Quote - Let me try to squeeze this in into my ongoing Material Room demystification.

I can't think of anyone who'd do a better job :-)
If you do decide to work on some explanations / guides, I'll be sure to help out.

Snarly, good to see you're posting again, hope you keep feeling better. :)

Can someone explain more how to get the Loom working?

I've got the compiler going but not the loom. :sad:

Quote - Snarly, good to see you're posting again, hope you keep feeling better. :)

Can someone explain more how to get the Loom working?

I've got the compiler going but not the loom. :sad:

Are you talking about Matmatic, or EZMat? The Loom plugin for EZMat is something BB has been working on and hasn't been released. It is not included in the freedownloads for EZMat.

There is a Loom extension for Matmatic though - is that what you are referring to?

Quote - Snarly, good to see you're posting again, hope you keep feeling better. :)

Can someone explain more how to get the Loom working?

I've got the compiler going but not the loom. :sad:

Is this an old Bagginsbill shader? Do you have the image in the folder and the compilier pointed to it?  I don't exactly remember how I got it work because I saved it in the MC5 or MC6 format.

It is the one from the Matmatic version. :)

Good to read these posts from you, Snarly... and really good to know that you've found some reprieve in terms of your health for now.

All the best :-)

Quote - It is the one from the Matmatic version. :)

Okay, could you please give a more detailed description of the symptoms? 

It just does nothing at all when I click run python.

And I'm not sure what I am supposed to do to load it anyway...lol.

Go back to bagginsbill site and download the latest copy of the matmatic. Install it.

Go to your config.txt file and change the verbose from 1 to 2. Check the scan Runtime:Libraries:materials:MatmaticDemos*  Make sure the # is not there. Create a MatmaticDemos subfolder in the material folder. Create a Loom subfolder and place the *.mm1.txt there. This is the script you need to run: Poser XRuntimePythonmatmaticcompile.py You'll see it in action.

It would be good to keep this as an EZMat thread ...

Perhaps questions and answers about Matmatic could continue in its own thread?

Figured I would add this link to IOR refrences. I am playing around with the water portion right now, and found this refrence to the Index of refractions for certain solid, liquid and gaseous components.

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

May be helpful, may not...

Above is my first attempt at doing a ruby material on a seahorse in my wife's content collection.

"It just does nothing at all when I click run python."

What does nothing at all? Matmatic? The loom? Neither of these have anything to do with EZMat and neither have a user interface. They're programming/scripting tools that have been around a long time without a UI.

The Loom plugin for EZMat that I showed in this thread is something I was working on for EZMat. It has a UI and contains a rewrite of the Loom. I was planning to sell that as a plugin for EZMat. 

But for the past few weeks, I've been continuing my earlier work with VSS, adding a UI and a plugin manager, and I modified my EZMat plugins both to make them more capable for the end user and to make more advanced features that I want easier to develop.

None of this is EZMat so I won't expand on it here.

So glad you are better! :thumbupboth:

Keep getting stronger.  Thanx for the gift. 

Do take care... :wub:

BB, thanks for the explaination.

Guess I had it installed previously and got it confused with EZMat.

Snarly, sorry for my confusion about it, my brain is not at peak right now due to health issues of my own.

I hope to give EZMat a good workout soon but my eyes need care first.

You will see me here as often as I can over the next few weeks just absorbing any information about EZMat. :)

Good to see you back, snarly old boy.

You've been missed. Glad to hear you're feeling better.

I've been having a play with EZMat - thanks for this gift. Even at this early stage it is still a very useful tool for my Poser work. You Sir, rock.

we're glad to see you here again, snarly.

users of EZMat should be able to answer many of the questions which may arise whilst you're on the road to recovery.

I'm having trouble and was wondering if anyone could help me. When I click on ezmat in the addon lists I get a popup that says ezmat (c) 2014 Snarlygribbly and a button to click OK. Then I get nothing else. There is no interface or anything. When I loaded a new scene after that I got this message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "L:Poser developmentEZMatRuntimePythonAddonsEZMat__init__.py", line 10794, in objectsDeleted
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'UpdateUI'

My path is C:Poser Pro 2014 ContentRuntimePythonaddonsEZMat. I'm using pp2014 lastest update on win 7 with the laatest update.

