I'm trying to make a photo album cover with an indented title (displacement) and gold text (overlay + specular). In DS, this is pretty easy, but I can't get a decent result in Poser. Can anyone help with this?

Image 1 - Daz Studio

Image 2 - Poser

Image 3 - Material nodes

TIA

mac

I can't seem to upload a 3rd image. Is there some sort of limit to number of images? I keep getting an Amazon error (whatever that's supposed to be)

mac

Wow! This forum's weird. I tried to edit my 2nd post to describe the node setup and it told me I don't have permission to edit. I'll try in a new post.

Leather texture (gray) - Attached to Diffuse Color (Brown)

Overlay texture (Gold letters on white background) - Attached to Diffuse Strength

Specular texture (White letters on dark gray background) - Attached to Specular Color (White)

Displacement texture (Dark gray letters on gray background) - Attached to Displacement

I've tried various different combinations, but with no good results.

mac

You can do this with multiple maps, but I would not go that way, for a number of reasons.

I'd make one map, white on black, indicating (in white) where the letters are. I would use that map to run everything. You can use it to run blenders to pick two different anythings - you'd use several to blend (pick between) two different diffuse color, specular color, bump map, etc. And you'd use it directly to indent the surface via displacement.

The real question then is - do you know how to make an effective leather setup and an effective gold setup? If not, then you have bigger problems.

Also what version of Poser are you targeting, and how much realism? Are you willing to pay for computing reflections via raytracing, or you just want something that looks like a cartoon book ala Poser 4?

The blender node takes two inputs and a mask. As Bagginsbill said the mask can be used for any channel (diffuse, bump,specular etc)  and the inputs would be the complete shader for each material.   

If you have satisfactory materials for the gold and cover it should be fairly easy to do, just tedious to keep everything straight.

This picture shows the node setup in poser 7

The image map is the mask, the two simple color nodes represent the nodes for that material, the cover and the printing for the diffuse channel.

You would do the same for specular and bump.

Well, I did get a result using the maps I had, and adding a Blender node. One reason for wanting to do it this way is so the user can change the Diffuse Color, thereby making the cover any color they like.

Thanks for the input.

Every time I try to post a pic of the material room, the forum gives me the same Amazon S3 account error, but not for other images.

Verbally

Blender - Attached to Diffuse Color

Leather texture (gray) - Attached to Blender Input 1

Overlay texture (Gold letters on white background) - Attached to Blender Input 2

Specular texture (White letters on dark gray background) - Attached to Specular Color (White)

Displacement texture (Dark gray letters on gray background) - Attached to Displacement

In my example the image map shown is the mask for the blending. One color will appear where the image is white, the other when it is black. You have not said whats hooked to the belnding value. 

For a metallic lettering you would need to use a blender node on specular, and probably use alternate specular so you can build a better shader for metals.

This is a common request and you should find some forum threads on the blender node and metallic materials.

maybe a better example

the material settings

Notes: The mask used was not scaled for the uv map of the book prop so I scaled it to get it to fit (more or less)

The mask is Image_Map_2 which is white text on black background.

Image_Map is the original cover texture. I use it for specular and bump. Thats not a proper bump map but used as example.

Blender is diffuse

Blender_2 is alternate specular

Blender_3 is the bump channel.

Thanks a lot for your help. I'll keep experimenting and see how it goes.

mac

Took me a while to find these threads (Rendo is not the only forum that can bork all the saved thread links and bust the search engine so all the great stuff we've posted can be lost forever. RDNA has done a credible job of losing stuff.) All of these threads are related to blending two or more different "materials" in the same "shader".

Dual Materials with Stencils

Dual Materials with Stencils a step further

Multi masking

OK I'm an idiot. How do you invert a texture in Poser?

Mask a Displacement Map

Need shader help again ;)

Thanks a lot for taking the trouble, BB. That should cover a lot of ground, and might solve a few other problems I've come across.

One thing I tried (unsuccessfully) to do recently was place 2 images on a blank page in this photo album.(It's an ERC-controlled album with 20 turning pages)

I have a base blank page texture (40/40/40 paper), and I was trying to find a way to place several photos on top of it. This is something that can be done in Daz Studio using LIE (the Layered Image Editor) and makes it easy for the user to fill a photo album with their own pics. I can scale and position pics on the page in Poser, but I'm getting a 'double-exposure' effect where the photos merge with the base page texture.

I'm one of the few PAs at DAZ who still makes a Poser version of every product, and if I can't get something to work in both DS and Poser, then I just don't include it. So I'm really trying hard to make the Poser versions do anything that can be done in DS. I know Poser is capable. It's me that lacks the know-how.

Off to check these threads.

mac

thanks for those links BB, I will grab a copy.

In case anyone is still interested in overlays, I've finally got it working - thanks to Karibou in the DAZ forums, who figured it out.

I was using a Color Math node to overlay multiple inages on a black page texture. Karibou discovered that only works with a white background. But it can be done using the basic image nodes, setting Image_Mapped to Alpha, and connecting the last (black page) texture to the background of the photos.

Using that system, I've successfully overlaid 3 images on the page, and I can add as many as I like.

I'm attaching a screen of the nodes, although I'm not sure if it will upload.

mac

Nope - As I thought, every time I try to upload a pic of the material room, I get the Amazon S3 error

I'll try to explain it verbally.

Image_Map1 (photo 1)> Diffuse Color

Image_Map2 (photo 2)> Image_Map1 Background - Image_Mapped = Alpha

Image_Map3 (photo3)> Image_Map2 Background - Image_Mapped = None

Image_Map4 (black page paper tex)> Image_Map3 Background

Obviously, each photo node needs to have UV Scale/Offset tweaked to get the position right. Image1 will be above Image2, etc, so you can actually set the order and have one photo partially cover another.