Last year I bought a group of materials that I thought would help with Cycles rendering in Poser. The group of materials is called the Cycles Material Vault or CMV for short. I was ecstatic because Cycles at the time I was looking didn't seem to have that deep a bench to go looking for materials. I found a few here and there, but they were basically simple materials, like chrome, paint, glass, etc. That was not a problem. Problem: I had seen Cycles do more, but all the files were for Blender. Poser doesn't read Blender Files. I even sent the man in charge of the CMV a letter asking if he could create the materials for Poser but never received a reply. I found other materials here and there. Including one site called Chocofur. They sell wave front objects and materials. Again, all for Blender. So I thought okay, I'll recreate the materials in Poser myself. I tried, really, I tried. Even got close a few times. Problem is, (and I'm sure you've all read it from be by now) Poser's missing a few nodes, so you can't do a direct node to node rebuild. Okay workaround then. I found a few. like substituting the Cycles Color ramp node with the Firefly Color ramp node. There are a few others, but none for the ones that have a graphic curve. You've all seen them, Photoshop and even GIMP have one.

But even if I could get that working for me (I can't, I've tried) There's the problem of laying out the nodes. Now granted I did not know until today that I could actually make the material room Window bigger. I can only get it so bid on my machine, but the problem was the nodes again. They're too big, you can't lay them out and arrange them. You can't zoom in or out in the Material Room, can you? You can scroll, I suppose. But I want to show you something...

I spent all morning trying to layout a material I found for chrome. I got a little ... confused to say the least. It's even tougher to layout with Poser sized nodes.

I give up.

Could be that the Firefly node you're substituting it with uses a different precision or type of data to that used by the Cycles nodes, just guessing though, so take that with a pinch of salt!

This is precisely why I keep yammering on about getting either the full cycles engine working with Poser, or better yet, the cycles plug-in for the AMD ProRender engine working with Poser. Poser should be leveraging open source - especially since it will provide more options for Poser users.

And the ability to use ANY graphics card for GPU rendering.

This. I haven't used an NVidia GPU in years. And Poser should be caught up with open source cycles branches.

On the size of the thing on your window: you can try collapsing some of those nodes into a compound node. Not only will that turn a bunch of nodes into one small window that you can plug things from/into, it'll also help you make sense of all the noodle fest in there.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 5:26PM Mon, 10 February 2020 - #4379828

On the size of the thing on your window: you can try collapsing some of those nodes into a compound node. Not only will that turn a bunch of nodes into one small window that you can plug things from/into, it'll also help you make sense of all the noodle fest in there.

Yeah, that's actually one of my complaints. You CAN collapse them, but you have the problem of laying them out, if they can fit, and if you uncollapse them, they jump all around the material room and you have to go hunting for them.

or better yet, the cycles plug-in for the AMD ProRender engine working >with Poser.

Prorender is not a plugin for cycles but a completely separate render engine with its own (Uber shader) and a complete library of preset materials as well.

It support All cards and even CPU rendering for those willing to wait longer times

Bondware just added the driver for NVIDIA RTX cards so those who made the investment should get much faster poser renders.?

@EClark1894: And what exactly are you giving up now?

Read the thread.

Agree that the existing Poser Cycles Root Surface shader regime is missing some node options. Sometimes I just switch to Physical Root Surface And make things simpler in terms of nodes.

Vince Bagna, Dimension3D, and Ghostship, have released Cycles Root Surface Collections worth getting. These are commercials sets. Kobamax has released a freebie set but its at their Japanese blog, IIRC.

infinity10 posted at 10:58PM Mon, 10 February 2020 - #4379877

Vince Bagna, Dimension3D, and Ghostship, have released Cycles Root Surface Collections worth getting. These are commercials sets. Kobamax has released a freebie set but its at their Japanese blog, IIRC.

