Hello to all,

Looking for a comprehensive tutorial for texturing and working with shaders - from beginers to advanced (POSER manual being too succint for my taste).

Thanks

 http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?book=material-room

written on explicit request by Renderosity. Enjoy the rest of the site as well. 

Thanks a lot aRtBee!

Looks exactly like what I needed.

And the PDF format is handy!

aRtBee's stuff is wonderful ... also look up anything by bagginsbill (at his site and here as well as RDNA)  I've learned a great deal from both. 

Oh yes Boni, I know too well about Bagginsbill expertise: I've even hassled him to the point he doesn't want to hear about me any longer :-)

I've started a lot of threads with the intention of getting bb's help ... and he has never failed me. :)

Neither has he let me down and in many cases Mr Bagginsbill has gotten me more than once out of SERIOUS trouble.

But lately I have abused of his kindness and "overPM'd" him, often asking for some silly questions;

So his reaction is perfectly understandable :-)

What reaction are we talking about? I last wrote to you that I was out of town on business and in constant meetings, and that I'd get back to you. When I'm working with this client on site, we have a very large team, chiefly there to speak to and listen to me from 8 AM to 8 PM so there's almost no time for me to pay any attention to Poser. On top of that I have no Poser with me on these trips.

I anticipated returning home Thursday night. But thunderstorms and tornadoes in the midwest (where I was) caused cancellations, and I had to find a hotel room at 2 AM. Since hundreds of people were prevented from flying, the next day resulted in my traveling for 14 hours in order to get home, instead of the 3 hours it usually takes.

During this trip I made a few comments from my iPad but I could not type anything complicated and had no access to Poser since last Sunday.

Meanwhile I'm home now but completely exhausted. As I said, I'll get back to you on your latest question.

Dear Bagginsbill,

For a reason or another it seems I didn't receive your latest message.

The main reaction we're talking about is mine: I sometimes have the feeling that I abuse of your kindness. As I said previously, you've always been the most helpful person I could find and I an grateful for that.

So please, let's forget about the whole "affair", and I sincerely hope you will have no hard feelings about what I said.

Take care,

JJ

Yikes now we have to wonder if PMs work.

I dislike PM, not only because the site no longer makes us aware we have one, but also because the information I have to say is better to be presented in the open so everybody can read how to do things, not just one person.

I can see that my last site mail to you remains unread (sent April 9). You should go to site mail every day even though you get no email about it because the programmer here does not know how to make it work. Or - he thinks it's fine and won't try to fix it. I am left trying to guess why such a basic feature is not implemented because there's another thread where many of us clearly begged for some feedback about the complaints and we got nothing.

I see another person who asked me a question in site mail in February. I answered, but they have never read the answer. This is probably because they have no idea that I answered them - there is no indication whatsoever that you have a site mail when you come here, and probably no email, either.

Boni - seriously - we have people who think I'm ignoring them. The problem is the site administrators and programmers are ignoring ME. I'm getting really pissed off.

You said you showed them the other thread - where is the reaction from them. Do they really just want me to get massively pissed off and really stop participating?

That would also mean I stop being a vendor.

Yes, I now do have recieved your last PM dated of the 9th (although I hadn't when i wrote my message on the 11th...)

You're right, let's forget about PM, that's fine by me.

PS trying to make a mirror material. Looks OK so far but unable to find the BGCOLOR node to attach to REFLECT-SPHERE MAP.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. There is no node called BGCOLOR. There is a node labelled "BG COLOR" buried in the "Background" material but this will not have anything to do with reflections or mirrors so don't go there.

There is an input to the Reflect node called "Background" but you would only use that if your world is empty. Your world should not be empty because you should be using my environment sphere to provide the missing "rest of the world".

Note: If you have exactly one material and no intention to change the environmental image, and don't intend to do realistic blurred reflection, then yes you can use Sphere_Map and attach to Reflect's Background input. However, you will have no ability to make a blurred reflection. If you want a different environment you'll have to change it in many places instead of one place, etc. There are tons of reasons not to do what you sound like you're trying to do.