Quote - I'm having trouble and was wondering if anyone could help me. When I click on ezmat in the addon lists I get a popup that says ezmat (c) 2014 Snarlygribbly and a button to click OK. Then I get nothing else. There is no interface or anything. When I loaded a new scene after that I got this message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "L:Poser developmentEZMatRuntimePythonAddonsEZMat__init__.py", line 10794, in objectsDeleted
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'UpdateUI'

My path is C:Poser Pro 2014 ContentRuntimePythonaddonsEZMat. I'm using pp2014 lastest update on win 7 with the laatest update.

Can you set Poser to load with the factory default scene (andy etc.) and see if the problem remains? I need to know if there is something in your scene that EZMat doesn't like, or wheher the problem lies elsewhere.

While I am unable to spare the time to work on full documentation or continued development at the moment, I will try to fix all bugs that are reported so please report all problems here.

I shall also start a thread soon which will act as a basic tutorial. If any of yoou who have started playing with EZMat would like to give some pointers as to what parts of EZMat require the most explanation, i shall endeavour to deal with those first.

I'm also very happy to answer any questions you have here.

I'd like to make EZMat useful to everyone, so perhaps between us we can get some good information in this thread (and the forthcoming tutorial thread) about how to use it effectively.

Don't be afraid to ask questions, even if they seem dumb - EZMat is NOT a straightforward plugin and your question together with its answer is likely to help lots of other people too.

Most of all, have fun with it.

Oh ... and how many of you would be interested in learning how to make your own plugins? It isn't as hard as you might think ...

One thing I noticed using the gem shaders is with the initial setup of the shader for the ruby, which I did in the above image a few posts back, my first renders were solid black. To fix this I made a 2048x2048 @ 300 dpi image of just the color color picked from an image of a cut ruby. I then applied it in the diffuse channel and highlight channel in the mat room. I also made the diffuse color from black to white.

My question is if I were to retry the shader as I did before I made the diffuse map. How would I get the model to render out the object at the color instead of pure black.

For my scene I had a heart jewel I made in wings3d. I used I13's IDL studio, Base for all around lighting. As for the lighting in the scene I am using a hard light setting which came in the Render Studio Bundle from RDNA.

Settings are

5 raytrace bounces

100 irradiance cache

idl quality 7

pixel samples 10

Shading rate .1

Forgive me if I don't post all the settings I have I am on my alt pc at the moment and won't be able to get to the better one for hours.

With the above settings it rendered black without the image map for the diffuse channel. Same with the sea horse image.

Would that be a lighting issue or a goof on my part setting up the scene.

I haven't had time to look at what this gem shader does but your ruby is not what a ruby looks like. You're doing diffuse reflection, which is entirely from the surface. It should involve refraction - sending light through the object and coloring it. It should also involve reflection, which means having something to reflect, not a featureless empty world of nothingness.

Ah - I just looked at the EZMat gem shader. It's a shader I posted for Laurie and she packaged it in this plugin - fabulous - perfect - it works great.

I think your empty world is why it was black.

"5 raytrace bounces"

But you did not mention that you enabled raytracing. So based on years of guessing when somebody doesn't mention this it's why it isn't doing raytracing, I'm gonna say you forgot to enable raytracing.

Here I tested the Gem - Garnet Red preset. Works great!

You have to have raytracing enabled.

You have to have at least 3 bounces to make it look somewhat complete because light bounces around inside these gems a lot - 4 would be better. I used 6.

You have to have stuff for the rays to hit. A complete environment full of things that are not all one color.

If you want hot specular highlights, you either need some Poser lights or you need an outstandingly well-made HDR environment. 

Sorry, yes ray tracing was enabled, I also set the lights and made sure that they were raytrace instead of shadow mapped. Ok guessing the formless void is the problem, then since there wasn't anything around it. It was a test image, Ok will try it again with more items around it. Thank you for the time and responce.

Now question. If you are using a lightdome such as the one in I13's IDL studio could that count as an environment to bounce the light back for the refractions so as to get the same effects without having to have other objects in the scene, so it can render out a base image to use as a png resource for a realistic gem, so when it is saved, it won't have to be edited in gimp or photoshop to remove say the counter tile like it is in your scene. This might be a dumb question but if I set up the scene as you have, then remove it from being viewed in the camera during raytracing would it give the same effect?

I often do this type of rendering for things I create for tubes, but haven't really needed to do anything more than basic setup and rendering for character pngs. I am new with use of refractions, but am interested in doing more with it.

that garnet looks great, as do the tiles!

Thank you again BagginsBill for your time and responce.

Yes you could use that or my environment sphere - same idea - a giant sphere or dome that holds an image of the world around the subject. But!