My stuff is free :)

Another thought is to create and bake the mats in Blender and import to the physical surface node in Poser. Never tried the process so I'm making a few assumptions. You've probably already seen Boni's thread https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2942646

Whoops ! Even better - sorry, my mistake.

ghostship2 posted at 4:02PM Tue, 11 February 2020 - #4379897

infinity10 posted at 10:58PM Mon, 10 February 2020 - #4379877

Vince Bagna, Dimension3D, and Ghostship, have released Cycles Root Surface Collections worth getting. These are commercials sets. Kobamax has released a freebie set but its at their Japanese blog, IIRC.

My stuff is free :)

I already knew about Vince Bagna, DED and Ghostship's shaders. I even mention them in another thread and in my directory. Along with Seachnaisaigh, Deecy, Red Phantom... Some of those though are for specific sets.

Here are some pics of materials with the Cycles Material Studies I mentioned in the original thread...

I've tried to recreate most of these for Poser, but as I said before, missing nodes, large nodes, no zoom in material room. I can't do it. And these are all Blender files, so I can't use them in Poser.

OMG A pasta node!

I would buy Poser 12 just for the Pasta! D:

Well, found another missing node in Poser. It's the Scale node.

It is what's known as a distort node. Here's what the manual says:

For instance X: 0.5 and Y: 0.5 would produce an image which width and height would be half of what they used to be.

Use this node to match image sizes. Most nodes produce an image that is the same size as the image input into their top image socket. To uniformly combine two images of different size, the second image has to be scaled up to match the resolution of the first.

Boni suggests using the Firefly 2D Texture Scale node instead.

I think Boni is right on this one. It's not a Firefly" node though, all old nodes have been rewritten for Superfly.

TBH their new PBR root node will make creating most of these materials a lot easier in Blender so it is that we should be aiming for, sort of a Physical Surface Root on steroids,

For Blender or Poser?

BTW, I know a lot of you don't like to subscribe to anything, but if you go to the CMV website and subscribe, you can download a few freebie materials and Blender scene files. And as I've been saying, Poser can't read Blender files so you will need Blender to view them. Just click on the image of the file you want. It is free to subscribe. And you will be sent to a download link.

http://www.reynantemartinez.com/freebies.htm

EClark1894 posted at 7:13AM Wed, 12 February 2020 - #4380042

For Blender or Poser?

I think this refers to the "Disney Shader" => Principled Shader

Not in Poser, up to now, but I expect it to be in the next version.

bantha posted at 8:22AM Wed, 12 February 2020 - #4380050

EClark1894 posted at 7:13AM Wed, 12 February 2020 - #4380042

For Blender or Poser?

I think this refers to the "Disney Shader" => Principled Shader

Not in Poser, up to now, but I expect it to be in the next version.

I don't. Honestly, I was and, to some extent, still am, hoping for Poser to improve, but so far, all the improvements I've seen in Poser have been more in line with Renderosity selling more content. Nothing wrong with that, that's who they are, that's what they do, but with not seeing SOMETHING , hell, ANYTHING else getting a quick or even a little small fix or improvement, frankly, I'm not feeling too hopeful at the moment.

EClark1894 posted at 8:24PM Wed, 12 February 2020 - #4379907

I already knew about Vince Bagna, DED and Ghostship's shaders. I even mention them in another thread and in my directory. Along with Seachnaisaigh, Deecy, Red Phantom... Some of those though are for specific sets.

Here are some pics of materials with the Cycles Material Studies I mentioned in the original thread...

I've tried to recreate most of these for Poser, but as I said before, missing nodes, large nodes, no zoom in material room. I can't do it. And these are all Blender files, so I can't use them in Poser.

The VB SuperShaders for Poser11 SuperFly by VinceBagna has a selection of car paints, liquids, textiles and metals that look similar to some of those shown. Winter Glitter for Superfly by PHD can create some stunning Christmas Balls so something similar is possible in Poser while Photoreal SuperFly vol 1, also by PHD, can help create some others. I am nowhere near clever enough to understand how, which is why I buy such products. No doubt they may be improved upon and other shaders created if Poser had all the missing nodes but it can still do some great stuff.