A mirror material is utterly simple. But - not at all achievable in the "simple" view of the material room. Go advanced.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2772892&#msg3463314

Oh, I've started working in the advanced room alright.

I often work by imitation (as monkey see monkey do), start with an eisting shader and modify it to get the desired effect. That's what I'v done for a mirror and found this elusive BGCOLOR (but I'm afraid I'm not allowed to post shadow tree, right?)

Did you follow my link? That's all you need. Set Diffuse_Value = 0, plug in Reflect. I don't care what you're planning to do with BG COLOR - it won't reflect.

Perhaps you should show me the tutorial you're following so I can disambiguate it for you. Give me a link to what you're looking at.

Please note that an enormous amount of disinformation exists about shaders. And - a lot of stuff that just doesn't apply any more because the year is 2015.

You have to understand I am a beginner, so I have studied an existing mirror shader tat whent like this:

REFLECTION COLOR / background connected to - SPHERE MAP / color connected to - BGCOLOR

Starting from there, I modify parameters to try to understand how it works.

But with your help and the one of another tuto, I now have a perfectly fine mirror shader.

I am now n the process of trying to make a metallic "flaky" paint.

Sometimes ago, a nice lady from the forum showed me how to do it using a very simple shader. Unable to find it anylonger (complaint how the forum search has changed).

I have tried to use and study your BBG Car Paint, but:

• it takes ages to render

• it got me completely lost, far to advanced for my level of expertise. 

Well as I said before, sphere_map is for faking an environment sphere. I have given everybody a real one, that is free, and has none of the disadvantages of the Sphere_map setup.

Basic car paint without metallic flakes is pretty easy. Can you do that yet? Until you can, don't try to add the metal flake.

As for studying my big car paint shader, don't. It's full of tricks to solve problems you won't even know exist for another year.

Start simple. What do you want - basic glossy paint, right? Have you studied my threads on basic glossy shaders?

If not I'll point you to them.

If I knew what version of Poser you're using, I've forgotten. Tell me.

I use PP2010 and can make basic glossy and paint alright with REFLECT and ANISOTROPIC on the alternate specular (sometimes using raytrace).

Metallic paint is less satisfying, and what I lack in particular is to add those bloody flakes that simulate the "modern" metallic paint.

As I said, I was given an easy way to do it but the thread has disappeared from the forum.

Oh my fucking God. I just typed a glitter tutorial for you - I typed for 20 minutes. It's gone. Mysteriously deleted when a single keystroke somehow went back to the forum listing.

Fine here's the shader and now a super short description.

The bottom part is doing the glossy. The left pawn only has that part.

The top part is doing the glitter. The right pawn has it.

The sparseness of the glitter comes from generating mostly negative numbers in the Noise and then throwing those away with the Clamp.

The Clouds node is there to thwart a bug in Poser that produces obvious repeating patterns in the Noise.

Choose Glitter color based on base color. They are usually related - I basically pick the base color mixed with some white. I usually do that with nodes, but I wanted to keep things simple. So - three nodes for glitter.

There are many other variations - but I won't show any until you ask for specific goals because typing into this God-forsaken piece of crap software is extremely risky and I'm so damn pissed off I can't stand it. 

Click this for the full size version. https://live.cdn.renderosity.com/forum/comments/4200014/file_a0a080f42e6f13b3a2df133f073095dd.jpg

I should not have to manually supply that link but the software seems unable to do anything that makes sense.

Thanks Mr BBG, that's so helpful!

And with such a "simple" shader, I'll be able to understand what each parameter does.

Enclosed is what I tried to achieve.

Believe it or not, it's supposed to be "flaky"...

Thanks Mr BBG, that's so helpful!

And with such a "simple" shader, I'll be able to understand what each parameter does.

Enclosed is what I tried to achieve.

Believe it or not, it's supposed to be "flaky"...

http://www.imagebam.com/image/bfbe77404017936http://www.imagebam.com/image/bfbe77404017936

BBG you're the man!

