Quote - Over time - initially I just need to get this basic/essential shader done and out the door.

Any approximate ETA for this and the BBEye? I've been trying to remap a lot of my Gen4 eyes over to the free version, but often they don't look as good as I'd like. :( 

we're not certain when the metals shader pak will be released, however here's another one with a less chromatic room (red viper's e. d. warehouse). the reflections don't look as fake as they do in a room with saturated RGB wall hangings.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/full.php?image_id=2225157

Zaarin,

I sent a note to syyd at RDNA to begin discussion of putting the metals in a store. It's only been a day but haven't heard back yet. I haven't thought of going to Rendo or Daz as I feel they take too much percentage. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't know.

I have a question on metal packaging.

I generally do not make shader packs - I make one shader that does a thousand variations and expect you guys to figure out how to use the parameter nodes I set up to make it easy to control effects. Normally if I were publishing this metal as a freebie, that's what I'd do.

But I know that non-enthusiasts of the mat room will buy this. They will want presets. How far do I go?

I have 14 metal colors

I have 5 finishes (actually infinite number as it is a numeric parameter, but I could argue the need for 5 is all - mirror, polished, brushed, dull, matte)

I have 3 surfaces - smooth, hammered, distressed (again, really an infinite number, but let's say 3)

So that is 14 * 5 * 3 = 210 different materials.

Should I include 210 materials in the pack? Or 14 colors only and let users figure out how to do finish and surface? Or some selection of 20 or 30 that I think are most useful like brushed aluminum and steel, matte brass, hammered polished copper, distressed dull silver, etc?

Quote - I sent a note to syyd at RDNA to begin discussion of putting the metals in a store.

Yay!!!

Quote - ...

But I know that non-enthusiasts of the mat room will buy this. They will want presets. How far do I go?

I have 14 metal colors

I have 5 finishes (actually infinite number as it is a numeric parameter, but I could argue the need for 5 is all - mirror, polished, brushed, dull, matte)

I have 3 surfaces - smooth, hammered, distressed (again, really an infinite number, but let's say 3)

So that is 14 * 5 * 3 = 210 different materials.

Should I include 210 materials in the pack? Or 14 colors only and let users figure out how to do finish and surface? Or some selection of 20 or 30 that I think are most useful like brushed aluminum and steel, matte brass, hammered polished copper, distressed dull silver, etc?

If i search in the marketplace here for "materials" i would say that 210 is not an especially large number for a material package. 200-300 seems to be quite common, with the filesize still being very small.

I would desist from including an actual infinite number of .mt5 files, however: zip files cannot handle this very well :-) 

Thanks for the feedback. By filesize still small, what do we look for here?

Remember, this is a BB material, physically accurate, with automatic GC. It is 64 nodes per material.

I wonder if the fact that they are identical files except for a few numbers will make them compress together better than usual.

Quote - Even with automation, it took over an hour to generate the thumbnails, and now I'm not happy with them. Sigh.

Hm, i would include just the plate in the thumbnail (if the materials contain displacement and/or absolute unit-dependent values) or the orb (if they do not).

Also i would try to make everything fit into 10MB if possible.

I personally would be suspicious about the automatic GC if i read it in a description, BTW. What does this mean? Perhaps you might consider offering a GC and a non-GC version of each material?

Ah, and include subdirectories for the different colors, please.

Hope not sounding too demanding here, it is just my personal opinion, but since you asked... :-)

I think the different shapes are good to show things react. I would put them in a gold, silver, bronze, etc. subdirecotry. I don't think that the file count is too much.

Quote - Zaarin,

I sent a note to syyd at RDNA to begin discussion of putting the metals in a store. It's only been a day but haven't heard back yet. I haven't thought of going to Rendo or Daz as I feel they take too much percentage. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't know.

I have a question on metal packaging.

I generally do not make shader packs - I make one shader that does a thousand variations and expect you guys to figure out how to use the parameter nodes I set up to make it easy to control effects. Normally if I were publishing this metal as a freebie, that's what I'd do.

But I know that non-enthusiasts of the mat room will buy this. They will want presets. How far do I go?

I have 14 metal colors

I have 5 finishes (actually infinite number as it is a numeric parameter, but I could argue the need for 5 is all - mirror, polished, brushed, dull, matte)

I have 3 surfaces - smooth, hammered, distressed (again, really an infinite number, but let's say 3)

So that is 14 * 5 * 3 = 210 different materials.

