So the issue I and others here have been having with skin shaders ported from P11 being ether too glossy or not glossy enough: The glossy bsdf node has been updated as far as I can tell to have a wider usable range/curve. I remember something about this in previous versions of Blender where people complained of the roughness values being very touchy and not having much usable range. So this will affect any shader using a glossy node with any amount of roughness. Good thing is it's more usable, bad thing is you'll need to adjust all your shaders. This is something core to the cycles render engine so don't expect a retro version of the shader, just deal with it and move on. here I have an example with 9 spheres. starting with the top left at 0 roughness increasing by .1 each sphere till .8 roughness. The P12 version clearly has more usable range/curve.

maybe an admin can pin this to the top of the forum.

Thank you for the comparison between P11 and P12 Cycles Glossy nodes. It definitely clarifies the difference.

You can see directly from your preview that Poser 12 is more accurate representation of roughness on the Metallic material (Conductor) , for non metallic surfaces the specular need to be set to half unless you have proper values , accompanied with desired values of roughness . It is not much about the glossy this time, but actually the roughness , all true metals have the glossy value of 100% compared to non metals with the default value of 50% at max , not mixing here the glossy with roughness , in PBR glossy values are mostly hard coded for metal and non metal materials, all what changes is only roughness when using bidirectional scattering distribution function workflow For Poser12 to render a proper PBR materials it needs proper BSDF nodes and this one is very crucial in this process

@ Mec4D yes, already pointed out in another thread that PBSDF should have a default specular of .5 and that the roughness values adjust how shiny the object is. same way my free super shader works for P11 https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/freestuff/poser-11-super-pbr-shader/82690

@ghostship2 that is nice to hear ! we don't want people to get confused and go in the wrong direction , and trust me many will .. the default should help them a lot , it is just so hard to flip people's minds after they being used to something else for so long .

AFAIK the roughness value was changed in Cycles nodes from linear to quadratic (as common for PBR materials). Posers physical root node always used quadratic anyway. Someone from the dev team should confirm this.

Physically based shading is not completed yet in Poser12 , regular users will not even notice the difference to tell you the truth the Poser12 webinar and it's new features is tomorrow at 15:00 EST, don't miss it ! we may know more about

I do not have Poser 12. Anyway, the change in the Blender Cycle nodes regarding roughness is exactly as I wrote. In older Cycles the value was assumed to be linear, but that was not compatible with the PBR roughness maps. For compatibility reasons, all older Blender Cycle node setups used a mathematical node that calculates the square value from the roughness before feeding it into the (old) Cycle nodes to be compatible with the PBR roughness maps... very simple.

Presumably there is a known mapping of the old vs new values. It would be friendly for Poser to include a script to adjust a figure's materials accordingly. "Convert P11 glossiness to P12" or something like that.

Right now, what I know is that whatever values I have are wrong. I don't, however, necessarily know what they need to be changed to. So I have to check my materials and see whether they have the relevant nodes, and then do a bunch of trial and error to correct them. That's still not optimal.

nodnod That is precisely the issue right now. Almost everything I have is unworkable in Poser 12 and without knowing what I'm doing or even when I know what to change, it's incredibly time consuming to adjust every single thing on my render. Presumably the new version of EzSkin and Scene Fixer would help with that, once ready.

this is what I had in my shader. No I don't know anything about it either as I was following a tutorial video by Blender Guru.

Lol, it says 'math', I am allergic.

Rhia474 posted at 9:54PM Sat, 14 November 2020 - #4404626

Lol, it says 'math', I am allergic.

Yes, I am too. I vaguely know what the nodes are supposed to be doing in there. I'm a big dummy. lol

already have my ticket. Hopefully the zoom thing will work for me.

The Math node with "power" selected raises the value of input 1 to the power of input 2. X^Y. I'm not sure why there are three inputs though.

But input 1 is set to 0. So, isn't the output of the node also going to always be zero?

