Hi I haven't been using poser much lately, but I decided to jump back in and buy Poser 12.

Most of it I understand, but I can't figure out how I apply my textures.
Some old timers will probably remember that I do most of my own textures. I see how you import textures from the library, but how do I bring in a texture from my personal files?

Is there a simple way to just navigate to them and load them, as there used to be, where it will let you see and pick them from a window. I can't find any interface that will let me search for anything, I had to open a project in Poser 11 to add the textures and then reopen it in Poser 12 just to get my textures on the figure. I've looked for a tutorial, but everything just seems to talk about loading the from the library.

I need to know how to import them from my folders?

Mike

You have to add materials/textures in the Material Room. Click on the Material tab at the top, and then click on the little node next to the Diffuse Color option on the PoserSurface node that's presented, and drag it a little and release. It will show "New node" and you select 2D Textures and image_map. That will present a new Image_Map node, and at the top there's an item called Image_Source > None. Click on the word "None", and then click the Browse button and go to wherever you have the texture(s) you want to use. You may have to adjust the Diffuse and Specular Colors and settings, as they default to 1.0, which may be fine for the Diffuse, but a bit much for the Specular.

Hope that helps.

With Poser 12, you even have an easier way: just drag an image file from your file explorer directly in Poser's Material Room, in a place where there's nothing.

And if you do the same on an existing image node, Poser will ask what to do, letting you the opportunity to search and replace all occurences of the same picture with the new, be it on the figure, the scene. The choice is up to you ?

Example:

Example with the "Replace image" dialogbox. I have just dropped the new picture file on an existing one, and:

Basically, adding textures in P12 is not really any different than in P11.

Thanks, I'll tryout both of these tomorrow.
I have to say, I've been working most today and didn't get anywhere. I did try dragging in things from explorer, but I must not have been doing it right. This is hard after doing it the same way for many years. Things like tinting texture and what have you I've figured out, though it's a little harder to do that the old simple way. It would have been nice if they had kept the old way for the people who have been doing it for years.

What way have you been doing it that you can no longer do? To my knowledge, unless you've been using the simple tab in the material room, I don't think anything's been removed from how it was in older versions.

The simple tab is a lot simpler for loading textures.

Poser 12 doesn't have the simple tab. It's now an assign tab that allows you to apply an mt5 to multiple matzones at once.

""Sure was a terrible mistake to remove the simple Tab in Poser 12"", applying to multiple mat zones was possible with many offered Python scripts, and copy paste was already doing the trick ! The new features in Poser 12 are just making it complicated and you lose allot of time for simple setups.

this was a really great feature.

Hi everyone.

I always assigned the textures using the simple tab. Sometimes I would browse thought a half dozen or more and see how they looked in the preview window before deciding which one I was going to use.

Once I figured out which one I was going to use, I'd go to the Advanced window and do the settings.

This seems much harder to do than the old way. It's like Windows, they keep taking things that were easy to do and making them harder.

But I'm working on it, I haven't succeeded, yet I just started trying to follow the instructions.

It was so easy before, I'm a "just for fun animator", I like to do animated jokes etc. and I do everything in Preview mode, I was an Illustrator and Graphic Designer as well as a Photographer as a trade, I'm retired and 83.

Actually rendering a clip of 3 or 4 hundred frames is just too slow to be practical. And the truth is that the quick rendered modes (which are still very slow) don't look nearly as good and the preview image.

I do every thing at large sizes, so I can show them full screen, now at UHD settings, and when finished they look like the rendered image pretty much in a fraction of the rendering time. One frame is practically instantaneous, in Preview, instead of taking 10 or 15 minutes or more.

I've sometimes done single clips with voice that are a thousand frames long, no way I'm going to do a real render on that.

Especially when I see it done and want to change things in it.

I posted comparison photos way back showing my Preview images next to the Rendered images done much smaller and then put them side by side at the same size. Sometimes the Preview images looked better.

The only real weakness is the shadow handling of the Preview images, many times I just turn off shadows, but I've gotten rid of most of the problems.

Now I'm interested in how much faster Poser 12 will be doing the same tasks. Having something 6,000 frames long would be a just too long to do rendered, I'm not Hollywood.

And doing them a full size and high resolutions I can't even image.

Anyway, if I can figure out how to load my textures and I usually use my textures for everything clothes props etc. I can see it's going to be more time-consuming than using Poser 11.

