I may still have it wrong. I'm on a conference call and distracted.

Have you guessed why it worked?

It's because I was running with render GC, so all my material-based GC or AGC calls were disabled, so it didn't matter if I got them wrong.

Now that I'm testing with render GC off, it's not working right.

-- Disabling GC entirely (by using renderer GC) made it work right.
-- Material GC alone makes it work wrong.

I remember from a previous thread that there was a question of something else (lights?) that was influencing my outcomes with material GC. Dunno if that has any bearing, here...

Might have found a Poser bug. Switch GC off, render, then GC on, render, I get different results than if I load and render with GC on.

Something about the Background shader or an empty scene means a repeat render with GC switched doesn't work right.

The prop-based one works right every time.

And the Background-based one works as long as you don't switch GC without loading a prop.

x-post: This shader ignores lights. Nothing to do with it. Render without lights - same thing.

So, the script is fine.

-- I'll turn GC off. Save scene (with my hi-res square prop). Close Poser.
-- Load Poser and scene with GC turned off. Run the script and make the materials.

Again - it seems that the prop-based works fine always, and the background-based works fine if the texture is also on a prop, even if we can't see the prop.

It also works fine if you switch before your first render and don't switch after.

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I was informed that it's not wise to post even fragments of a skin texture, so I'll show a render using that texture instead.

The approach I used was:

-- include these lines in the script:
path = "runtime:textures:!SaintFox:ToniPolygon:"
textFace = path + "ToniPHead.jpg"
colorMap = PM2(ImageMap(textFace).labelled("Color Map"))

-- run the script without manipulating any values (compile into mt5)
-- load on a high-res square
-- render the square at 4000 x 4000 with the settings I gave earlier
-- save the render as ToniPHeadls3.jpg
-- load this texture for lips and head

The background (non-texture region) ends up being black - not sure how to change that in the script. I photoshop-ped it to be roughly a skin colour as the resultant texture created black lines around the lips. Here's a render:

My focus is on the lips... there still needs to be some manipulating of values I'm unclear on.

It's the Split View thingie - Add(1, 0) fixes it (well, made it white - not sure if that's really a fix).

Put the whole shader on the GROUND instead and used the top camera. The cloth plane was clipping off the side of the texture image.

What? What do you mean "It's the SplitView thingie".

The Split View should be 0 if you don't want to see the original texture.

If you set it to 1, then you will not be seeing the result of the despec. The purpose of split view was to set it to .5, and then half is original color map, and half is despec'd. Or .25 if you want 1/4 original and 3/4 despec'd. Etc.

The reason the white background is turned to black is that it is a perfect specular color - white.

I don't think you can get a despec shader to ignore white - that's exactly where it needs to be applied.

Yes I understand that's not in the face, but the shader doesn't know that. Remember, the shader gets to work on one tiny spot at a time, not even a whole pixel. It can't look around and go "oh, I'm not on the face anymore".

Quote - What? What do you mean "It's the SplitView thingie".

The Split View should be 0 if you don't want to see the original texture.

If you set it to 1, then you will not be seeing the result of the despec. The purpose of split view was to set it to .5, and then half is original color map, and half is despec'd. Or .25 if you want 1/4 original and 3/4 despec'd. Etc.

Oh. I see. Just looking at the lip texture, I see no discernable difference between the original and the despecced texture. Set split to PM(.5, ... and see no discernable difference between the right and left side of the texture. GC for the renderer has been turned off.

Btw, hooked that last Blender node to diffuse_color to see the texture displayed on GROUND in preview. Diffuse_Value to 0, of course.

Rendering now...

Correction: the rendered image does show a difference in the lower part of the face right to left but not in the eyebrow region. I'm going to assume that your script has intelligently identified the paler skin in the eyebrow region as not being paler due to specular burn but rather due to the skin being that colour originally.

As to the lips... I'm going to render again and compare to the original.

Robyn, I'm getting the impression you're not calibrating the shader. There is a color there, initialized to SKIN, but you have to actually choose the color of the lip or whatever it is you're trying to despecularize.

Load the shader. Open a preview on the color map node.

Using the color eye-dropper capability, click on the color chip in the Normal Color node, then click somewhere on the color map where you don't see specular. If it's the lip, click somewhere on the lip.

This is not something you do in Python. You do it in the material room. You click on what is the correct diffuse-only color as an example from the texture you have loaded. Then the shader will use that color as a reference for the correct ratio of diffuse reflection, sans specular.

It compares other points with that reference Normal Color, and things that look whiter than that, it un-whitens.

Wow! You're absolutely right, Bagginsbill: I wasn't calibrating the shader. Thanks for explaining this... how clever is this!

So now, I've got it pretty much optimised for the face - now I'll do the lips and composite the two.

Brilliant stuff - thank you!!!

Jeez, this thing is so mind-boggling!~ it's all in real time. Colour change and off you go! Re-rendering now - even the skin looks acceptable, if a bit darker. This is simply incredible!!!!

is there a PP2012 matmatic available? i get "magic number" messages with the copy i'm using from 2010.

Quote - is there a PP2012 matmatic available? i get "magic number" messages with the copy i'm using from 2010.

From my web site, matmatic page - been there a while:

ATTENTION!

NEW:

September 21, 2011

Matmatic 1.4.0 for Poser 9 and Pro 2012. The file Matmatic.1.4.0.zip contains the newest binaries, updated Node Reference, and some new demo materials. This package does not contain the full documentation.

(PolygonHair excluded from reference but supported for experimentation.)

thanks--i should've looked there first....

This script completely works as advertised.

Not sure what I'm doing "wrong" but I appear to be getting colour banding in the colours on the rendered texture close to the reference colour. This happens whether I'm using material GC or not.

ETA: I'm not permitted to show you a sample of the texture map - is my understanding - or I'd give you an example.