I have the sense that a lot of materials that people sell have a lot of nonsense nodes, multiplying values by 1, adding 0, and other non-operations that serve the sole purpose of making them look more complicated than they need to be. When I go through materials trying to learn from them, I see a lot of those things. I know just enough here to be suspicious, and not enough to be sure. :/

Mec4D posted at 10:49PM Sat, 14 November 2020 - #4404613

Physically based shading is not completed yet in Poser12 , regular users will not even notice the difference to tell you the truth the Poser12 webinar and it's new features is tomorrow at 15:00 EST, don't miss it ! we may know more about

I sign up too. Will be interesting . I do also some research on the shaders and compare them to Blender PBR. Yes, it is not complete now, but you see already the right direction.

ghostship2 posted at 3:52AM Sun, 15 November 2020 - #4404625

this is what I had in my shader. No I don't know anything about it either as I was following a tutorial video by Blender Guru.

The marked math node and the one above (not sure about the 2nd one, because I cannot see where it is connected) are the ones that do the calculation of the power of 2 on the roughness value. For Poser 12 you can remove them or, if you want to use your shader in P11 and P12, connect the value2 input of the nodes to a new input of the compound node. If the value is 2, it will be P11 compatible and if the value is 1, it will be P12 compatible.

Right now I think I'm going to leave this for P11. No point in fixing this for P12 when we have PBSDF

Nice to see Cath perusing and spreading her knowledge to Poser folks! YAY

Who's Cath?

ghostship2 posted at 1:13PM Mon, 23 November 2020 - #4405589

Who's Cath?

Mec4D

Definitely Richard , I did not give up on Poser after 22 years yet ! and it seems like my wishes come true at last partially as other users I am allergic to Math .. but I am very good in PBR (ask Nvidia) lol I just got Poser12 after playing with the trial version , so testing stuff out at this moment and everything look very promising My forum notifications still not working so sorry for the late reply

RAMWolff posted at 4:09PM Mon, 23 November 2020 - #4405513

Nice to see Cath perusing and spreading her knowledge to Poser folks! YAY

As Miss B stated.. its me Cath (Catharina) I am not so much active in this forum here for the last 6 years, but I now you will see me more often as I have a very good reason for that.

ghostship2 posted at 4:17PM Mon, 23 November 2020 - #4405589

Who's Cath?

I think it is good to learn the PBR basic and copy less from other programs as that will make things more clear to understand , PBR is simple to follow, and it is easy to create monster shader that make no true sense at the end of the path, applying rules from old shader system will never works , as the new path is simple and have own rules that should be no broken. And it is less mysterious as you may think.

TheAnimaGemini posted at 4:25PM Mon, 23 November 2020 - #4404667

Mec4D posted at 10:49PM Sat, 14 November 2020 - #4404613

Physically based shading is not completed yet in Poser12 , regular users will not even notice the difference to tell you the truth the Poser12 webinar and it's new features is tomorrow at 15:00 EST, don't miss it ! we may know more about

I sign up too. Will be interesting . I do also some research on the shaders and compare them to Blender PBR. Yes, it is not complete now, but you see already the right direction.

I think this is apparent if you study the comments above in detail, but I noticed in the documentation for the PrincipledBSDF in Blender it states clearly:

When converting from the older Glossy BSDF node, use the square root of the original value.

That seems to apply here too. So, to convert a P11 or earlier setting to P12, just take the square root of the original roughness. To convert a P12 setting for P11 or earlier, square the value (i.e. X^2, or X*X).

ChromeStar posted at 7:47AM Sun, 03 January 2021 - #4409262

I think this is apparent if you study the comments above in detail, but I noticed in the documentation for the PrincipledBSDF in Blender it states clearly:

When converting from the older Glossy BSDF node, use the square root of the original value.

That seems to apply here too. So, to convert a P11 or earlier setting to P12, just take the square root of the original roughness. To convert a P12 setting for P11 or earlier, square the value (i.e. X^2, or X*X).

Sorry but square root... isn't that more something like x^0.5? I mean if x=sqrt(y), then x*x=y, no?

