I've been planning on making a warrior type character using M4. I got muscle maps already, but is there something out there to add bulging veins bodybuilder style to M4 or a particular texture that does this? I know there's the M4 Displacement Maps but it says it's for daz studio only. I'm surprised that there is no poser equivalent of this yet, unless i've overlooked something at their store. Is there anything out there that does this hassle free?

The M4 maps can be used in Poser.  Semidieu provides a script in post 40 of this thread...

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?40908-M4-Displacement-Not-only-for-DAZ-Studio/page2

I'm curious why those maps are DS specific, if they are I'm sure they could be poserized in an image editing app... takes a little knowledge of how displacement works in poser though.

check out this thread if your bored, curious, and want a laugh... It's got some good info on displacement in poser.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2855000

 

WandW: Yeah i checked out that thread, but it looks like gamma correction conflicts with it. It says you have to change the gc on the image maps to get it to work. I'm not sure if that's what i want, since i tend to use gc for most of my renders.

Piccolo, I have not read the thread so excuse me if I am mis-firing...but typically Use Gamma Value from Render Settings are changed to Custom Gamma Value = 1 for all displacement/normal/spec/bump maps. They are not talking about your Render settings but the Map settings.

Darkedge: I'm a bit confused now. What are they talking about in post 6, 31, and 32?

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?40908-M4-Displacement-Not-only-for-DAZ-Studio

In post 6, he said he had gamma correction in render settings witched on, and that gave him bad results with the m4 displacement maps.

Quote - Darkedge: I'm a bit confused now. What are they talking about in post 6, 31, and 32?

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?40908-M4-Displacement-Not-only-for-DAZ-Studio

In post 6, he said he had gamma correction in render settings witched on, and that gave him bad results with the m4 displacement maps.

Those posts are quite old. As Dark Edge said, all bump/displacement/specular maps in Poser need to have GC turned off on those maps in the material room. If the M4 Displacement maps are too much work, though, most of Jepe's and Morris's guys have vein displacement maps included. Just run them through EZSkin and tell it not to turn displacement off. 

I use the M4 displacement maps all the time, with the above mentioned script to load them. I've also taken that script and edited it to load other displacement maps (such as Smay's last gladiator, or StudioArtVartanian's various displacement maps that come with her characters).

Not adjusting the gamma on them does result in some horrific results: M4 will look like a zombie.

But if you just use the material mod script that comes with Poser to adjust gamma on displacement maps to 1, it's fixed in a couple of clicks (though for reasons I don't understand, I sometimes have to run the script twice to get it to work).

@Piccolo, what we are talking about is in the Material room on an Image Map node. Look at the attached pic it's one of my Specular Map nodes for one of my characters, if I click on the Image Source I get a pop-up where I can browse for an jpg/psd/etc. Since it is a Spec map I want the Gamma value at 1, the same goes for your Bump, Displacement and Normal maps.

Hope this helps.

I believe the reason it was D|S specific was because it had poses to apply the displacement maps only, which wasn't doable in Poser. That was until Cliff Bowman came up with a script which did that, and semidieu then did one too.

I used the maps at a low setting in this image, http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1903437

If you do use them in Poser and you use gamma correction, then as said above remember to set the custom gamma for them (easily done with the changeGamma script included in the scripts menu MaterialMods folder) to 1 as shown in DarkEdge's post above.

 

More recently there was more of a problem using them with sss but I'm pretty sure that was cleared up with SR3.

Funny enough one of my projects I am busy with is called vascularity. Basically you will be able to add veins to any displacement map, as well as an underlying vein colour for the skin texture on any V4/M4 set. It will come with Psd files so you can create your own. It will be for V4 and M4 UV's.  Most of these displacement maps with veins are not 100% accurate. They are just there to add detail. I have mapped the entire human vein system on a model in zbrush and will translate that into seperate transparent layers for colour and displacement, which you overlay on your favourite texture sets. You can just load the displacement or the colour overlay or both. You will get results like the attached pic above (just an example), where you see a little displacement and the vein colour. But more about that later when it is near completion.