Want to use nothing? Ah! Ok forget light domes - forget anything else. To make an isolated object as if there is a world around it, do as I did here.

Go into the shader. On the Reflect and Refract nodes there is a Background input. Change that to white. Now you will need three nodes (middle is optional, but do it)

1. Add a Sphere_Map node. Connect that to both Reflect and Refract Background input.

2. Add an HSV node. This is optional, but it is nice for adjusting the color and brightness of the world image.

3. Add an Image_Map node and load your world image into it.

My image is a very very blue sky and I wanted to both boost its brightness and decrease the saturation. I was easily able to do those two things with the HSV node. Notice I set the Saturation to 0.25 and the Value to 2.0? That is a fantastic tool for image adjustments.

Now I can render with nothing else in the scene. I still want raytracing for the gem to pick up internal bounces and so on, but I don't need any other objects. The Sphere_Map + Image_Map will supply the rest.

In render settings, make sure! you choose Render Over Black in the options box.

Save as PNG.

Very cool BB.

Snarly, I for sure would be happy to learn how the plug-in structure works.

Forgot to mention, when using a dome or sphere, if you do not want it in the background of the render, just for reflections, then turn off the checkbox "Visible in camera". (Only in latest Posers)

I forgot to mention that the Background Sphere_Map trick only does sharp reflections. If you want soft reflections (like from a not-so-polished metal) then you have to use the environment sphere or dome.

Also if you want the environmental lighting for IDL, again, use a sphere or dome.

Looks like this.

(Note: I made a horrible mistake on the rubies and emeralds here, which I later corrected, but I didn't rerender as it took over an hour. Just look at the metal.)

Thank you for explaining this to me. And thank you for screen shots and example renders. I will try this out tonight and post results.

@BagginsBill Your images are awesome. Again thank you for teaching me something and taking the time to explain.

Thanks. Still working on the tile UI. So many parameters. I'm not even half done.

I think what I'm going to do is publish a free version of BBTile for EZMat (one that doesn't have a bajillion knobs) and I'll sell the big BBTile "Pro" for VSS. (WIP seen here)

Quote - > Quote - I'm having trouble and was wondering if anyone could help me. When I click on ezmat in the addon lists I get a popup that says ezmat (c) 2014 Snarlygribbly and a button to click OK. Then I get nothing else. There is no interface or anything. When I loaded a new scene after that I got this message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "L:Poser developmentEZMatRuntimePythonAddonsEZMat__init__.py", line 10794, in objectsDeleted
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'UpdateUI'

My path is C:Poser Pro 2014 ContentRuntimePythonaddonsEZMat. I'm using pp2014 lastest update on win 7 with the laatest update.

Can you set Poser to load with the factory default scene (andy etc.) and see if the problem remains? I need to know if there is something in your scene that EZMat doesn't like, or wheher the problem lies elsewhere.

It still happens with factory defaults.

I got something similar at first, but loading a plug-in remedied that.

how do I load a plug in?

Yes, I'd be interested in learning to do my own plug-ins when I finally master the EZMat. :)

A thread devoted to tutorials sounds great!

I've deleted the old one from my Poser 2014 and installed the correct on and installed Matmatic on Poser 7 so I can play there too.

That way I'll stop confusing the two of them.

in OS X, select item in pose room with figure present, go to mat room, select EZMat from addons, dbl-clk EZMat window, then it should look like this :]

select material, select plug-in, click "apply" button.

Note that you can right click on the background of the EZMat UI to bring up a menu that allows you to make the EZMat interface into a floating window. It is designed to be floating, so this is recommended. best to make it non-dockable too.

yes, is much better floating.  in OS X, it can initially be made floating by control-click.  then if it's dragged, it will redock, unless option key held down whilst dragging.

ok. I've got things working. Sarnly had said you could put it any runtime so I put it in my main runtime. I moved it to the runtime where the program is installed and now it works.

Hmm. That's not right. I certainly do not have it in my main runtime and it works for me. 

Which SR of PP2014 do you have? And where is your main runtime (full path).

In other words, say stuff you didn't realize would matter. grin

It was located here C:external1 NTFSPoser Pro 2014 ContentRuntimePythonaddonsEZMat

It's now located here C:external1 NTFSProgram FilesSmith MicroPoser Pro 2014RuntimePythonaddonsEZMat

It's sr 3.1

Loving EZMat. Nice & easy to use only prob i have is sorting ezskin config part of it.