Obviously with the same node arrangement, there is a lot of room for variations.

Do you want to use the variations or build the ability to have them?

First - reduced saturation

Second - reduced IOR, increased "brush" effect (which is a Fractal_Sum node blended into the IOR value)

Third - reduced blur

Fourth - less green, more blue

Finally... a great thread.

In this thread, I develop, from first principles in physics and geometry, a shader that does nylon. Every step is fully explained and results demonstrated.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2803439

If you want to see how it's done, there is an example.

What I wanna know is, if I use a certain node attached to another node, what is it really doing? What does Exp do different from Max, etc? If wanna do a particular thing, what nodes should I start with? It's easy with some of them, but some are just damned mysterious...lol.

For those of us who have never run across this type of shader system before (and I haven't) sometimes we don't even know how to start..lol. Sometimes it's more satisfying to do it oneself and have it turn out well than have someone else give it to you. I'm not one of those, but that may be where Khai is at. He just wants to understand it, because it's the last part of Poser he hasn't conquered ;). Some folks wanna learn to do it themselves rather than have someone else do it for them.

For what it's worth, Blender's node system makes my head hurt too ;).

Laurie

I do not know what you did, to figure out how to use or create textures, but i think it is actually a good idea to take a look or two at how other renderers or 3d programs do it. I do not know sketchup specifically, but e.g. vue, blender or povray have essentially the exact same material system. In fact, there seem to be only two in use (the second variant is used by the physically based renderers). Probably Poser is not the best option to learn about how it works, because it is full of technicalities and historically grown idiosyncracies which makes it difficult to see the underlying scheme, and also there is the gamma correction problem between poser versions. Also you usually cannot just grab a shader and take it apart and hope to find out why it does what it does, because (in my opinion) you can never be sure if the creator actually knew what she was doing, which makes things often more confusing than they need to be (often, not always!). Forums will only get you so far, because you have to be relatively specific in what you ask for and even then will you get a lot of different opinions and wrong answers (this one might be an example), and good tutorials for Poser, especially for materials, are rare.

If you can use video tutorials, there are a lot good ones on the internet for blender (though blender is not the easiest software to learn IMO), for vue (at geekatplay.com for example), and even more for the more expensive software packages (sketchup too, but i did never touch it). Video tutorials have the big advantage, that - because they are limited in time - their authors have to confine themselves to the most important things and leaving out all the complicated details.  If you rather use books, i can recommend the one by Jeremy Birn, it can be read without having to deal with much math.

Quote -  Probably nowhere near as clever as BB's script, but if anyone wants this little utility that I made for myself, feel free to go grab it.

Cheers Snarly, that's awesome

Quote - In this thread, I develop, from first principles in physics and geometry, a shader that does nylon. Every step is fully explained and results demonstrated.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2803439

If you want to see how it's done, there is an example.

Cool

Quote - Well, when you've been using the program as long as we have ya find yourself losing interest in what ya started it for in the first place and want to broaden your horizons I guess. I've been using this silly program since 1998. I'm pooped out on making images... It's either focus on another element of the program or move on..heh. I get where you're coming from - I WAS you...lol. I'm just not there anymore and I guess some ppl like me aren't either ;). Can't really speak for Khai, but I guess that may be the case. Or may it's just cause he want's to know every aspect of the software and that's where his satisfaction lies.

Laurie

I've been a "how does all this stuff work" type of person for a long time.  For me it was modeling, texturing and rigging.

Quote - Here is the gold preset in Lux Render, after 35 minutes of rendering using "unbiased" techniques.

Yeah, I don't really understand this "unbiased" thing, if I'm honest?

Surely there are still some kind of "heuristics" in there, on top of the purely mathematical "laws of physics" enshrined within the renderer code? Are they just less optimised... or what?

What's the deal??

Yes there are shortcuts even in unbiased renderers.

