Hello All,

Thanks for all the advice and help this forum has provided regarding the use of Poser 11.  I've learned a lot here.  

I've got another question.  I'm using websites like https://www.cgtrader.com/ to download .obj files.  Many of the free models do not have textures.  I'm looking to learn how to make and save in Poser 11 texture and material files.  Any help with this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

You'll need to add lots of tools to your tool box for creating textures. Something like substance painter is the ultimate but also quite pricey. You're going to need something to get the UV maps. for the objects. The cheap way is UV Mapper. http://www.uvmapper.com there's a free version you can use to get started.

UV mapper can export a template you can use to paint textures that will fit your model in any paint and draw program. In the beginning the easiest thing will be to just create simple diffuse color maps. Once you have a diffuse texture map you can drag n' drop the map into Poser material room on the Edit tab. First select the object in the material room with the eye dropper tool. Now drag and drop the image map into the Material Edit tab. Drop it in a blank spot. Drag the output from the Image node to the diffuse input of the root node.

Now you've got a very basic material. Save it to the library. First make sure you have the correct library and folder selected. Click the (+) pus button on the bottom of the library and give your new material a name.

That's the first drop in the ocean. Texturing models is an entire profession in it's self. There are a lot of texture artists here and I'm sure they'll have tons more to add to this.

A word of advice about downloading free content from CGTrader, although most models contain several different formats readily accessible in Poser, you will need to familiarize yourself with how material zones are labeled.  Some models may have a .mtl file associated with them that makes texturing easy but others may have generic labeling that may make it difficult to determine which textures to use when reconstructing the model in Poser.  As Nerd 3D mentions, a properly assembled UV map is crucial to creating texture maps.  Without this template, you will be unable to paint an adequate image.

I'd go as far as saying UV Mapping is an art-form in its own right...

Kudos to modellers who bundle templates: May the Force be with You !!

I do a lot of 'fun' porting from eg SFM, XPS & PMX formats. eg Free Noesis can extract SFM textures and mesh, but you're left to match them up. And, internal flags such as scaling / wrapping controls are lost. I remember spending a lot of time trying to get an SFM MLP's eye-textures to match port. Okay, Poser's material room has many arcane options and controls that I'm still discovering. I prefer to have OBJ+MTL files I can grok. IIRC, after umpteen hapless attempts to re-map the model's topology, which all 'broke' the well-mapped 'body-textures', I threw finer and finer 'finder grids' at the problem. Found each 'eye' tucked away near corner. 'Iterated' scale and ovality, got passable results at expense of a migraine. Is not 'right', is on my 'ReDoBetter' list, but...

Another head-scratcher is UV mapping scenes' luminaires so you can mask the glowy bits correctly, dial them to super-ambient / set emissivity etc. Easy when a luminaire's light-source has own material. Yay !! Harder when pendant, bracket, conduit, switch share map. Hard when map covers multiple items in multiple locations, is 'very busy', and the lights' contribution not obvious. I iterated one such into submission by re-painting mapped texture's likely zones with vibrant hues, looking to see what appeared where. The lights didn't change colour, so I had to back-track, cast my net wider...

"This is a notification that there has been a new reply posted to the thread titled "Creating and Saving texture and material files" in the Poser 11 / Poser Pro 11 OFFICIAL Technical forum. "

Huh ?? It's my own post from almost a year ago !!!

Weird, or what ???

Someone necromanced the thread, but the post was removed.