I just upgraded to Poser 11 (not pro) recently and I'm trying to come to grips with the new physical surface shader node. There are a few things that I have gripes with but one thing at a time.

OK, so, imagine a simple sphere and a flat plane in front of it facing forward. I've created a texture for it with simple PBR textures and a transparency map. When I render everything out with all the maps connected properly to the PoserSurface node then everything looks fine in both Firefly and Superfly. However, when I plug in all the textures to the PhysicalSurface node then everything behind the plane gets tinted the colour that is mapped to the plane EVEN if the transparency map shows full transparency for parts of that plane.

The crux of the issue is: PoserSurface node = transparency correct PhysicalSurface node = colour tinting on even completely transparent parts of the mesh

What I want is to have complete colourless transparency on the PhysicalSurface node.

How can I achieve this?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers, Paul (mix_mash)

The physicalsurface node is a tricky root ... it was built with certain goals in mind. Could you show us some screen shots? According to Teyon Alexander during the early release of Poser 11: "The main purpose of the Physical Surface root is to allow for compatibility with maps out of programs like Quixel Suite and Substance Designer/Painter. Can you use nodes with it? Sure but it's really more focused on supporting maps like Albedo, Metallic, Roughness, etc. without the fuss of having to fiddle with nodes." Now having quoted that ... you still should not have this issue. But we will work through this. This root node does have it's limitations.

Maybe post a screen shot of your material room settings for the render?

Post a screenshot of the material setup (open/expand all nodes).

My first thought would be to use the transmap to control the color as well as the transparency.

For complete transparency the spec needs to be set to black.

Also if you are using the Cycles Transparency node in the Physical Surface Root node you need to add an invert node to your transparency map.

I just checked it out and you need to do the same with a Poser image map as well.

In Firefly, white areas in a transparency map are opaque, and black areas in a transparency map are transparent.

You can use the same transparency map in the Physical Surface node. Just set the mode to "Opacity" instead.

Following screen cap shows a closeup of the trans map used for this fabric. Black areas are transparent, white areas are opaque (same type of map that you would use in FireFly). Just use your old typical Image Map node that you used for Firefly. You don't have to use a Cycles image node here.

The transparency image map node is then hooked in to the "Transparency" input of the Physical Surface node. Then the Transparency Mode is set to "Opacity." You don't need to flip it with an invert node.

Quoting the OP:

"However, when I plug in all the textures to the PhysicalSurface node then everything behind the plane gets tinted the colour that is mapped to the plane EVEN if the transparency map shows full transparency for parts of that plane."

Hard to see what is going on without seeing a screen cap of your node connections. Just a guess .... You wouldn't have "Colored Transparency" checked by any chance, would you? That could cause that behavior. If you do have it checked, uncheck it.

"For complete transparency the spec needs to be set to black"

Yeah highlights and reflections are very different between FF and SF. I suppose one way to test if it's spec color is to plug the transparency map into the specular temporarily and see if that gets rid of the issue.

Hi, I will try to post up some sample pics soon. Unfortunately, I will be busy for a few days due to life issues but I will try to get something up soon in a few days time.

Appreciate everyone's input so far.

Cheers, Paul (mix_mash)

Here is a breakdown of the renders. The first part is obviously my material setup. I set up both the Poser and Physical shader nodes at once and just changed the Firefly and Superfly root selections when rendering between the two types. The object covering the face, as you can see, is just a basic plane mesh, molded slightly to the face more. There is a duplicate mesh with flipped normals so the mesh is actually coplanar. However, even when I tried separating both the front and back meshes so that they were not coplanar (even by a large distance), I would still get the same results with the renders nonetheless.

1. Poser Shader + Firefly This gives my the perfect setup for what I want but lacks the PBR shading, which I really need.

2. Poser Shader + Superfly The displacement of this is either off or incorrect. It's just an uglier version of version 1.

3. Physical Shader + Firefly As you can see, the purple from the colour map shows through when it technically should not (unless there is a shader issue). Also, the displacement gives slight streaky specular rendering errors. This could also be in conjuntion with the normal map, though.

4. Physical Shader + Superfly Same as version 2 except it also has the colour bleed like with version 3. Not happy with the displacement issue (if there even is displacement going on in the first place.)

I would love to create an new version of one of my older products that uses the displacement tricks AND gives good PBR results but these are my current rendering hiccups. I'd like to get rid of these hiccups because the potential for this set up has been good to me in the past.

Oh, and, yes, I have tried plugging in the transparency map into the specular colour but that did nothing.

Appreciate any help on this.

Cheers, Paul (mix_mash)

Fully open the trans and trans blend nodes, so that we can see what they are doing. My initial thought is that the blender is producing a non-zero output where you intended transparency.

Here are both the trans and trans blend nodes.

Paul (mix_mash)

From your screen shoot you are using an early version of Poser 11. I would suggest to update to the latest version.