A true physics simulation would have the volution of each photo carried out through it's entire path, not just where it intersects a polygon. This would be true volumetric rendering. It is as much out of range right now as unbiased rendering was out of range, computationally, just 15 years ago. Nobody was doing it.

This is most obvious in SSS of any sort.

But still, unbiased renderers are a lot closer to flinging photons around than your typical scan line renderer. That's why they take so long - they don't do statistical shortcuts.

In my gold shader, the reflection of the sun (infinite light) was not done with rays. It was done with a statistical model (Blinn node). That's biased. It's a simplification based on probability, that given I'm looking from the camera to here, and from here the light is here, then this function (Blinn) can predict how much light would pass back to the camera from that light. That is one evaluation of a statistical model. It breaks down in a lot of cases. I did not set up any of those cases, though, so it didn't matter.

On the other hand, the LuxRender engine doesn't even have that statistical model. It sent over a thousand rays from every pixel in that image, looking for light. It made no statistical assumptions that would reduce that work.

For better or worse, the node 'metaphor' of shader creation seems to be quite popular these days. I don't know about the newer versions but Carrara 6 doesn't use it, nor does C4D 10 and you can do a lot  in Vue without getting into the nodes as well. I think a lot of it is how your mind works. For some people, nodes come more naturally. To me, it quickly becomes spaghetti - one reason I don't render as much in Poser. If you don't want presets or helpers, you're probably SOL. I doubt they're going to chnage the whole material system or create a full blown alternative method of material definition unless they change render engines. I assume that the node based system was there when they originally bought/licensed Firefly from Pixels3D.

I also get very frustrated with the material room.  While it is true that I haven't studied it near enough, whenever I see some of these shaders with 15 to 30 plus node attachments, I'm thinking how in the heck does anyone ever figure this out.  It is nothing short of amazing to me how BB and others make sense of this all, but I sure wish it was more geared toward average blokes like me.

Here's a dumb question that I've not seen asked, and this looks like the thread to ask it in.

BB (and others) have very kindly provided me with shaders from time to time. Right now, I keep those shaders as jpgs of the posted material room screens.

Question: Is there a way to save those shaders as mtls or presets so they can be loaded quickly?

Quote - I also get very frustrated with the material room.  While it is true that I haven't studied it near enough, whenever I see some of these shaders with 15 to 30 plus node attachments, I'm thinking how in the heck does anyone ever figure this out.  It is nothing short of amazing to me how BB and others make sense of this all, but I sure wish it was more geared toward average blokes like me.

Well, from what BB has said, he's working on some sort of add-on to provide just that.

As noted, Vue, for instance has nodes, in the heart of it's shader system. Possibly much more complex than Poser's node system.

But Vue also has an "intermediate" level, a UI that still lets more complex, layered shaders be built, without the need to look at the nodes underneath. Least that's how I understand it.

What BB is looking to provide, I think, is something like that?

Snarly's freebie posted... not to mention EZSkin are also variants of this idea... of creating an intermediate UI layer... the way I see it.

I know folk will say, why doesn't SM provide this in the core Poser. Why must it be an add-on.

Maybe then some folk would feel better about not understanding the node system then... if it was a sealed box, out of the factory... and not an aftermarket add-on... I don't know??

But personally, I don't mind who does it. If it's BB that does it, or Snarlygribbly, I'm going to be much obliged to them for doing that... in exactly the same way I'm hugely grateful for Kez-WM. Because I can't model much yet or rig figures either....

I think I got the point of this thread.

There is a need for the ability to create, all by yourself, from the ground up, decent shader / node constructions in material room, deriving expert results, told in "slow motion" (=with small steps and lots of intermediate examples) for those who never made the final (or any) highschool math classes and never got a decent class in "node based programming".

Like that, right?

I was contemplating to go Material Room in my tutorial series, this might be a way. To me it's like crawling the racing track, but it might quite well be worth the effort.

Quote - Here's a dumb question that I've not seen asked, and this looks like the thread to ask it in.

