diffuse_Value * Cosine(alpha) * LightColor * LightIntensity

That is only for one light. When there are multiple lights, that is evaluated for each light and these are all added together.**

Quote - ...why use the Alt_diffuse node instead of normal ??

The PoserSurface Diffuse_Color and Diffuse_Value channels are inputs to an internal Diffuse Node. The simplest shaders can have a colour map plugged directly into Diffuse_Color, and the internal Diffuse node does the Diffuse lighting calculations.

The VSS skin shader has already done all the Diffuse lighting calculations (as well as specular highlights), so you definitely don't want to feed the results into another Diffuse node.

Alt-Diffuse is a direct input channel, with no calculations apart from multiplying by the Alt-Diffuse colour (usually white, so it changes nothing) and adding the result to the PoserSurface output.

Edit: x-post... RV beat me to it!

Oh, but you did a far more complete job of explaining it, IsaoShi - reflecting a better understanding of this.

Great - thanks for the help. I'm off to vacation.

Enjoy your vacation, Bill: warmer climate, sunny skies... sounds delightful. Hang on, sounds like Brisbane, Queensland... :lol:

 you guys rock. 

Enjoy the Vacay Bill, you totalllly deserve one!

Quote - Hang on, sounds like Brisbane, Queensland...

Grrrrrr......
Hang on, your winter is on its way.
Heehee
Hang on, your winter is like our summer.
Grrrrrr......

Quote - The image above shows how to connect a transmap.  I created this for the Skin Template.  When you create a new node, make the connection and click auto-rename on the Script menu.  That will change the name of the node and make it ready to accept image maps from your character files.  Save the new VSSProp for future use.

Hborre, thank you very much for the helpful tip.  It looks like attaching the eyebrows map to the transparency input channel causes the eyebrows to show up only after Visible is turned on for the eyebrows, and only for the DAZ figures.  This method does not seem to work for Miki 2 since she does not have an "eyebrows" body part.  How do I make the eyebrows visible for Miki 2?

Unfortunately, Miki 2 is one of those models which requires her eyebrows to be 'painted' onto her texture.  Where VSS is concerned, if it doesn't find that particular material zone, it ignores and doesn't effect a change.

That's very sad.  Oh well, guess I must start painting eyebrows directly onto Miki2's texture.  Thanks for responding Hborre.

VSS Pr3

Almost looks like too much gamma.  Can we see a MAT room screencap?

Which base figure is this? I've taken to drawing my own eyebrows  and using displacement/transparency maps on the eyebrow material zone. That way, the eyebrow shader is separate.

I have had similar problems with specular maps. I would try by passing it to see if that's where the problem lies.

Hi Hborre

 I've tried various Gamma settings including the PoserPro2010 Gamma 1 setting- as well as gamma 1.5, and 2.2. I do see changes in skin tone- but the grey graphite eyebrows remain

Hi Robyn and General

 It is V4.2 with the Rio character and texture maps.  Hmmn, specular maps....

Quote -
 I've tried various Gamma settings including the PoserPro2010 Gamma 1 setting- as well as gamma 1.5, and 2.2. I do see changes in skin tone- but the grey graphite eyebrows remain

I had the same problem with another vendor's textures.  In the textures the alternate specular input channel was connected to the bump map instead of a true specular map.  If this is the case with Rio's textures, check out page 76 of this thread.  On this page Bagginsbill shows us how to change the VSS skin shader so it directly uses the color map.  The grey eyebrow effect should go away.

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.
 

 I had this exact problem with the Rio character and IIRC the color map was loaded into the specular map node after synchornizing.  This is partly why I use VSS to load all the maps to a mapless figure.

< wierdness >
As always, I use VSS quite a bit differently than the designer had intended, but only because I use a number of colourMaps, references for which lie in a data-reference py file, which my matmatic scripts get their data from.
So, I have these mt6 files that blank out the material zones that I want to re-populate with new colourMaps. I know: not what BB had intended, but hey, it works. This also helps me update a figure's shader if I happen to rename a colourMap node: the old-named one tends to remain (unconnected to anything) if I don't blank out those zones. < / wierdness >

 I look at VSS as a tool to apply shader rules from a single prop to a multitude of materials on any number of figures or props.  I fear that many users think of it only as a skin enhancer and dismiss it if they don't like what they see after hitting synchronize.

I´m not sure I understand your input correctly RobynsVeil :) but does it mean that you can let VSS replace an existing texture map?   In other words, is it possible to load an image into the color map in VSS and have replace an existing color map on a figure?

It should be very possible.  The only problem is you tie up your VSSProp with an absolute path to other textures.  Robyn is hinting at generating mc6 files after synchronization, which BB has suggested in the past.  That is not unconventional and is better if you create a perfect reusable combination.  The blanks are confusing me for the moment.

 There is a rather contrasty specular map- NO bump map I turned PM Shine LEVEL down from 1 to 0.25.

  Hborre: being PoserPro2010 the Gamma Value 1 In and Gamma Value 1 Out are both set to ONE, 

Bagginsbill, I looked up your web site and VSS home page but couldn't find mm1 files for the VSS PR3 and VSS PR3 AO skin shaders.  Have you published Matmatic files for your VSS skin shaders?  If you did, would you give me the links?  I'm studying the nodes in these shaders and it will be very helpful if I have your matmatic files to study also.

hawarren - I lost it! I can't find the PR3 mm1 file anymore.