For the displacement: SuperFly has no micro displacement like FireFly. In SuperFly displacement works on vertex level only, means you either have to subd your mesh several times or you better use a bump or normal map.

It is important to set gamma to 1.0 for your trans-map.

This works for me.

Nagra_00_ posted at 9:20PM Tue, 19 June 2018 - #4332054

From your screen shoot you are using an early version of Poser 11. I would suggest to update to the latest version.

For the displacement: SuperFly has no micro displacement like FireFly. In SuperFly displacement works on vertex level only, means you either have to subd your mesh several times or you better use a bump or normal map.

It is important to set gamma to 1.0 for your trans-map.

Oh, I installed from a physical version that was sent to me after I bought it, I HATE download managers. I thought they would have at least the decency to have sent me the latest version. Just to note that it is not Poser Pro but just Poser and that's why I didn't have the 'Opacity/Transparency' toggle option.

It sucks Superfly can't do pixel based displacement. Such a waste of potential.

To be honest, I would be happy to just use the Poser shader in Firefly if I could only get it to fake decent PBR spec/gloss/reflection.

Paul (mix_mash)

mix_mash posted at 11:01AM Wed, 20 June 2018 - #4332095

Oh, I installed from a physical version that was sent to me after I bought it, I HATE download managers. I thought they would have at least the decency to have sent me the latest version. Just to note that it is not Poser Pro but just Poser and that's why I didn't have the 'Opacity/Transparency' toggle option.

It sucks Superfly can't do pixel based displacement. Such a waste of potential.

To be honest, I would be happy to just use the Poser shader in Firefly if I could only get it to fake decent PBR spec/gloss/reflection.

There is more missing in your PhysicalRoot than just the OT toggle. Looks to me definitely like one of the first versions. AFAIK that old version did by default only colored transparency.

You can’t expect to get the latest version when ordering a physical copy, thats normal and not specific to Poser. Its a matter of production costs. The last software i ordered physical came on a USB stick and guess what it was version 1.0 and the first thing i had to do was updating.

Unfortunately, no support for micro displacement seems to be a common limitation with path tracers.

For PBR with metal-roughness workflow in FireFly there is the ’PBR-Emulator’ by ByteFactory3D available here at Rendo. But i guess thats out of scope for you.

"For PBR with metal-roughness workflow in FireFly there is the ’PBR-Emulator’ by ByteFactory3D available here at Rendo. But i guess thats out of scope for you."

Um, why is it out of scope for me?

Anyway, that aside, I suppose that I'll have to update via the Download Manager. It just seems like the Download Manager is some sort of roundabout way of stopping piracy. It just seems to make things awkward for some people (like me).

If Smith Micro would just give us a direct link to the installation files, I don't see the problem with that.

Paul (mix_mash)

The DLM finds the latest installer(s) for you and notifies you of what's available. The main advantage is that it can pause/resume a download, or resume if interrupted. It's not so bad. :-)

If you have P11**Pro** and use Queue Manager on remote machines (render slaves), then only update as far as 11.0.8.34338 (SR8); the latest SR does not have a Queue-only installer, so DLM won't update your remotes, and then your workstation can't control the remotes (build numbers must match).

Finally bit the bullet and used the download manager and got Poser updated.

So, yes, now everything works as it should. It is just a shame that there is no way to smooth out micro detail on the pixel displacement. I still get those specular streaks like in sample image 3. I thought they might have worked on that since Poser 10 but no go.

Thanks to everyone who contributed anyway. I appreciate your help nonetheless.

Cheers, Paul (mix_mash)

The lack of micro displacement is probably a reflection of the game industry origins of PBR. Normal maps can work well but assumes a hi-res mesh model is available to generate the maps from and a program to perform the calcs (not Poser). A possible work around is to use the subdivision option in the properties pane to boost the mesh density at render time

ironsoul posted at 8:40PM Sat, 23 June 2018 - #4332209

The lack of micro displacement is probably a reflection of the game industry origins of PBR. Normal maps can work well but assumes a hi-res mesh model is available to generate the maps from and a program to perform the calcs (not Poser). A possible work around is to use the subdivision option in the properties pane to boost the mesh density at render time

Technically that sounds like a good idea but there are two issues with that. First, The texture is 2048 x 2048 which means that the mesh would need at least 4.2 million polygons for the displacement to cover the texture size correctly. That puts a massive drain on the system. Secondly, I did a test with this and the result was horrible. It might have something to do with the order in which subdivision and deformation occur.

It doesn't matter anyway because I will have to experiment and see if I can make it more stable for commercial purposes or just model the masks manually. But, I prefer the novelty of using the texture transparency and displacement map method for cheat ways of making quick and simple designs. I mean, you just load up some textures and, boom, you got yourself a new design.

Thanks for the advice, though.

Paul (mix_mash)