Should I include 210 materials in the pack? Or 14 colors only and let users figure out how to do finish and surface? Or some selection of 20 or 30 that I think are most useful like brushed aluminum and steel, matte brass, hammered polished copper, distressed dull silver, etc?

Good news! :) People want options when it comes to materials, especially since it seems even more people are allergic to the material room than the cloth room. I'd include as many presets as possible; as several people here have said already, 210 is not really a large number of materials for a material pack. Also, I second (third?) the suggestion of subfolders; it makes things a lot easier to keep track of. Of course, I sort my library myself so I can easily enough resort it if its not. Others may not do so, however, and seeing 210 items in one folder could be a little daunting.

Quote - People want options when it comes to materials, especially since it seems even more people are allergic to the material room than the cloth room. I'd include as many presets as possible

That made me laugh!!  I agree about the options.  Since all I can really do in the material room is connnect a basic node to the poser surface node, and possibly tweak the colour of something, the more options I have available in a materials package the better.

Also, since I'm highly organized, I like the idea of sub folders. 

Ah but which subfolder organization - whatever I pick surely someone will not like it.

There are two golds. There are four brasses. Two coppers. Only one each of steel, aluminum, silver, chrome, and platinum. Do I:

Put Gold and Gold2 in separate or same folders? (Think carefully as you imagine yourself trying out which you like better.)

Put Brass 1, 2, 3, 4 in separate or same folders?

Is breakdown by color really the first division? Suppose you know you want a polished metal for everything, but some are silver, some gold, some brass. Do you want the top folder to be Polished, and it contains all the colors?

Where does hammered and distressed come? At the top, 3 folders, Smooth, Hammered, Distressed? Or do you expect to find those variations together in a Polished Golds folder?

I can't figure out the best structure based on guessing use cases.

Quote - Ah but which subfolder organization - whatever I pick surely someone will not like it.

There are two golds. There are four brasses. Two coppers. Only one each of steel, aluminum, silver, chrome, and platinum. Do I:

Put Gold and Gold2 in separate or same folders? (Think carefully as you imagine yourself trying out which you like better.)

Put Brass 1, 2, 3, 4 in separate or same folders?

Is breakdown by color really the first division? Suppose you know you want a polished metal for everything, but some are silver, some gold, some brass. Do you want the top folder to be Polished, and it contains all the colors?

Where does hammered and distressed come? At the top, 3 folders, Smooth, Hammered, Distressed? Or do you expect to find those variations together in a Polished Golds folder?

I can't figure out the best structure based on guessing use cases.

I'd personally like to see them separated by color, with Gold 1 and Gold 2 as separate etc. For my workflow at least that would be what I would choose--I usually know what metal I want and can decide finish from there. shrug 

I think just a folder for each metal type would work.  IE: Gold; Brass; Copper, or whatever metals you are going to have. 

I do love sub folders, but there does some a time where there is too many. For example, a folder for each colour of gold that contains just 3 shaders such as "brushed", "Shiney" and "dented"

I think all shades of gold and its various textures should be in one folder. All shades of copper and its various textures in another, etc.

Could a script be written where you check a box for choice of color (gold/platnum/etc.) , reflection (matte/mirror) and then a surface condition (hammered/brushed/distressed/etc.) option that you could check more than one and have amounts that could be entered for each? Perhaps also include a small amount of mat files too.

Quote - Could a script be written where you check a box for choice of color (gold/platnum/etc.) , reflection (matte/mirror) and then a surface condition (hammered/brushed/distressed/etc.) option that you could check more than one and have amounts that could be entered for each? Perhaps also include a small amount of mat files too.

With the understanding that there is no GUI, I already wrote such a script. It's called matmatic. And this is how I make the 210 shaders. 

Quote - > Quote - Could a script be written where you check a box for choice of color (gold/platnum/etc.) , reflection (matte/mirror) and then a surface condition (hammered/brushed/distressed/etc.) option that you could check more than one and have amounts that could be entered for each? Perhaps also include a small amount of mat files too.

With the understanding that there is no GUI, I already wrote such a script. It's called matmatic. And this is how I make the 210 shaders. 

Coming in a bit late, but whole-heartedly agreeing with Acadia and everyone else: the more options, the merrier. Too bad the thumbnails can't be generated in matmatic as well, but I'm sure you could script something in Photoshop that would give you the requisite variances of colour.