BB (and others) have very kindly provided me with shaders from time to time. Right now, I keep those shaders as jpgs of the posted material room screens.

Question: Is there a way to save those shaders as mtls or presets so they can be loaded quickly?

Totally. I have the Library window opened inline within the mat room screen, because I load and save material presets in and out of the Library when I'm in the mat room...

The "plus" icon at the bottom of the Library interface will save the material currently selected in the mat room, this way.

If you click the plus sign in the Pose Room, then you get a prompt to select which material group, or groups, you want to save as your Library preset.

Is that what you mean Basicwiz? (have I explained what I mean reasonably?)

Quote - I think I got the point of this thread.

There is a need for the ability to create, all by yourself, from the ground up, decent shader / node constructions in material room, deriving expert results, told in "slow motion" (=with small steps and lots of intermediate examples) for those who never made the final (or any) highschool math classes and never got a decent class in "node based programming".

Like that, right?

I was contemplating to go Material Room in my tutorial series, this might be a way. To me it's like crawling the racing track, but it might quite well be worth the effort.

That would be cool, I think.

BB's nylon thread makes great reading... more, step by step, tutorials, and some kind of node cheat sheet would be a fantastic resource, surely?

One thing that I have noticed is that the newest versions of poser allow you to do more with less 'node spaghetti'.  If you look at the BB glossy shader and compare it to the PP2012 BB glossy that BB posted(I think in an RDNA thread) you will notice how much simpler it is.  That is a result of the addition of new nodes that contain the equations that BB had to create in earlier versions of Poser.  I'm thinking of the fresnel effect in this one that used to be several nodes and now is contained in one.  So in that way poser is becoming more and more geared twoards us average folks.   But by the same token they are also adding new toys for BB to squeeze the most out of by coming up with big fancy complex shaders for us to puzzle over.

I for one am happy to use anything they feel like throwing in there and I just have to hope people will help me when I use it wrong.

Quote - I also get very frustrated with the material room.  While it is true that I haven't studied it near enough, whenever I see some of these shaders with 15 to 30 plus node attachments, I'm thinking how in the heck does anyone ever figure this out.  It is nothing short of amazing to me how BB and others make sense of this all, but I sure wish it was more geared toward average blokes like me.

Speaking of new nodes...does Fresnel_blend affect the way we should be doing water in PP2012?

Quote - Yes there are shortcuts even in unbiased renderers.

A true physics simulation would have the volution of each photo carried out through it's entire path, not just where it intersects a polygon. This would be true volumetric rendering. It is as much out of range right now as unbiased rendering was out of range, computationally, just 15 years ago. Nobody was doing it.

This is most obvious in SSS of any sort.

SSS was the thing I thought of there. How can it be wholly unbiased, I was thinking, if there isn't layers of skin modelled in the mesh, with each layer having some thickness... and then, having a muscle layer modelled underneath that and likely some skeleton under that...

...but I expect I was over thinking it there somewhat!

Yup, render speed is definitely important to me... as important as realism... because I like complexity in an image, often. So my scenes take a long time to render anyway.... it's not that I want a five minute render.

So BB putting all these mathematical heuristics and light physics equations into the biased, but faster Firefly is great, I think.

Like Sam, I can program... I do it for a living... and I'm not terrible at mathematics or algebra, etc, when I need to be. But I'll generally defer to more hardcore mathematicians than myself to come up with the really cool libraries... some open source or MIT licensed... some priced license models... the choice will depend on the reuse / project.

I quite enjoy a spot of gardening myself, when I'm not doing 3d, in the spare time I have.

But I generally plant a lot of stuff already propagated by others... from the garden centre... or grown by more horticulturally astute older relatives... etc.

Well, I just get the feeling that for a hobbyist program (which Poser definitely is), the material room should just not be that darn hard to figure out. I mean, it's probably the toughest part of Poser to understand and use (other than maybe rigging, but even that is fairly straight forward). Why?

