EDIT: Hah hah! looks like everybody beat me to it while I was busy typing! Just goes to show how many people are on the thread who can help answer questions! (P.S. there was one above that was on a seperate subject, and I think Bob was the only one to pick it up... So don't let that one get lost incase they need any other help... seems to be a lot on the challange! `¬)

Quote - So, I thought I would try this fun challenge.  Um..  I got the object to import into studio, which was a first for me. I've never imported anything before. What do I do with the mtl file?  I put it in the daz folder in geometries with the obj file.  Do I import the mtl file?  I'm brand new to all this if you can't tell.  Another question.  How do I get textures onto the objects?  Do I need to make them myself? 

in ds3 the import settings would be like this, I had to select custom and set the scale to 125%, the other settings should be automatic... Not sure what it looks like if you have ds4... Note, that to get the lower settings to show I had to click on 'hide individual settings' and then on 'show individual settings' again maybe a buglet in ds3. From the image you can see an mtl file will be applied. If everything comes into daz as white then you have the previous version of the download that had a typo in the file names, you should put a '3' at the end of the name so that it is madscience3.obj and madscience3.mtl. Paolo fixed the download, so probably better to get the latest download again. Note that some of the items will probably come in white, but there should be quite afew that come in coloured. If they do, that's your first step...

From that point you can select a surface (using the surface selection tool from the tools menu - and with the surfaces tab visible as above)...  You may need to move your perspective view to either look down so you can select liquids from above and / or move into the container to select, or select directly from the list...and then call reality and set the material parameters in reality. You can load your own images as textures, for example, if you scan a page of a document and put it in the 'diffuse texture' for the loose paper item, when rendering the paper will look like your scanned document. etc... Remember that there are liquids inside the glass containers etc... you can simple select the item by its description and simply set its colours. That should get you going for a start! Oh, you will need to add a reality light of some sort, I started with just a single reality softbox just to see what changes resulted from changing materials... If doing test renders, keep your image quite small at first. I set my size to be the size of the screen and then test at 50% size set on the output tab (of reality 1.25 anyway...) It may depend on what version you are using.

If your render bursts into a lot of big white splotches that get bigger, then you have some materials either set too high glossyness or specular. If thats the case, make sure the specular is very low (in the 10-40 ish?) and make sure your glossy is not all at the top of the range. You should get somewhere by initially setting the materials to what they are, for example metals and glass and water etc... If you have any issues, post them here and someone is sure to give some advice! ;) Have fun!

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