I've noticed that some products come with both material files (.mc*) and pose files (.pz*) to change the color and texture of an outfit. What's the advantage of using one over the other?

Matpose files are an old hold over from previous versions of Poser and they are still in common use.  The disadvantage is that you can only apply textures to CR2 models.  They are not reliable for props unless they are parented to actual models.  Material files are not restricted, they can be applied to any type of model present in your scene.  You will see more vendors creating Material files especially with the ease of apply textures in the most recent iterations of Poser.

Well, that was fast. So if you have the choice, use the material files (.mc*) and just delete the pose or matpose files (.pz*).

that's what I would do..lol. I've even starting converting all my old mat poses over to material files just to get them out of my pose folders.

Laurie

LaurieA...

How does one convert mat poses to mat files? I can see a real advantage to getting all the mat files out of the Pose folder!

Load the mat files to your object. Go to the material room and save as a material collection. You can even use the thumbs from the MAT files as the thumbs for your material files then delete the lot of the MAT pose files ;)

If you want, you can even change the pose files with a text editor over to a material file. Since I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to be changing there, I just load the pose file first and resave....lol. But I know it can be done. markshum or nruddock would prolly know ;o)...lol

Laurie

As always, many thanks! I'll give it a try!

Hmmm, another outlet for my OCD: culling the mat pose files in my Pose folder.

My stars, though... the process! Because of course I'm not happy just loading the item and leaving the shader well-enough alone. You realise what this means, don't you? Might come up for air in 2024... maybe.

I'd have to correct them all for gamma before resaving at least...lol

Laurie

Another advantage of mc6 files is that Poser will check if the object you apply the mc6 to has the corresponding material zones and will ask you if you really want to create lots of useless material zones... Oh and you get that advantage by just changing the file extension (and pre Poser 8 by moving the pose files to the material folder of course - if you use Poser's library :-)). This won't help to apply the pose file to props though, but it's good enough for mat poses for figures.

Basicwiz, some MAT poses are partial;  they only change some of the material zones.  To make the corresponding selective mc6, click the + to save and specify a subset of whatever material zones are relevant.

For example, a MAT pose entitled makeup A might only include skinface and lips.  You could set a doll to bare shaders (I keep an mc6 just for wiping everything to simple shaders) and then apply the MAT pose to find which material zones are affected.  Or, if you're comfortable with a file editor utility, you could study the MAT pose in that.