Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: VSS Skin Test - Opinions

bagginsbill opened this issue on Apr 23, 2008 · 2832 posts


bagginsbill posted Fri, 15 July 2011 at 4:03 PM

Quote -
The reason I changed it to 4 material zones is because all of the Winter Queen Wing material zones are different and hborre suggested that I needed a different material zone for each of the WQ Wing node setups that were different.

Well, yes as in different nodes, not different maps. Often the only reason we have multiple materials on something is because the detail desired cannot be got on just one map. When the shader setup is the same except the maps are different or missing in some, you do not need multiple templates. VSS deals with multiple maps automatically. 

Quote - Which is all 4 material zones because the image maps vary and so does the poser surface node values.

Again - if the image maps vary, that has no bearing on the matter. If the nodes vary, then it does. 

Do they really vary? They have different numbers in them? You have to understand that the point of VSS is to save you time by combining multiple materials in one template shader. The first impediment to doing so is usually varying image maps, and VSS takes care of that. You don't put the image maps into the template. 

If, on the other hand, the numbers in the node parameters are truly different, then you will need to have multiple shaders.

Quote - A VSS shader that will work on the Poser 6 Winter Queen Wings. The same way that the default VSS shader works on V4.

Ah - but the VSS shader works and creates value by

  1. Applying a new shader that you don't have. Something better than you already have. Something you don't get from almost all the vendors out there - a Bagginsbill shader.

  2. Doing it across many material zones automatically.

  3. Applying a great shader onto another set of image maps that normally load with a not-so-great shader.

In the case of these wings, you don't have anything to benefit from. You're not using a Bagginsbill shader - you plan to use the shader that is already there. And you're not going to save time by applying shader changes from one place to many - each of your templates goes only to one place. And I'm assuming you don't have other 3rd party image maps for the wings that you want to swap out the shaders but still use those maps.

Using VSS will be more work, not less work, then simply editing the target materials directly.


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