My recall is hazy, but back at that time I swtiched jobs and computers, and I think I misplaced the fie, because I didn't care about it as I was building a new way of doing shaders in matmatic.
The new approach doesn't change the nature of the shader, but rather the nature of how I assemble the shader. Traditionally I would write one big function to do a shader. This made it difficult to take any individual effect in the code and reuse it somewhere else. So the new implementation is based on a stack of objects, and it's very complex, not in the shader it produced, but in how it works. I haven't finished the stacked material architecture yet, so it's caveat emptor if you're willing to look at it.

Third, it's all one big file, including some effects that I don't want to give away for free. So while I'm happy to share the free parts, I have to separate them out first. I will do that, but I'm working on a tutorial for another thread at the moment, so it will be later today. I'll be back.

I actually took the time to skim the thread in its entiety - this took 6 hours last night.

Today I got VSS to work beautifully in Poser 7 and Poser Pro 2010 (for this I was setting Gamma in the shader to 1). But I've got two questions:

When I enable OpenGL hardware shading my figure preview turns all white when applying the PR3 skin shader with VSS. Is there a workaround available?

Is this VSS PR3 skin shader still state of the poser-art or are there (arguably) better skin shaders available these days?

As for the first question I´ve never been able to use OpenGL hardware shading in Poser so I can't really comment on that.

As for the second question, there are other shading systems out there like the one from D3D and FaceOff.  Personally I find VSS to be much better.  It's also important to think of VSS as more then a skin enhancer.  VSS stands for Versatile Shading System and you can use it anytime you need to apply shading properties over many objects and materials.  If you manage to improve the skin material that comes with VSS you can still use VSS to apply it to your figures.

I seem to recall BB mentioning that for Miki 3, he developed 3 different versions of VSS and Smith Micro only used one of them.  I would be curious to see the other two versions of VSS. I'd like to give the a try if they are different from VSS3.

There is sometimes a lag in OpenGL as the textures are applied through VSS conversion.  I sometimes jump back into the material room for allow the process to automatically finish. 

Vestmann mentions two other shader systems available, and IIRC, D3D is loosely based on VSS node arrangements.  FaceOff is an older system which relies on light settings and skin texturing.  Not as reliable, every time you change your lights, you must reapply the script.  For the most part, VSS is much more versatile and can be modified for all situations. 

Again, VSS intent is for easy application of any shader node arrangement for any prop or figure.  It changes many material zones at once, which is a time saver if you have many figures/objects present in the scene.  All you need to do, create the necessary material zones and rules, and let synchronization do the rest.

Edit: Latexluv, I have looked at that node arrangement for Miki3 (I have her) and the node network is not as extensive as VSSPR3.  But it works very well in PP2010.  You can see her in my gallery:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2152637

The shipping Miki3 shader is not like the VSS PR3 at all. I invented it when SM asked for a new shader and felt that the full VSS shader was too complicated. (I don't know what they really mean by that - other than seeing lots of nodes scares people? But then lots of nodes produce correct results without manual intervention, so .... )

I did make what you might call PR4 and tried it on Miki. It looks slightly more real - we're at the margins of the 90/10 rule here. You have to do 9 times more work to get another increment in realism at this point.

If you have PP2010 with render GC and IDL, you don't need the complicated shaders I have been using. It's mostly in the correct setting up of the Blinn node - after that it's just marginal details that arguably have no absolutely "correct" value.

If you don't have render GC and IDL running, then the Miki 3 shader is weak and the VSS PR3 is better. PR4 is more better, but it's a tiny improvement.

When I have time I will publish the PR4 shader. Too busy right now.

Quote - (I don't know what they really mean by that - other than seeing lots of nodes scares people? But then lots of nodes produce correct results without manual intervention, so .... )

TBH it's pretty cluttered, with every single node expanded and spread out offscreen.  If the nodes don't need manual intervention, why have them expanded and spread everywhere?  Collapse them and maybe even arrange the collapsed nodes by function.  What if you wanted to mix in a partial bump map or partial texture?  Just leave the map nodes expanded.

Quote - > Quote - (I don't know what they really mean by that - other than seeing lots of nodes scares people? But then lots of nodes produce correct results without manual intervention, so .... )

TBH it's pretty cluttered, with every single node expanded and spread out offscreen.  If the nodes don't need manual intervention, why have them expanded and spread everywhere?  Collapse them and maybe even arrange the collapsed nodes by function.  What if you wanted to mix in a partial bump map or partial texture?  Just leave the map nodes expanded.

Of course, you understand the shader was created with Matmatic. I actually coded a skin shader some time ago in Python which was compiled using matmatic that collapsed nodes and arranged them in stack all neat and tidy, but at the sacrifice of readable code: each math function had to be identified as a node entity in order to manipulate the settings of that node. I don't think that BB (who saw the code) has fully recovered yet. :blink:

Matmatic-generated shaders should, to my view, only be modified with Matmatic, with extremely rare exceptions. If you try to reverse-engineer PR3 (the most commonly used shader that came bundled with VSS) they'd be putting you in a quiet room with nice people giving you sustenance through straws and medication every hour on the hour. What I found most interesting about Matmatic-generated node sets: the compiler would take process-conserving steps to arrive at the result you're anticipating with a given formula, so you'd expect one node set and actually find another. Not sure if I said that correctly, but anyway...

Okay, I am having a moment of proverbial blondness here.

I am using VSS with the albino material to make my figures skin texture paler.  No problems, all happily adjusted save for one small detail.  No AO in the albino shader that I can see.

Normally, I have no issues adding AO to a material, but the snake pit of VSS is still a wee bit of a mystery.

Since I would like to add this to the material how would I go about it?  I could add an IBL with AO, but since all my AO in the scene is materials based so far, would be easier to just add it to the materials for V4. 

I may have missed it in the thread here if this has already been covered, if I have I am sorry.

Any help would be appreciated.