I have a (long) list of shaders from Blender, that I'd like to rebuild for Poser, but the Material Room in Poser sucks for doing that because I'd have to create a number of node groups for the shaders. Is it possible to build Poser a "new" Material Room using Python? Preferably one that will let me zoom in and out, scroll up and across, and won't have the nodes jumping around like mexican jumping beans.

it is certainly possible, and has been done before, but why not learn to use the current Material Room to its full potential? Using Compound Nodes will keep it all neat and tidy, and everything will fit on one screen without any need to scroll or zoom. It'll certainly be quicker (half an hour) for you to do that than for a script writer to spend a lot longer (weeks/months) writing a new Material Room…

No offense, Snarly, but based on that argument, there'd be no reason to ever improve the Material Room. Poser's Material room nodes stay full size, so you can't just lay them out and connect the nodes as needed. That's what zooming in and out would provide. I don't mind using the compound nodes to make things nice and neat, and I'd like to do e able to do that.

PS: Your arguement does hold water in the level of difficulty and length of time. Maybe there's some way to shrink down the node size?

EClark1894 posted at 10:03PM Sat, 16 November 2019 - #4370393

No offense, Snarly, but based on that argument, there'd be no reason to ever improve the Material Room. Poser's Material room nodes stay full size, so you can't just lay them out and connect the nodes as needed. That's what zooming in and out would provide. I don't mind using the compound nodes to make things nice and neat, and I'd like to do e able to do that.

PS: Your arguement does hold water in the level of difficulty and length of time. Maybe there's some way to shrink down the node size?

That's nonsense, Earl. I'm sure the developers will give the Material Room some love when they get around to it, because they'll be paid for their efforts and it will benefit all Poser users. But you specifically said about doing it in Python, which means some poor sod giving up a chunk of their life to make it. Tell you what, I'll build a zoomable one for you, for $3,000, which is about what it would be worth for me to give up that much time. Let me know?

If I had $3,000 I'd take you up on that.

BTW, Snarly, FWIW, I wasn't asking anyone to build it for me, just asking if it was possible to be done.

EClark1894 posted at 10:36PM Sat, 16 November 2019 - #4370400

BTW, Snarly, FWIW, I wasn't asking anyone to build it for me, just asking if it was possible to be done.

Well Semidieu made the Advanced Material Manager script, which pretty much had a replacement Material Room. It wasn't exactly what you've asked for, but it does show that these things are possible.

Of course, there aren't many script writers out there who are a skilled as he was so i don't think it would be very easy, but certainly possible.

Think it might work for me? Or too old?

EClark1894 posted at 10:54PM Sat, 16 November 2019 - #4370404

Think it might work for me? Or too old?

Too old, most likely. I can't be sure about that, maybe somebody who still uses it can chime in?

I use it on a regular basis, but it only works one the poser surface node, does not even see cycles or physical. Bill

@EClark1894 Kind of curious what those Blender shaders do. If they are natural materials like metal, wood, leather etc perhaps they could be converted into PBR?

ironsoul posted at 6:55PM Sat, 16 November 2019 - #4370407

@EClark1894 Kind of curious what those Blender shaders do. If they are natural materials like metal, wood, leather etc perhaps they could be converted into PBR?

They're mostly natural, Glossy, metal, fabric etc. But I was just reading something which may help me immensely. Let me check.