And I'm already in the queue to Buy this, basically on Principle. After all the gifts you've given us, Ted, I'm elated to see you finally getting a bit more than just a few " 'ats-a-way! " for your efforts!

BTW, no day goes by (when I do get a chance to open Poser) that I don't open Notepad++ to write/mod a matmatic script and then compile... not a single day. Needs to be part of the next version of Poser, to my view!

My question is: Will it be a merchant resource? (Pleeease?)

So the merchant resource issue is fascinating. Ugh - so many things to think about when trying to make money!!!

Keep in mind that all these materials are actually the same shader, identical, except for a few parameters.

The hardest of these parameters to figure out was the color and reflectivity coefficient (expressed as IOR). I've done that work so you get realistic results with no effort.

So now you build a prop - perhaps jewelry - and sell it with all 14 metals. And the other 200 are just a click away by editing the parameters in any of those 14 metals. I myself could model a pair of hoop earrings in 5 minutes or less, so it's no big deal to "add value" to the product and avoid directly selling the metal shaders alone and violating merchant resource rules.

Basically you've embedded my product in yours through five minutes of work. Now people have a choice to buy mine or yours, probably at similar or lower prices than mine. How do I make money? Do I get to charge more for the merchant resource license? Or do I get a cut of your product? How does this work?

This is not like a skin texture, where the rule is you have to go and substantially change the texture before you sell it as part of a character. These are basic metals, with as much realism as I can assemble. It means that if you were to substantially change the shader before reselling, you'd basically be ruining it. 

@BB

Before selling something as material nodes, there is another question to answer.
And beware, not a easy one.

What you made looks fantastic.
But??
When all is said and done,  in front of a jury, anyone (mathematically speaking) can make the same thing.

So the question is: Whith what criteria or proof do I file a complaint?

As you said yourself: the first juwelery sold will have your material nodes in it.

From there it is out of control.

I buy a juwelery with one of your materials in it, but as usual; "Who reads a read-me file"????

A few weeks later, I build and start selling a kitchen.
And i use some nodes I found in the juwelery for the sink.
One small part, of a total of some 25-30 materials.

What about?
Oh, yeah, just accidentaly, I bought the juwelery from a chap in Ourboekoen, live myself in Whocareswhereland, and sell at a server on a Moonlike Cloud.

And? I made a "ahum" single mistake, some 5 decimals behind the comma.. ha-ha-ha-

But, all this is for every one that sells stuff.
You worry about it, or you do not.

But? And that is your smart  bright side, you already made those reflections yourself.

vilters,

I have never had to pursue these ideas and questions until now. But I have thought about some a little bit. Whether my reasoning holds up to Rendo or actual legal standards - who knows.

Anyway - a shader is actually a program. In fact, the shader I made is the output of a compiler, with a specific source code as input. While you may use the same math, you may not use the same source code. Same as if I make a program to do linear regression, and you do also - we may both sell this program without fear of intellectual property, because linear regression is math. But it may be that mine is a copy of yours, in which case I have violated your copyright.

In the case of a two-node shader, there is no question that "copyright" cannot be claimed. However, with 60 nodes doing things in just such and such a way that only I seem to know how to do - well that is easy to judge, don't you think?

Yes you can make a metal shader, and it may have 30 nodes and use the same colors I do - but you may NOT use exactly the same 60 nodes that I have used. At that point, the complexity is enough to demonstrate that it is software, and software is protected by copyright.

The idea of a metal shader with specific features may be protected by patent. But I have no intention of pursuing any sort of patent protection. For example, you could argue that I invented the idea for auto-shader GC and that is patentable, whether or not it is done in a Poser shader. But I'm not going to bother with anything like that. I encourage people to use the ideas freely.

I'm concerned about the weeks of measurement I did - and the information of how to do gold accurately - that results in direct copying with no effort. That is bothersome. I looked everywhere for this information and it was not available. Clearly I did research and development, resulting in a shader that no one else produced up to that point. Discovering and exploiting physical properties is not pure math and is protectable, in theory.

Right, we are on the same track here.

At my last job in the Belgian Air Force, before retirement,  I was reponsable for the application of Standards and Norms.
ISO, DIN, EN Norms, Stanags, and so on. (including copyright issues)
So I know their value in court.
It is rightfully very wise to think about it beforehand.

As you clearly did.