Laurie

hi Laurie,

personally i don't think it's that hard to figure out, it's just hard to explain to people who don't have the background talents to do the figuring out.

It reminds me of a discussion with some manager: driving a car is not hard, changing the engine is not hard, changing the tires is not hard and slipping along a row of pilons is not hard either. But changing the engine as well as the tires while driving and slipping along the pilons all at once is a challenge.

The same holds for Poser: it goes from physics (cloth mechanics in Cloth Room, Optics and materials / light interaction in Mat Room and Render) to math to program coding to user interfacing while at the same time the manual should address the user input - working process - render output in a way that is easy to grasp for non-tech non-math visual artists who did not desired a carrier in quantum astrophysics for a reason.

That requires a very serious bunch of skills in the technical writing department, and those skills are very rare as you can tell from about any manual from about anything you buy, or from (looking at the teacher in) most math and physics classes in average highschool.

That exactly is what this thread is all about. For the "teacher" explaining reality without math is like talking to the deaf without using his hands. For the user it's like a Roman Centurion trying to understand a US Drone Controller fighting Taliban from his home office. There is a mental gap. It can be bridged. That's the challenge.

At least for me it is. Just my view.

Quote - Totally. I have the Library window opened inline within the mat room screen, because I load and save material presets in and out of the Library when I'm in the mat room...

The "plus" icon at the bottom of the Library interface will save the material currently selected in the mat room, this way.

If you click the plus sign in the Pose Room, then you get a prompt to select which material group, or groups, you want to save as your Library preset.

Is that what you mean Basicwiz? (have I explained what I mean reasonably?)

Exactly. And now I feel like an even bigger idiot because I never noticed the + at the bottom of the material collection on the library screen! I had always assumed (yeah, I know!) that if I tried to save it as a pose, then the pose would be saved with it. But the mtl collection will serve my needs perfectly!

THANK YOU!

I really, really wish SM would do one of their webinars on the material room as well as some tutorial videos. Hint, hint SM...hint ;). It only makes sense...the material room is the most confusing for more Poser users than anything else Poser does.

Laurie

LaurieA:

I totally agree! They shouled be the ones doing it. But if Artbee wants to step up, I'll take advantage of what he knows and is willing to share any day of the week!

Just for grins and giggles, I'm in the process of loading all of the shaders I have collected into the Mtl files area as defined shaders. After I take inventory (and visit BB's site to raid his shader pantry) I'm going to think and see if there's something I'm missing that I need on a regular basis. About the only thing I think of now is a generic cloth texture based on a procedural. Probably can steal one of those from a good product like your free dynamic tee. ()

My point:

Given the large skill set (as ArtBee so accurately defined it!) needed to effectively use the Material room to full advantage, this may be like modeling is to most of us: Something we let the truly tallented do for us.

While I understand the OP's frustration with this state of affairs, if I can get my truck loaded, I'm good with it.

Lazy me. 

Everyone has their own needs and interests.....lol. I'd rather make my own than have it given to me too, like Khai, but I'm also willing to accept some help which Khai probably is too, but more suggestive help than direct help :P

Laurie

I feel for Khai. The material room is an annoying.... grrrr.

In fact, every time I try to follow shaders in the forums, I get more frustrated.

Take this one, for instance:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3817511&ebot_calc_page#message_3817511

If I follow it precisely, I get a nice, shiny, black ball.

I was so puzzled by this that I downloaded the freebie that the OP created that is supposedly pictured in the thread.

The shader is precisely the same as given in the thread, precisely the same as what I re-create.

And I get... a nice, shiny black ball.

I have no idea why, and I have no idea how to even work out why.

(I've tried changing lots of parameters just to see what happens. Nothing works. But using trial and error, I could be at it for years.)

So I can only conclude that either my version of Poser has some odd bug that randomly prevents shaders from working properly, or my eyes are funny and I'm just not seeing things the way everyone else does.

