Well, here I am again, the stocking guy, trying to take another step forward in the Materials Room. Now I have used Bagginsbill's Stocking Shader on V4. I can see how it works for pantihose, by adding legs, feet, hips, etc to the Shader Group (called "Stockings") in the Material Room. In this figure I added feet and legs to the Group. I also added the left hip, but not the right hip, just to see what would happen. (I know the hips need the torso map, not the limbs.) I added my wrinkle-displacement map to see its effect, which is fine. And for the Skin_Color image I used my painted stockings, with the welt and heel and backseam. The way BB's shader adds the gloss is quite perfect.

Obviously, though, something has to be done to make the stocking-gloss end partway up the thigh, at the top of the welt.

I had made a gray scale mask, and BB actually showed some examples of how it looked--the gloss ended right at the stocking top. But how did he do that?

So my question: How do I make this step? Where do I add the mask? What do I plug it into? I am assuming I can work from BB's stocking shader. Is that correct? Or have I gone entirely astray here....BB? Someone?

And here's a snip of the material room and most of the nodes...

 can you post your material room setting ?

Here's the rest of the material room nodes (it was too big for me to grab all in one try)

 

 

Dude - you're killing me. I already posted the shader for you two weeks ago in one of your other threads. It was step by step, each node explained, and showing how to assemble the whole thing, using your stocking mask.

Why are you faffing about like this?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2856484&page=2

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3995919&ebot_calc_page#message_3995919

BB, it is clear that you are the resident expert on the Materials Room and its varied nodes, and you show admirable generosity with your work. But it is also clear that you dont have much patience for a rank amateur in this field, like me. I must tell you I was pretty happy just getting your stocking shader to work--and to play around a bit with those nodes, trying to figure out what they did--quite amazing, they are--and I was hoping there would be an easy way to drop a mask into the business. I did go over some of that earlier work you showed, but much of it was simply baffling. I dont even seem to have all of those nodes you used. Or are they re-named somehow? Anyway, I'll go back and spend more time with them. Maybe I'll make progress. Just playing with this stocking shader of yours was instructive.

If I have more questions, I'll  post them again. But perhaps it would be best if you just ignored them, at least until I reach a higher level of understanding. Then you can toss your complex subtleties at me and I might actually get them!

To make it more clear, yes, there is a utility to rename nodes, and BB has used it. 

I took the liberty of reposting BB's shader setup from the other thread.  The "nylon map" node is a standard image node with a new name; the "div" node is a math function node with a new name.  After a while, you'll be able to recognize the more common nodes and know what kind of node it was originally just by looking at the parameters in it. 

The blender node is mixing together your skin shader, which is Input_1 (in the red box), with the stocking surface effect, Input_2 (the anisotropic node, fed into the other two nodes next to it), and the "nylon map" (Image) node, plugged into the Blending paremeter, is telling the node what is skin, and what is stocking.  Skin is white, stocking material is shaded.  The darker lines indicate what part of the stockings are more opaque, like the seam.

Did I miss anything, any more nodes that don't make sense?

Nice of you to lend a hand, there, DisneyFan. BTW, what renaming utility is it that you allude to? Wasn't that part of an older version of poser or is there a current python utility that can do this?

Matmatic does it, but that's a creature all its own...  There may be some other scripts/add-ons too.  But I use a Python utility from Poseworks: http://www.poseworks.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/14-Rename-Node-Wacro.html

Also, I should have said above, "...the "nylon map" (Image) node, plugged into the Blending paremeter by way of several math nodes, is telling the node what is skin, and what is stocking."  You may have figured that out, though, heh.

Thanks, actually have Matmatic, but I haven't really set out exploring it yet... ditto with VSS. A rainy day endeavor...

Just tested that Poseworks Wacro in Poser 8.0.3... works like a charm.

I used VSS since I wanted to be able to apply the stocking to any texture set using 1-click.

I need to learn how to incorporate VSS into my workflow, that's for certain BB! I'm sure it's not that difficult at all, but I'm constantly distracted by modeling and Cararra.

...Sorry for the OT in this thread.

...I think that dnstuefloten has gone MIA.

No, I'm here, sorry, been busy working on other things...I thank all of you for the further information. I've actually learned (using PhilC's tutorial) how to apply a mask, using the Blender node, and I used BB's instruction about using the mask to lighten/darken the stocking color. I just havent had a chance to take this any further--will get to it next week, see if I can feed into my noggin this information and take the stockings much further. I also want to buy the vascularity/veins asset, since it looks like the author is using displacement maps in the way I want to also. So much to learn, so little time...

But thank all of you again for the information! I'll be working on it and posting some results next week!

Incidentally--here is my masked version. The gloss now covers just the stocking, not the thigh.