Reverse-engineering a complex shader generated by matmatic/Poser is not possible (just in case someone was thinking that might be an idea): matmatic creates a node set based on efficiency, which may or may not be what you'd expect to see based on the mathmatics or code you'd compiled.

Quote - Reverse-engineering a complex shader generated by matmatic/Poser is not possible (just in case someone was thinking that might be an idea): matmatic creates a node set based on efficiency, which may or may not be what you'd expect to see based on the mathmatics or code you'd compiled.

Oh, but then there no danger in trying it, is there? But then how would you know the shader does what you wanted it do do? :-)

Quote - > Quote - Reverse-engineering a complex shader generated by matmatic/Poser is not possible (just in case someone was thinking that might be an idea): matmatic creates a node set based on efficiency, which may or may not be what you'd expect to see based on the mathmatics or code you'd compiled.

Oh, but then there no danger in trying it, is there? But then how would you know the shader does what you wanted it do do? :-)

Nope, no danger. Good luck - I tried. :biggrin: You'd kind-of have to know the shortcuts/optimisation algorythms matmatic takes to create node sets - it's not a one-to-one relationship between code and nodes.

Quote - I know that non-enthusiasts of the mat room will buy this. They will want presets. How far do I go? I have 14 metal colors

I have 5 finishes (actually infinite number as it is a numeric parameter, but I could argue the need for 5 is all - mirror, polished, brushed, dull, matte)

I have 3 surfaces - smooth, hammered, distressed (again, really an infinite number, but let's say 3)

So that is 14 * 5 * 3 = 210 different materials.

Should I include 210 materials in the pack? Or 14 colors only and let users figure out how to do finish and surface? Or some selection of 20 or 30 that I think are most useful like brushed aluminum and steel, matte brass, hammered polished copper, distressed dull silver, etc?

What, no fantasy metals?  Like "mythril" from the lotr movies?

As for structure, you can either do by metal, maybe lumping the ones you have more than one of together, or by finish (mirrored, hammered).  If it were me I'd go by metal. 

About the merchant resource, you might make a "crippled" version for a MR.  Fewer metal options and I know you like to add extra controls... you can get rid of those.  you can also maybe simplify the nodes for something that is close to the BB metals for sale, but slightly less real.  But it kind of sounds like you don't want to go the last route.  And you are right to be worried about the color, IOR, and whatever other measurements you have being stolen. 

Hmm.  Maybe not doing an MR for it until you know what you'd be dealing with before then would be the best idea.  People can always say this is the item with BB's shaders (sold seperately).  If others like it so much, they can go and buy it for themselves.

Finally, have you considered a scientific paper on the numbers?  If they are going to be stolen anyways, at the least you'd get some recognition for your efforts.

Quote - People can always say this is the item with BB's shaders (sold seperately). If others like it so much, they can go and buy it for themselves.

This sounds like the best route to me, personally. 

About Merchant Resources: limitations can and are often included in the Readme and product files. If a person doesn't read your limitations and makes a product ignoring them, one needs to only complain and most stores either remove the product or require the vendor to fix it. In ANY case, the only person licensed to distribute your Merchant Resource is the person who BOUGHT it, and that person is bound by the limitations you impose on your resource.

Most material resources I have place limitations on their included seamless textures that the materials use (i.e. a person can use in a single product 4 of the 30 textures included in the merchant resource).

Your product uses only procedurals; you could say something like "use only 5 of the variations included, or only 10 of your own modified variations of this shader, in any one product you create". Also the "you can't use these shaders for freely-distributed products, only for commercial products". There's also the "these shaders can only be X% of the value of your product", but that one is harder to impose as it's so... relative, so to say.

Bottom line is: you already mentioned the color of gold here, for anyone to see. Surely I can't do much with that tiny bit of information, as important as it is; however, anyone of enough understanding of materials to actually FIND this information inside your 60-node-shader will know that a person is not licensed to simply copy your nodes and use them in their own materials for redistribution.

I do, however, have the impression that vendors worry more about the quality of the materials they use than regular users, so maybe you'd lose a good share of potential buyers if you don't make it a merchant resource. I, for one, never buy material packs unless I can use some of those materials in my products (I might end up buying yours, because I love your stuff and because I think you deserve at least that bit of my money for how much you've helped my material knowledge improve, but I'd sorely miss the ability to use these metals in my clothing and hair packs). Legally, a person who buys a product that includes your shaders would mostly be able to copy those shaders only to paste on their own scenes (maybe not even that) and NEVER to redistribute them; plus most people wouldn't know what in those 60 nodes to change in order to have a different metal color or feature, so they'd be stuck with that particular metal included in the product they have (hence the limitation to use X number of your shaders in a single product). They might even like it so much that they decide to buy your shader pack just to have the other options (might be a long shot, but it does happen!).