If I can't even re-create a posted shader, no way in hell am I going to be able to work out even the simplest things on my own. Ever. It's frustrating all right, and more than a bit demoralizing.

Because you don't have enough bounces set in your render settings to be able to do raytracing all the way through.

You need two bounces or more - one to enter the ball, one to exit.

Render settings are just as mysterious if you don't know what they do.

PS - Some people forget to enable raytracing, too. I used to write that in every post - enable raytracing, two or more bounces.

Thanks for the link to the crystal ball thread

Quote - Because you don't have enough bounces set in your render settings to be able to do raytracing all the way through.

You need two bounces or more - one to enter the ball, one to exit.

Render settings are just as mysterious if you don't know what they do.

PS - Some people forget to enable raytracing, too. I used to write that in every post - enable raytracing, two or more bounces.

Arrrrghhh!!!

Of course you are right. LOL.

Thank you.

Damn, Bagginsbill is kinda scary when his feathers gets ruffled. I suppose a painter should Fabricate his own brushes, grind his own pigments and weave his own canvas... I don't know, seems like alot of people aren't seeing the forest for the trees on here. Alot of "traditional artists" working in "traditional Mediums" think CG is cheating to begin with, can't imagine what they would think of a platform like poser wherein the basic foundation of the program is the use of pre-existing content as a means of creativity or illustration...

Oh, please, not this one again. Let's please keep to the OP's topic.

When I used to paint in oils I bought them all ready made... saved a lot of time... and faffing about with larger quantities of poisonous chemicals, I guess.

Also, had a guy to help make up the canvases. Although it was college... so they made us tack the frames together, stretch and prime them ourselves.

Now, if I went back to it, I would most likely just buy ready stretched and primed canvases to save me time.

Going back to the likes of the Renaissance, those guys used a lot of bodily fluids, excretions and the like in mixing up their paint colours, apparently. Definitely wouldn't fancy getting into that.

But I do believe there are still some purists who do...

@ monkeycloud, you're right about the purist painters ... I know several (because I come from that background) that will only use rabbit skin glue sizing and would be abhorred of acrylic gesso and on and on... @ latexluv, you're right. kinda missed a page of posts in the thread. But I think my comment still pertains to the original topic, plus I thought the subjects core was interesting and something that I muse about when pondering this medium. Speaking of which, sure beats hauling around buckets of plaster and mixing up clay in a mixer, etc. I'll admit the material room's inner workings are an absolute mystery to me but I'll still manage to make some nice shaders for myself through research and experimentation, Mystery is half the fun. I mentioned in another thread that I thought the material room was a piece of magical code. Has anyone ever used a layer based shader system like in Strata or Modo, have been meaning to look into that on Strata...

We shouldn't wait for SM to come up with something.

While no-one has BB's level of understanding (even including SM, I suspect) there are still people here with enough knowledge to demystify the Material Room for others.

There are also plenty of free online meeting rooms available, so long as you can put up with the ads that go with anything 'free'.

We should just do it.

Quote - Going back to the likes of the Renaissance, those guys used a lot of bodily fluids, excretions and the like in mixing up their paint colours, apparently. Definitely wouldn't fancy getting into that.

 

An example:-

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

 I just hope they didn't lick the tips of their brushes to get a fine point....

I do miss the physicality of getting stuck into real world materials.

But moreover, I miss all the time I had, when I was able to do that!

These days, I guess I'm just content to use what it takes for an end result... plus I love all the stuff that can be done with CG and where it has gotten to now... it is a very exciting medium.

But I totally do get where Khai is coming from, I think, with looking to work more from scratch... and I would wholly commend him for that impetus too.

If some more, structured tutorials, guides to using the mat room come out of this thread then that would be a great result.

Not that there aren't a lot, contributed by BB and others already, of course...