Mec4D posted at 10:52AM Sun, 03 January 2021 - #4404613

Physically based shading is not completed yet in Poser12 , regular users will not even notice the difference to tell you the truth the Poser12 webinar and it's new features is tomorrow at 15:00 EST, don't miss it ! we may know more about

Wondering out loud, is that webinar available to watch?

To convert from P11 to P12, take the square root of the P11 value. That equals x^0.5.

To convert from P12 to P11, square the P12 value. That equals x*x or x^2.

Or if you don't want to do math....

Not sure why the Markdown codes for tables aren't working here, but I think that is reasonably legible.

ChromeStar posted at 12:18PM Tue, 05 January 2021 - #4409311

To convert from P11 to P12, take the square root of the P11 value. That equals x^0.5.

To convert from P12 to P11, square the P12 value. That equals x*x or x^2.

Or if you don't want to do math....

P11	---	P12
>	0.05	---	0.22
>	0.1	---	0.32
>	0.15	---	0.39
>	0.2	---	0.45
>	0.25	---	0.5
>	0.3	---	0.55
>	0.35	---	0.59
>	0.4	---	0.63
>	0.45	---	0.67
>	0.5	---	0.71
>	0.55	---	0.74
>	0.6	---	0.77
>	0.65	---	0.81
>	0.7	---	0.84
>	0.75	---	0.87
>	0.8	---	0.89
>	0.85	---	0.92
>	0.9	---	0.95
>	0.95	---	0.97
>	1	---	1

Not sure why the Markdown codes for tables aren't working here, but I think that is reasonably legible.

Thanks!

So basically they changed the "Roughness" parameter in a way that affects all nodes in every shader, forgot to tell anyone, and then left us to find it out on our own.

See, things like this is why I'm not supporting Poser 12.

This was a change made in Blender. Why are you blaming the Poser devs?

ghostship2 posted at 11:27AM Thu, 18 February 2021 - #4413164

This was a change made in Blender. Why are you blaming the Poser devs?

Maybe because he paid for Poser and not for Cycles?

Wasn't it you who told me Poser is not Blender?

So Poser should stop trying to improve and make it easier to use other standard sources to make it more compatible? So if something is wrong and it has been wrong for a while then it should stay wrong, because someone has learned to work around the wrongness, correct? Like the fact the Spline curve does not work the same way on the lower side vs. the upper side of the timeline when you put in a Break spline. The Lower side turns into a Linear Line, while the Upper side remains a curved spline. Fixing it so it worked as Spline on both sides would allow someone to reverse the key frames and have a symmetrical movement and make it easier to animate with, but because it has been wrong it needs to remain wrong.

It would have been helpful if the Poser devs had told us that it had changed, and what to use for the new values. It's actually not clear that they even knew, though. The changed happened because they used a newer version of the Cycles renderer, and they might not have noticed everything that changed.

Given that we do now know that it has changed and to what, it would be helpful if materials recorded their Poser version number and automatically updated roughness numbers when that version changed. Or at least it would be helpful to have a python script in there "update all roughness values for P12" to make those changes for us.

So I think it's fair to say the change was necessary, but also that it could have been handled in a way that was easier for users.

Everyone does realize that Poser 12 is still in Pre-Release and it is being updated at a fairly fast pace as more of these problems become known. While getting a Python script will be very helpful, Python itself was until recently still very buggy and most of those kinks have been worked out. Now they are working on the nodes so they work correctly and once that is done then they will probably work on the conversion scripts. But until those things are done making a fix today and have it broken tomorrow will led to even more porblems.

If you don't like or use Poser then GTFO of the Poser forums and quit trolling people here. seriously, f*** off.

ghostship2 posted at 1:26AM Mon, 22 February 2021 - #4413230

If you don't like or use Poser then GTFO of the Poser forums and quit trolling people here. seriously, f*** off.

Aaaah, here you go. If someone was wondering, in what forum he would have landed here, now it's obvious.