I agree with you Hornet. In fact, despite what I titled this thread, I do still try to recreate some of the materials. In fact if you look at the pics above in volume five, they have a material for the dragonball, which if you know any anime, it's from Dragonball Z. One of the freebies I mentioned earlier in the thread is the material for the dragonball. It's really simple to do, and yes you can even recreate that in Poser. I did it this morning. I also recreated some orange juice, also all in Poser. And you can change colors on that and create milk and what looks like Pepto Bismol to me, but they just say pink juice. And I have manaaged to recreate some others, but most of them do require nodes that are missing or that need work arounds. Hell, if Renderosity would just make the material room zoomable in and out, I'd shut the hell up and stop whining about missing nodes. I still couldn't make all the materials I bought, about 100 so far, but at least I could group and lay them out easier.

Thought I'd show the fluids I managed to recreate in Poser this morning. I can substitute some nodes as work arounds, as long as I keep them simple.

Yep, still trying. Imported the Wavefront obj. into Poser and rebuilt the materials. This is coffee. Problem is, you can't really see it in the cup and I'm not sure what I got wrong with it. The glass material either. I think it's too dark. Both were rather simple, and I did have to substitute the Firefly color ramp node for the cycles one, but I think I got it right otherwise.

It's not perfect, but I substituted some nodes and got it working. Again, I still have to keep it really simple, so at least a third of my materials I probably can't use at all. Also, I managed to find out the problems I had with the last render. Mainly there were some nodes not connected.

EClark1894 posted at 6:48PM Thu, 13 February 2020 - #4380317

It's not perfect, but I substituted some nodes and got it working. Again, I still have to keep it really simple, so at least a third of my materials I probably can't use at all. Also, I managed to find out the problems I had with the last render. Mainly there were some nodes not connected.

That one's looking really good, to me!

By the way, some time ago I spent quite a while turning a lot of CC-0 materials I found for Blender into Poser. Built myself a pretty nice material library. Didn't release it as a freebie because a few of them were free to use but not CC-0, and I didn't keep the names to give proper credit. I feel like a lot of the older ones translate very well. The Glass Bsdf node seems to like making darker glass like that - I found this one to go around that.

I used the one that came with the coffee material, but I do have a glass material already. Thanks anyway.

Oh sorry - I thought you weren't liking the dark glass.

Anyway, I think both the glass and the coffee look good in that last one.

ssgbryan posted at 6:01PM Sat, 22 February 2020 - #4379818

This is precisely why I keep yammering on about getting either the full cycles engine working with Poser, or better yet, the cycles plug-in for the AMD ProRender engine working with Poser. Poser should be leveraging open source - especially since it will provide more options for Poser users.

Yes yes yes.

yes.

And the ability to use ANY graphics card for GPU rendering.

infinity10 posted at 6:03PM Sat, 22 February 2020 - #4379877

Vince Bagna, Dimension3D, and Ghostship, have released Cycles Root Surface Collections worth getting. These are commercials sets. Kobamax has released a freebie set but its at their Japanese blog, IIRC.

And all worth it. Ghostship's is free, technically making it (mathematically) infinitely more than worth it.

Everything I know about mats (which, at this point, fits in a thimble, with wiggle room) I learn from old threads (where BB is often gracious enough to conduct class), and pulling apart VB, D3D, and GS node tangles. Plus, pretty! I dread the loss of that info.

How easy would porting a poser scene into Blender be to take advantage of those shaders?

I don't know. I've never tried porting a whole scene before.

I would not recommend trying it in any version prior to 2.8x .

The FBX import is much improved which is why am replacing Maxon C4D with Blender for my animation renders ?

So I decided to try something a little new, for me, and work on shaders in small chunks. This way I can create a small compound node, save it, and work on another section of the node. I knoe that seems a little long and tedious, but I think I've seen some shaders using the same nodes for things like Fresnel Reflectance. So once I've made that and saved it, I don't need to make it again.

Anyway, I've run into a small problem. How do I change the name on a node if I want to name it something else like "Fresnel Reflectance" or "Map Bump"?

double click on the existing name on the node.

RedPhantom posted at 4:40AM Thu, 12 March 2020 - #4383270

double click on the existing name on the node.

Thanks, RP. It's working perfectly.