...but something resembling more of a quick start guide, some more step-by-steps... with some sort of associated node cheatsheat would be fantastic on top of that, I reckon...

...it does seem to me like the mat room and usage off it has possibly now matured, from experimentation and development of techniques, into some more tried and tested practices, such that the above could probably be put together in a nice, accessible format for folk to follow better?

Quote - Damn, Bagginsbill is kinda scary when his feathers gets ruffled. I suppose a painter should Fabricate his own brushes, grind his own pigments and weave his own canvas... I don't know, seems like alot of people aren't seeing the forest for the trees on here. Alot of "traditional artists" working in "traditional Mediums" think CG is cheating to begin with, can't imagine what they would think of a platform like poser wherein the basic foundation of the program is the use of pre-existing content as a means of creativity or illustration...

You seem to have my opinion reversed from what it actually is.

I was not suggesting that others make their own - and all my later commentary was that you probably can't even if I explain it to you.

I was suggesting you use my presets.

It's the recipients of that suggestion that take umbrage and blame Poser.

But if Poser made it easy like the some other renderers, then you'd just be using presets again. "Easy shader" assembly means components that are higher-level, i.e. presets.

You want gold, silver, bronze, platinum, etc.? Get my metal, then tweak.

You want lake water, sea water, glass water, river water? Get my water, then tweak.

I don't want you to try to understand how to make these things from raw (math) materials.

I do enjoy trying to teach it, but most artists don't need to know this stuff. You learn it because it's fun. You don't fight through it because it's terribly boring - you just skip it. Same as you skip making your own oil paints.

You're not rolling your own in those other renderers. You are assembling high-level components. That makes it easier, and also more limited.

@ BB, as I wrote before, the main problem that confuses lots of users is that Poser allows everything to be connected to everything.
Even the worst combinations are possible.
Want a devide by "0"? No problem.
Put a Blinn in Diffuse_Color? No problem
A Glossy in transparant?
A Specular node in the Bump or Displacement channel?
Or chain them all up?
Even when total garbadge arrives, Posers material room allows it.
Please do, no limits; Some might even make sense to somebody...

And then, one gets the strangest results and gets frustrated, or quits.

(Remember from a past discussion that I allways open up all windows, because I want to see what is happening.)

Let me give one more.
An easy one : The HSV node.
Hue? At what number are we back at ZERO change?
Somebody?
Any takers?

If the hobby end user has to test, and try out each and every possible combination?
He"ll have Poser 2020 before he is finished with PP2012.
And we only covered the material room, what I often call (with a smile) the "Math room".

By Poser 2030, he"ll have tested the Cloth room, the hair room, and still has to try the face room.

Yes, from that point of view, I understand the OP's question.

Or??
We limit ourselves to what we know, and work with the little we know.
And build our workflow around that.

Most of what I see in the Galleries comes from Mc Donalds.

A pre-morphed figure, V4 plus Morphpack++, some dials spinned.
A sword from freestuff with Poser 7 materials. Some adapted with BB  metals, (or not) 
A light préset => When you are lucky adapted to PP2012 lights
A bought background and some props with Poser 6-7-8 textures=> texture filtering stayed at None. Or be lucky again and find it set at quality.

Render=> Upload.
Finished.

It is like being a pilot; Engage the autopilot and sit back.

Yes, the Math room could be more structured. (Sorry, this time I wrote "Math room" automatically)
Only allowing connections that make sense.
Giving WARNINGS when doing something stupid.

Knowing in the back of our heads that the average Poser hobby user has about one free hr a day (at best) to "create" something.
He /she (sorry ladies) does not have weeks or months to figure out all nodes and all possibilities.

YES;
We thank you for all the help and math here (I got it right this time) but also know we forget as we are not working full time in Poser.

If SM want to make Poser more user friendly, the Material room is the one to start with.

"Its all there, figure it out".

Leads to posts like this.