All in all, I guess it would be worth the extra you'd get from vendors who need good metals in their products, and being a resource might give it enough extra value to pump the price up a bit. And I swear I'm trying not to be biased here just because I really (really) want it as a resource LOL

Any news on this? :)

I'm in contact with Colm - getting myself set up as a vendor.

 Glad to hear it! I usually do my picky renders in Lightwave- multiply faster than FireFly-but given that the only reason I can even LOOK at Poser skin renders is VSS- I think I will buy your new shader!

Quote - I'm in contact with Colm - getting myself set up as a vendor.

Quote - I'm in contact with Colm - getting myself set up as a vendor.

Sweet. :) 

Still seems too much like tinted  chrome than gold to me.

Because, as I said, the color changes with angle of incidence. A single tint applied in every direction leaves out some things that are in that last 5% towards realism. It's what I worked on so hard.

Also, your environment is decidedly low dynamic range, which makes the reflections seem dull. Try to use an HDR environment and see what you get.

BB, for those who want to resell your shaders, you could always offer a special licensed version which is more expensive. Surely you could make minor changes to the shader so that it was obvious to you which was for sale and which was purchased for personal use. 

Can't wait to get a copy. I think this is one of poser's biggest limitations: good procedural textures. 

Hum hum ...

Before selling, are all these shaders P2012 compatible ? If not it's totally useless for me.

Also the wood is procedural - next package.

Quote - Hum hum ...

Before selling, are all these shaders P2012 compatible ? If not it's totally useless for me.

Poser's policy has always favored backwards compatibility. I seriously doubt they'll ever allow newer versions to be unable to load content made in older versions properly.

Correct. There are nodes that should have been deleted already but they are kept for compatibility.

Who would use the skin node today? LOL

I have been admiring the demo renders you have been showing us! Makes me itchy to have Pro2012 on my system now.

Quote - Because, as I said, the color changes with angle of incidence. A single tint applied in every direction leaves out some things that are in that last 5% towards realism. It's what I worked on so hard. Also, your environment is decidedly low dynamic range, which makes the reflections seem dull. Try to use an HDR environment and see what you get.

Actually I remembered that part, but I'm still working on it.  I'm also probably nowhere close to getting to it because as of now that shader was... maybe a dozen nodes.

I'll look into HDR enviroments as well.  I don't think I've used things like that before yet.

Quote - Correct. There are nodes that should have been deleted already but they are kept for compatibility.

Wouldn't it be possible to delete those node and let the program auto-convert them into a current node set up.

Let's be honest, if new to this and I never heard of rendo and I tried to make a human skin texture, one of the first things I'd probably do was try the node that's called skin.  From a newbie's perspective that choice would be a no-brainer. 

The right thing to do is called deprecation.

Note that word is not depreciation. It's deprecation.

When you deprecate a feature, old files that use it still work, but nobody can pick that feature any more. It's removed from the user interface options so you can't add it. They should do that.

gold is silver if it's pure, considered white gold.

only looks like that smitten with copper to make it yellow.

Are you joking or misinformed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_gold

While pure gold is yellow in color, colored gold can be developed into various colors. These colors are generally obtained by alloying gold with other elements in various proportions

White gold is an alloy of gold and at least one white metal, usually nickel, manganese or palladium. Like yellow gold, the purity of white gold is given in karats.

Whoa, that's weird.  After the first link in bill's post, all the other ones point to a hypothetical rendo wiki.

And I agree depreciation would be the right thing to do.  I got a little annoyed when I  saw that SM brought back the two reflect_lite checkboxes again.

I quoted wiki, and the links are relative links. I didn't mean to put them there but they were in the source and I didn't want to bother removing them.

I would love to buy the complete bagginsbill compendium of materials. I await my opportunity (impatiently).

If I should ever get to the point of being able to make a product to sell (ROFLOL), and I wanted to use a BB material, I think I would contact BB directly to purchase the right to use his materials on a material by material basis.

Personally, I think SM should buy materials from BB to include in each version of Poser like with WW2 by PhilC. That makes the most sense to me.

lmk