Ahhhh, ok that makes a lot more sense now. When i read the posts in the other forum, i thought they were talking about the 2.20 gamma in the render settings. So let me see if i understand this completely =P I can checkmark the 2.20 gamma correction in the render settings, but i have to make sure that the gamma correction setting for the displacement maps is set to 1.0. And this can be done in the material room manually or with that script right?

What is that script called to change the gamma correction for the displacement maps? And how do i load these displacement maps onto M4? Do i have to manually load the displacement maps for each body part or does Semidieu's script do that automatically for me?

It is built in to scenefixer for one program

http://snarlygribbly.org/3d/forum/viewforum.php?f=8&sid=4c55caa2b27fdc225d757b2900438873

 

Also built into poser

System is busy right now but there is a wacro for it

EDIT to add: also scripts->changegamma

Bill

Attached Link: http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=101910

This is the thread where it all began, in the old DAZ forum. You can get Cliff's original scripts, but the second page has a newer version of Cliff's script in the first post.

Also here is a pic of where you can find the script in Poser if you aren't using Snarlygribbly's SceneFixer script.

You may be interested to know that there is a difference between how SceneFixer handles the setting of gamma and the way the changeGamma script does it.

Specifically, they differ in their handling of cases where the same image map is used for both colour (e.g. Diffuse) and data (e.g. Displacement).

This is a problematic situation because each image map can only ever have one gamma setting. This means that if a map is plugged into both Diffuse and Displacement (for example) you have to decide which of those channels will have the correct gamma, and accept that the other channel will have the wrong gamma.

The changeGamma script will assign a gamma value of 1.0 in this case, resulting in the colour channel having the wrong gamma and looking awful.

However, SceneFixer will favour the colour channel and set the gamma to the current render settings value (usually 2.2). This means the data channel will have the wrong gamma, but I would argue that using a colour map for data is going to produce nonsense anyway so the fact that its gamma setting is wrong isn't so important - at least one channel (the colour channel) is correct!

With changeGamma, though, both channels will be wrong: the colour channel because it has the wrong gamma setting and the data channel because it is using a colour map.

Of course, the correct thing to do is to have separate maps for colour and data, so they can each have their own gamma settings. Unfortunately it is too often the case that even commercial products come with maps being pressed into dual service like this.

Note that having seperate imagemap nodes makes no difference at all -  it has to be physically seperate image maps for it to work correctly.

Quote - Funny enough one of my projects I am busy with is called vascularity. Basically you will be able to add veins to any displacement map, as well as an underlying vein colour for the skin texture on any V4/M4 set. It will come with Psd files so you can create your own. It will be for V4 and M4 UV's.  Most of these displacement maps with veins are not 100% accurate. They are just there to add detail. I have mapped the entire human vein system on a model in zbrush and will translate that into seperate transparent layers for colour and displacement, which you overlay on your favourite texture sets. You can just load the displacement or the colour overlay or both. You will get results like the attached pic above (just an example), where you see a little displacement and the vein colour. But more about that later when it is near completion.

This is something I would definitely be interested in buying. I look forward to its completion. :)

willyb53 and raven: Ahh ok, found it. Thanks for the info guys ^_^

Snarlygribbly: Ohh, i think this was the problem they were having in the other forum. Now it all makes sense. I guess i'll just avoid those textures that have the same image map in both the diffuse and displacement.

This is a great veins map for M4, acurate an not overdone.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=68657

Quote - > Quote - Funny enough one of my projects I am busy with is called vascularity. Basically you will be able to add veins to any displacement map, as well as an underlying vein colour for the skin texture on any V4/M4 set. It will come with Psd files so you can create your own. It will be for V4 and M4 UV's.  Most of these displacement maps with veins are not 100% accurate. They are just there to add detail. I have mapped the entire human vein system on a model in zbrush and will translate that into seperate transparent layers for colour and displacement, which you overlay on your favourite texture sets. You can just load the displacement or the colour overlay or both. You will get results like the attached pic above (just an example), where you see a little displacement and the vein colour. But more about that later when it is near completion.

This is something I would definitely be interested in buying. I look forward to its completion. :)

Yup - that sounds great

Also... I spotted this item in freestuff a while back:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=68657

...haven't tried it yet myself...