But Vilters, I'm seeing the opinions of multiple people and they conflict here. This thread is incoherent.

Quote - He /she (sorry ladies) does not have weeks or months to figure out all nodes and all possibilities

Then this person should use presets.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

One person says they want to make shaders FROM SCRATCH.

Another person says the materials need to be easier to build.

These are conflicting goals. You either can make anything you want, but you make it from scratch, or you take the limitations of presets and you don't make it from scratch.

I give people shaders that have plenty of knobs to turn for different results and there is NO MATH in doing that. Yet only a handful pay attention to that. If you want to build a little bit, you can do that too. You want a clouds node in your BBGlossy diffuse color? Plug one in.

Yes it is also possible to do senseless things, like plug a Blinn into Diffuse_Color, multiplied by 0. I don't see that as a problem.

It sounds to me that what is being said is it would be desirable to have a system that produces something sensible no matter what settings or connections you pick. But, that seems motivated only by a desire to enjoy mindless experimentation without frustrating black output.

That's like assembling electronic components at random. You're never going to find a radio or MP3 player by accident, no matter HOW sensible the connectors force you to be.

Quote - Hue? At what number are we back at ZERO change? If the hobby end user has to test, and try out each and every possible combination?

This is just a matter of documentation, not a rewrite of the material room. But I agree you need to know this. The answer is 6. And not 6 in the parameter. Six after the incoming hue has been multipled with the parameter. The rainbow is spread across the numbers 0 to 6, and repeats forever.

0 = Red

1 = Yellow

2 = Green

3 = Cyan

4 = Blue

5 = Magenta

6 = Red

7 = Yellow ...

Castle Poser tried to explain every node.

Some found it helpful.

Questions like Laurie asked earlier are perplexing to me.

The exp, max, min, sin, cos, etc. functions, for example, are taught in math class, not in CG artist class. How you use them is like asking how you use a pencil.

You hold it, press it against paper, and move it around. It will leave behind some dark marks.

Now - go sketch a portrait with a pencil.

Read this.

http://www.castleposer.co.uk/my_tutorials.html

It's a quick intro to many of the nodes.

But - you understand that you're not going to learn physics there. If you don't understand the Fresnel effect, learning the math nodes won't change that.

The suggested uses are a bit ridiculous. I could write about the Bias math node function for DAYS.

@ bagginsbill. No, I understood your point of view. I was just referring to "X-Post: Advert? Man you're a cynical f***. Thought you'd be interested in a solution to your problem. I guess you just want ears to hear you. Got cheese?" Nah, man... nothing but respect for your opinions and your work. I'll use one of your shaders anytime. Of course at this point in my digital medium experience, it's a challenge to even figure out how to utilize something you've already put on the plate for the user. Not to mention that my elderly hardware would rather I didn't. One thing I am curious about though, is why you chose a 'Hobbyist' application like poser for your explorations. Then again, like I said, I'm only just beginning to look seriously at this medium, hence I'm not aware of all of the Poser lore and norms.

Oh, just a little aside to some of Vilters comments... I agree about the whole V4 thing. I don't get it (perhaps that's a forbidden topic, and I apologize) but what is this obsession with endless pin-ups. I mean don't people get tired of trying to fit virtual lingerie on... oh, nevermind.

Addendum... The CastlePoser tutorials ARE very helpful.

Quote - One thing I am curious about though, is why you chose a 'Hobbyist' application like poser for your explorations.

The answer to that is in WandW's signature.

“I could buy better software, but then I'd have to be an artist and what's the point of that?” --bagginsbill

More specifically - using other people's presets like in LuxRender is boring to me. I want to build from scratch. The Poser material room lets me do that. On top of that, I become famous for doing what is perceived as near impossible, over and over.

If, instead, I just made average drecky art, nobody would know my name, would they.

ROFLMAO 

Voila, sir.
You are the first and only one so far that has ever answered this Poser "Hue" question.
Does that surpise you?
In you honest mind.

