Hi,

I thought this might be a good time to bring you up to date on my latest project: EZMat

EZMat is a Poser addon to facilitate working with materials, including:

• Being able to configure complex shaders via a simple user interface, and being able to save your favourite configurations as presets which can then be shared with other EZMat users via an Import/Export option
• An embedded version of EZSkin, for convenience
• A texture drag and drop option to make changing texture maps for multiple zones simultaneously much easier.
• A suite of tools to assist in the creation of shaders from scratch

EZMat is still in development, with an anticipated release in January. It is, however, already at a very useable stage.

It will work in Poser 9 and upwards, on both Windows and Mac (the Mac may lack the drag and drop facility, but an alternative solution is available).

If it's ok with everyone, I'd like to use this thread to show some of its features ...

This is the Shader Helper screen, for those who want to roll ther sleeves up and muck around in the Material Room.

This is the Texture Manager screen, for the dragging and dropping of textures.

This is the embedded version of EZSkin, which many of you will be familiar with ...

And EZSkin's editor screen ...

And finally, the most important bit: The materials screen. Here you can call up a plugin and configure it using a few simple controls, and then apply it to multiple materials at once.

Here you can see several plugins that I have already written, and a few more based on Bagginsbill's publicly available shaders (for testing - it is not yet known if they will be available for distribution).

As well as EZSkin, the Snow Machine has also been converted to a plugin.

Here is a 'before' render ...

And an 'after' render...

it looks good IMVHO.

Here are some examples from the Leather plugin ...

Cracked brown leather

Smooth black leather

There's a glass plugin too ...

Frosted green ...

Red ...

I've done a water plugin as well. Here is deep water ...

And not so deep ...

Shallow ...

Add some algae ...

Or just make it a little murky ...

I've also made the popular EZMetals into an EZMat plugin, making it much easier to make your own metals now.

Rusty metal ...

LaurieA has kindly let me make her gem shaders into a plugin :-)

Nicely done.  Absolutely a must have when released.

Oh, and a brick shader. Not as good as BB's of course, but it was fun making it :-)

Like all of these shaders, it is configurable ...

And fun .. :-D

Wow!! Looking forward to this release.

And sometimes silly

Anyway, this is what has kept me busy lately.

There's still lots to do, but if it's ok with everyone I'll post the occasional update here?

Oh, did I mention that EZMat has an open API so that anyone can make plugins for it? If you think you'd be interested in that aspect of it, do drop me a sitemail to find out more.

Cheers, and thank you for looking.
Snarly

Wow...yet another reason I need to take out a loan and update my Poser!

Very very cool! Interested in the leather already!

:)

I used it extensively in this image.

Impressive :thumbupboth:

Wow. Ok I'll admit it. you had me at EZmat... ok just EZ. Anything that can make the mat room easier is great and with this looks like I can avoid it almost totally. Looking forward to this.

I'm sure it will be easier to use when the manual comes out. I've been doing a lot of playing around with the texture map feature. The plug-ins still have me a bit confused, though . . .

Good work!

but where is the sausage shader plug-in?

ummm, OK, I must have a go at using this...

Ohh wow - it looks really really great!

You sir... ARE AWESOME...

Amazing work, I am impressed greatly. Thanks for sharing the images they are awesome, and esp the water and glass. Can't wait to see it in action.

I do have a question, do you plan on other types of mats, which focus on cloth material? Just wondering cause I was thinking it would be awesome if there was a ezskin type thing for cloth, seeing the leather made me rekindle the thought.

Seriously, this looks amazing.

I'm following very interested...

Quote - I do have a question, do you plan on other types of mats, which focus on cloth material? Just wondering cause I was thinking it would be awesome if there was a ezskin type thing for cloth, seeing the leather made me rekindle the thought.

Yes,  I have plans for many more plugins.

However, I am aware that there are persons much better placed to produce certain plugins than me, and I'm trying to avoid the situation where we all make the same ones :-)

The main enhancement that I will be working on over the next couple of weeks will be overlays, allowing for one shader to be overlaid upon another. This will enable things like tattoos on skin, grafitti on walls, peeling paint on .. anything etc. Not quite sure how I'll achieve that yet, but I'll find a way.

I'm also open to ideas from you guys. Even if I don't have the time or the skill to do a particular plugin, then someone else might make it :-)

One thing that WOULD be helpful is an "undo" button!

Watching with great interest

That is so awesome. Tattoos will be great to impliment. If I may be so bold to ask, how would you apply them in your plug in? Would it be like you have a png image and it overlays a certain part selected in the mat, or would the tat png overlay have to be alligned much like it already is when making overlays to skin mats?

All in all I definately salute your efforts and time in making this. I have only just started to play with EZSkin2 with my rendering within the past few months but already have noticed a difference in output.

You mentioned giving ideas. One which would immensely help me would be a zombify skin creator plugin. I could see the overlay helping creating the grunge aspect in which I use from hybrid grunge shaders as well as the wounded shaders that use to be sold here. For me personaly it is really hard to get displacement maps to give decent rips in skin as well as cloth in Gimp, probably due to inexperience texturing on my part, with disp and bump. But would be awesome to have a plugin which could emass a new unique zombie shader overlay for exsisting character mats. Just an idea though.

excellent  work  look foward to the  release

Can't wait!!!!

Been playing with a tile plugin for EZMat today ...

You can change the size of the tiles ...

.. and the shape ...

You can also use texture maps for the tiles ...