And that's without COLOR ADD connected to Input 2 of BLENDER which I can't find (where is it?)

PS sorry for the multiple images above, can't edit the message?

My nodes are custom named - Color_Add is a Color_Math configured to Add.

You really need to get your basic glossy reflections going first. Here's a comparison without raytraced reflections and with them.

Note - the car is kind of a poor model for a closeup like this. I was experimenting with some free cars and this was handy.

Fantastic!  I love it! 

Boni

@Boni I love it too! But the tyres (a good thing, it proves our friend Bagginsbill is human after all ;-)

• How do you set it to ADD? Is it important? I left it to COLOR MATH, looks alright to me.

• On the above pic is what happens when DIFFUSE is set to RAYTRACE.

No problem when it's left to SPHERICAL MAP.What am I doing wrong?

- Next step will be to try your MATMATIC GLASS on the windows.

Cheers!

Your scene has nothing besides the car so the reflect node finds nothing to reflect.

When you add the SphereMap, you're invoking its fall-back technique, which is if it can't find an object to show in reflections, it will show what the "Background" channel has in it - your SphereMap.

That's why I mentioned you should be using an EnvironmentSphere - something to surround the entire subject. This not only provides reflections, but also matching lighting (with IDL).

@Boni I love it too! But the tyres (a good thing, it proves our friend Bagginsbill is human after all ;-)

No it doesn't. It means I didn't do anything to the tires. This is some junk model I was trying out and I slapped the glass and paint on it to show you how important the reflections are. Note: I suppose I am human, but the image doesn't prove that. I could be a machine which is only programmed to deal with shiny parts.

• How do you set it to ADD? Is it important? I left it to COLOR MATH, looks alright to me.

 

The Color_Math has a pulldown to choose Math_Argument - that is what should be set to Add - but even if you don't find it, Add is the default. As I've mentioned before, I don't build the nodes by hand - I use matmatic, and matmatic places labels on the nodes a little differently than the GUI does. In matmatic, when I have two color nodes in A and B and I say

A + B

It makes a Color_Math node, sets the Math_Argument to Add, and connects A and B to the Color_Math inputs. It labels this Color_Add. If instead I say:

A - B

it would make a Color_Math node, set the Math_Argument to Subtract, and connect A and B to the Color_Math inputs. It labels this Color_Subtract.

Similarly

A * B is called Color_Multiply

and 

A / B is called Color_Divide

and so on.

But the label is completely not important. The parameter values are. The label is basically a comment - something to clue you (the reader) in as to what is happening here.

Here's what a car looks like in Poser when I do all the materials on it.

Here is a motorcycle, again with all my materials.

Earlier I mentioned the importance of an environment sphere instead of a sphere map.

Here's a demonstration.

See how this little stage appears to be surrounded by a sunlit apartment? That's the environment sphere.

Now when I look closely at the stage, I see that environment reflected in those pawns.

But - notice how the room is tack sharp reflected in the chrome pawn, but blurry and indistinct in the red rubber pawns? That's something you can't do properly with the SphereMap - no blurring. I don't know why it works that way - but it just does. Also, it's much better to put the environment image on the environment sphere, than to put it in many shaders of each individual prop.

Wow, just WOW!!! I'm in awe...

The car & bike just look out of this world.

In a couple of centuries, if you keep on sharing your knowledge to me, I may be able to render something appproaching that quality. Hopefully...

if you're interrested, i'll keep you posted on my improvements. And if you don't mind, carry on asking for advices;

PS: mentioning the "bad quality" of the tyres was meant as a joke (and eventually a compliment).

I have to admit I usually don't Ooooo and Ahhhhh over automobile renders ... but Wow! those are fantastic.  I love them! It's amazing what the envirosphere can do to bring out the shine and reflection off a surface.  This brings Poser up a few notches.  And we could not do it without the amazing work in python script and the node work of you bagginsbill! 

bagginsbill, I have been trying to find this glitter tutorial for a while now and here it is. I do wonder why I could not find it before with a search. Thank you so much.