Do you think that is normal after so many Poser versions that have had this "Hue", and  so many thousands of end users?

Your answer should be in the manual. Thank you.

Conflicting posts?? Yes, no, yes, no.

I am sure that a lot of end users want to build their own shaders but should be protected against themselves.
Or helped, call it whatever you want.
The current material room allows everything. Even total math chaos.

Indeed a good set op présets but on some conditions;

• That they are updated with every Poser release.
• That they are different from Poser 9 to PP2012. => (GC) (But GC is an optional setting in PPro.)

One material that works great in Poser 9 is probably useless in PP2012 with GC.
Another material that is great under IDL is probably pretty ugly with only IBL.
A material that looks great inside your sphere, can be useless without it. => ( do not forget to read the word "can" )

Actually, each and every material preset HAS to be documented for the light conditions.

Structuring the Material room to make it more user friendly, and to avoid "stupid" connections would help most.

Every knife has 2 sides.

The hobby guy/girl that will buy and use presets.
The professional that knows his way around the room. => ONE only :-). He gave the "Hue" answer remember. :-)

And then there are those that experiment, and YES, they read each and every one of your posts. :-)
They take notes, and try to learn.
Thank you for that.

A rewrite of the material room?
No, just remove the impossible possibilities.
Make it work like a flowchart and I am sure you know how a flowchart works.

Better document each node.
I know this sounds pretty stupid by now, but I again take the Hue as an example.

PS; I could have asked the same question about Posers "HSV"  Saturation or Value to any other Poser user.
Nah, :-) , you and Stefan are excluded. :-)

Quote - I give people shaders that have plenty of knobs to turn for different results and there is NO MATH in doing that. Yet only a handful pay attention to that. If you want to build a little bit, you can do that too. You want a clouds node in your BBGlossy diffuse color? Plug one in.

Yup, I spotted all the user-parameters... in your recent shaders BB, usually all over to the far left, left of the main node, I think?

I've certainly managed changing colours, textures... adding my own bump etc... and indeed even adapting the black painted wood shader to make the "Police Public Call Box" sign on the TARDIS, in my last render.

I managed to add the original image_map texture with the sign graphic on it, so that it was driving a blend node, between the black background (made of the black painted wood) and white text, with the white being made out of the lit lamp shader (with brightness turned down a bit).

I do feel like I am getting somewhere by playing around like that...

...but as I say I think I personally learn better by trying to dissect fully formed examples, rather than buiding step by step from scratch. Although going through the latter process likely builds a more thorough understanding I guess.

The Castle Poser tuts look like a worthwhile read... thanks for the link.

To build shaders from scratch, the room needs a flowchart structure, and better documentation.

From Diffuse_Color, => Only to nodes that make sense in Diffuse_Color.

From Specular, => Only to nodes that make sense in Specular

From Blinn, => Only to nodes that can make sense in Blinn

And so on.

Well, one can dream right.

** So? Back to my question.**

I know, it is a stupid one. :-)

From Hue at 1 = No change to the incoming material.

I go upwards, to where?
3?
5?
10?
100?
1.000?
10.000?
100.000 in Poser?
When am I back at "No Change".
Or? I put in a negative value?

Where am I going in Poser?

Never mind, :-) I know it is not full circle.

Just put in 10000000000 in hue, take of leave a few "0", and guess what? 

I know I can be a PIA.
:-)

Well, this may not be a particularly popular statement but Vue's shader system is easier to understand than Poser's and Vue is a significantly more complicated program. Yet, their shader system is fairly straight forward. Perhaps in the background where we can't see exactly what's going on, Poser's shader system and Vue's shader system work in a similar fashion. That's all fine and dandy if the implementation is something that people can easily grasp (especially in a program geared toward the hobbyist like Poser). People shouldn't have to be slamming their heads against the desk trying to figure out how to make a decent shader.

My 2 cents ;).

Laurie