I may do what I have been doing, applying all the textures in Poser 11 and then moving the components to Poser 12 to put it together and animate it.

By the way I started out with Poser 3 or 4 I really can't remember which anymore.

Thanks again for the help.

Mike

It sounds like you might be better off just using Poser 11.

Poser 12 renders in Superfly faster, but it sounds like you would get no benefit from that. Superfly materials often don't even show in preview, and you're not rendering, anyway.

randym77 posted at 11:27AM Sat, 10 July 2021 - #4422901

Superfly materials often don't even show in preview

Only if the material uses the Cycles root. But yes, perhaps P11 will be better for MikeMoss' purposes :)

Hi I've made some progress, I have created my character and loaded all the textures, the image looks great, but it was very time-consuming, I think that your right, it may be better to do all the creation work in Poser 11. What I'll have to do now is create an animation with the character, make a video and see how is does with processing it in both programs and see if there is any advantage to using Poser 12 over 11.

Until now every time I upgraded Poser to a new version I got an improvement in the quality of the Preview Render, it seems that isn't true in Poser 12, but I'll have to compare them side by side and see if there is a difference. I have to say, it seems that leaving out the easy option in materials didn't help anything, why not just leave it in.

Mike

Here's another one, as you can see she is wearing glasses, I always use the standard textures on the glasses but in Easy Mode I can specify the frames and change the color of just the frames very easily by just clicking on a dark brown color to be added to just the frames. I can't find anyway to do that in Poser 12?

You can see that the quality of the render is adequate for animation, as I'm not constrained to using small images.

The above is a single frame from a 375 frame test video, she is talking, it created this at about 2 frames per second or faster in this resolution.

You can do it Poser 12. Usually what you want to change is Diffuse_Color. Click on the color block by the Diffuse_Color label and the color picker will pop up, just like on the Simple tab.

If it's a complicated shader, this might not work. Probably the easiest way to get rid of that shader "spaghetti" is to apply a very simple material. One you've made yourself. Or one copied from something simple, like one of the primitives that comes with Poser. You can save it to your library. Apply it, then adjust the diffuse color.

Oh, one thing to check...make sure Diffuse_Value is not set to 0. If you change the Diffuse_Color and the color doesn't change, it might be because Diffuse_Value is set to 0.

The Simple tab automatically changes Diffuse_Value to 1 if you change the Diffuse_Color. This doesn't happen in the Advanced tab. You have change them separately.

Thanks, I'll try those options. I think I'm starting to get it, but I still miss the old way of doing it.

Yeah, I already miss the Simple Tab too.

I've never used the Simple11 tab and haven't gotten used to using the Assign12 tab. I've always used the Advanced11/Edit12 tab, and I'm no Materials pro. Am I the only one who finds this easiest? I'm sure it all depends on what you've started out using. In 12, I really like being able to change all instances of a texture map when I change just one instance.

I used to use the easy tab but found there were often nodes or settings that needed to be changed so I was often switching to advanced so I gave up on the simple tab. About the only time I used it, was for copying a material to another matzone because I didn't have to select anything.

I've never used the Simple tab, either, but Poser 5 was when I got really into Poser. I had Poser 4/Pro, but didn't know enough back then to get much into changing textures. So the Advanced tab is what I'm used to.

I can see why people might prefer the Simple tab, though. Poser shaders can be crazy. IMO, the Poser Material Room isn't very user-friendly. With, say, Vue, you can poke around and figure things out. Poser has a much steeper learning curve.

I used to use the simple tab back in 6 but started dabbling with the advanced in 7 and fully over to the advanced in 8. Bagginsbill's posts are what got me comfortable with the material room. I seem to like node based material systems over any other. As much as I used to like Carrara I could never quite click with it's material system. At least not enough to do anything beyond rudimentary or very guided by tutorials. I wasn't even aware that the simple tab was gone. I'm assuming it's still in 11? Haven't looked.

The Simple tab is still there in 11, gone in 12.

I normally used the simple tab to do whatever I needed only using the advanced tab if it couldn’t be done in the simple one. I started with Poser Debut where there was no advanced tab. ;)

I did get the glasses frame the way I wanted, and I'm getting used to the work flow, but it is much more time-consuming and harder to look at a whole variety of texture options in just a few minutes, that it was using the Simple Tab.

I don't know why they didn't just leave it there for those who want it, it would have made things so much simpler.