Hello,

I have use the M4 displacement map in Poser using Cliff Bowman script. Work very well in Poser 7. However, if I understand, this is not the case with the Poser versions that have a gamma correction function.

Allstereo

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Funny enough one of my projects I am busy with is called vascularity. Basically you will be able to add veins to any displacement map, as well as an underlying vein colour for the skin texture on any V4/M4 set. It will come with Psd files so you can create your own. It will be for V4 and M4 UV's.  Most of these displacement maps with veins are not 100% accurate. They are just there to add detail. I have mapped the entire human vein system on a model in zbrush and will translate that into seperate transparent layers for colour and displacement, which you overlay on your favourite texture sets. You can just load the displacement or the colour overlay or both. You will get results like the attached pic above (just an example), where you see a little displacement and the vein colour. But more about that later when it is near completion.

This is something I would definitely be interested in buying. I look forward to its completion. :)

Yup - that sounds great

Also... I spotted this item in freestuff a while back:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=68657

...haven't tried it yet myself...

I did. It lacks detail. Very little veins on that set...The m4 displacement set has more detail.

Quote - Hello,

I have use the M4 displacement map in Poser using Cliff Bowman script. Work very well in Poser 7. However, if I understand, this is not the case with the Poser versions that have a gamma correction function.

Allstereo

As we've just been saying in this thread, it works perfectly well in Poser Pro 2012, you just have to run the material mod script to change the gamma on the displacement maps.

Those who use PP 2012 are probably already familiar with the script, as they need to run it (or Scenefixer or EZSkin2) to fix the transparencies on hair, unless they enjoy changing the gamma settings manually.

Quote - Those who use PP 2012 are probably already familiar with the script, as they need to run it (or Scenefixer or EZSkin2) to fix the transparencies on hair, unless they enjoy changing the gamma settings manually.

I'm curious about this. What happens to hair in PP2012 if this script is not run? And which maps do i have to apply the script to? I haven't noticed any problems with hair so far, but i might be overlooking something.

You might see strange behavior as bloating or badly morphed appearance.  Scenefixer or EZSkin2 will attempt to detect transparency, bump, displacement maps by their connections to the PoserSurface and automatically change their gamma's to 1.  However, MAT Room complicated shader node structures might prevent the script from successfully detecting the target nodes and initiating any gamma change at all.  I most cases, through my observations, the scripts have been very, very reliable and accurate.

Quote - > Quote - Those who use PP 2012 are probably already familiar with the script, as they need to run it (or Scenefixer or EZSkin2) to fix the transparencies on hair, unless they enjoy changing the gamma settings manually.

I'm curious about this. What happens to hair in PP2012 if this script is not run? And which maps do i have to apply the script to? I haven't noticed any problems with hair so far, but i might be overlooking something.

If you render with gamma correction but leave the gamma settings for transparency on hair at 2.2, the hair will usually look thin and even sometimes as if the character is balding.

If you don't render with GC on, though, you won't notice any difference.

Hello,

  Have try the freestuff vein map proposed in this tread. Work well, not as beautiful as M4 displacement map.

Piccolo, if you don't have the M4 displacement map yet, just try to edit the freestuff map, it is not too difficult in Photoshop.

Allstereo

Yeah i got the M4 displacement maps. Now that people have mentioned it, i noticed that my horde werewolf's hair had the same problems you were mentioning. I used the material changegamma script that came built into poser and set the gamma for displacement maps to 1, and that corrected it. I've been messing around with a few other things in poser where i had problems, so i haven't tried them out yet, though that's next on my list.

One thing i was wondering though. That changegamma script has all the maps except for the specular maps. Do i also need to worry about changing the specular maps gamma to 1 also, or can i just ignore this when using gamma correction?

In many cases, specularity is tied in with the image map and plugged into the specular_color on the PoserSurface.  If it is only a data file (image with whites, grays, and blacks) and is the only map plugged into the Specular_Value instead, it should contain a gamma value = 1.

Do i need a second script to do that? Because i don't see a specular map setting in poser's changegamma script.