Lots of time people want to know how to do odd things with nodes, and we need a thread that is nothing but useful node tricks to do things that you might not first think of. I was trying to remember how to access the length of dynamic hair to make changes over the length, which I think is on the W axis in FireFly. I came up with a very simple solution on how to do it in Superfly. Here is the shader just to modulate the color along the length in SuperFly.

You only need the mapping and texture nodes if you want to modify the positions of the colors. Which takes some experimenting.

Obviously this could be used to drive various texturing setups, but it wont wont for all of them I have tried for some reason. Driving the Principled Hair shader with it doesn't seem to work so well.

This is a good idea. We need a thread like this.

I agree.  Collectively, we can solve some issues that have vexed us in the past.

Looks like someone pinned it, awesome 

I'll add to this:

The Blender node is your friend. You can modulate all sorts of stuff with it.

Quick example: I have a map that I want to multiply to a texture map for grunge.

(Poser thought it's a Specular Map and autonamed it. Silly bee, it's not.)

But the grunge got too dark for what I want...

There are many ways to fix this with nodes, but Blender node is my favorite because it's super easy. Consider:

Add your texture to "Blending", value 1. Whatever you put in Input 1 will replace what's white in what's attached to Blending, whatever you put in Input 2 will replace what's black. What's gray will mix. So I'm basically replacing my black with grey there.

Softer grunge :D 

And this is for many things. You can make funky colors.

And so on~~

Pretty simple: how to add some blush
Example for Vic4 and for those who aren't able to draw something like that (--> me) there's a mask created by Red Viper for his FEG character (look for "red viper feg" on sharecg.com)

Inspired from EZSkin: how to add tanlines, using a mask. Here I've used one coming with EZSkin precisely

The Color2 input is a simple more or less white. With Cycles, I prefer to start with the luminosity at 195 (max: 240 on Windows), but with the Physical node and Danae's Lyon skin, I've set it at 200, or RGB=(212,212,212)

Could you add the blush, tan lines and grunge on a separate material layer?

Could you add the blush, tan lines on a separate material layer?

It can be done, but the layers' architecture needs to match the original base and not overwhelm it with unexpected effects like high specularity.  I would need to play with the settings to determine how the nodes should be connected.

This is why resurrecting old Python scripts that did exactly this sort of thing would be such a godsend.

Kalypso posted at 4:34 PM Fri, 5 January 2024 - #4480094

Could you add the blush, tan lines and grunge on a separate material layer?

The layers make it different than doing it on one layer, and is some ways easier, but layers also have limitations in what they can do.

It can be done, but the layers' architecture needs to match the original base and not overwhelm it with unexpected effects like high specularity.  I would need to play with the settings to determine how the nodes should be connected.

Yes you can. LaFemme2's base makeup uses layers, and scripts are run to make sure it doesn't just keep stacking more and more layers on top of each other. It is a fairly simple script and a novel approach to using layers, but relies completely on the name of the layer to remove one before applying another.

Just to clarify this: relying on the name of the layer was the first version that shvrdavid was helping test, but we ran into Poser limitations. Wolfnom, who made those LF2 Pro scripts, ending up going for "if there's more than the base layer, delete one layer" approach instead, to go around those limitations :)

To make the tanlines work on a second layer, try the arrangement below:

Instead of connecting the mask to the factor plug in on the Mix node, connect it directly to the PhysicalSurface root node and then control the intensity of the tanlines through the Mix node factor values.

How do I make 2sided materials for dynamic cloth items? (Seems like in over 25 years of poser use I would have discovered this before now...LOL) Cloth self-collision  doesn't work so well and I end up with black areas where polygons are flipped inside out. While maybe not the best solution, at least 2sided materials may help keep appearance more uniform, or at least less distracting. Dealing with thousands of frames so morph brush smoothing isn't an option.

How do I make 2sided materials for dynamic cloth items? 

You can substitute shader setups for the colors in the blender node, and use the same or separate textures on both sides of the cloth. This doesn't work in Firefly thou.....

Thanks Scott.

shvrdavid posted at 1:20 PM Sun, 7 January 2024 - #4480168

JAFO posted at 10:45 AM Sun, 7 January 2024 - #4480163

How do I make 2sided materials for dynamic cloth items? 

(...)

You can substitute shader setups for the colors in the blender node, and use the same or separate textures on both sides of the cloth. This doesn't work in Firefly thou.....

I know this thread is for Superfly, but I just figured to let people know :D

Ooh, thanks for that, Ohki. I wanted to be able to do it in Firefly too.

If you run into an issue where either method of doing this has display and or render issues, you may have found a normals issue. That can be fixed a few different ways. Recaluculate the normals in the modeler, or select recalculate normals when importing it into Poser.

OK.here's what I ended up with...

Before...

After...

I had to crop the images, adult content....

I also plugged the bump into the displacement node with a value of -.1(not shown in 'after' image above.)

Thanks Guys&Gal

The Mix node, and a few things you can do with it................................... And you should be using it......

I will use my character SS Loni as an example, and textures from my other characters..

This is Loni's Makeup 10, just as it comes in the set. As you can see, it is Kawaii makeup with a very light base. Not everyone likes that.

So, how do you change the makeup to get rid of the light base? A few people have asked me that and that is actually fairly simple by mixing 2 face textures. You do that with a little node wizardry, with the cycles mix node. This is just one example that literally is just mixing the textures. You can replace areas versus mixing as well, but more on that later. 

Here is Loni 10 makeup, with less white base, just by mixing the default face with the makeup face textures. 

But what if you don't want to use Loni's makeup, and want to use something from another character? How do you do that?

What if you want to use the eyeliner and brows on the texture from SS Lorraine on top of Loni? Lorraine's brows on on the texture, for a reason btw....

Well, you can do that, just as easily.... She looks a bit different like that.

What about SS Lemura's eyeliner mixed onto Loni?  Not a problem...

These are just quick examples that are just using a simple value mix function, and there are lots of other ways of doing the mixing to make the masks needed to separate out any color you want to add to another texture from 2 or more textures. Both the face and the lips will need changed for a lot of this to work. You can use the same trick to make new metal maps for the eyeliner, make the eyeliner darker, etc.

So how do you make new masks from just the textures? What if you want to replace, not just mix areas?

Here is an example of SS Laura's makeup #4 mixed onto Loni's face using the textures to create the masks needed to do so. That way none of the makeup blocks her freckles. There are multiple ways of doing what I did with the Brightness node. So do that any way you want to so the final mix works for what your after. You could easily make the mix way darker, if that is what you were after. The mask determines if it mixes, or replaces, based on the color.

But what if you want to replace an area, and not just mix separations, How do you do that?

Here is Loni, with Lemura's eyeliner. There is zero mixing anywhere else other than where the white is on the mask.. And because it is a black and white mask, it simply replaces those areas with the other texture... Pretty neat...

Some of my texture sets have lip masks and eyeliner metal masks that can be used to do far more. Those can be used to do even further mixing of textures, adding outlined lipstick, gloss, etc. With a little experimenting you can separate out the blush, etc. Or just do that on a separate layer. Lots of choices. I prefer to work on one layer thou.

Suddenly, my characters have a lot more options if your willing to do some tinkering in the material room..... A ton of options....

If you have my characters, you have hundreds is not thousands of options available with just a few simple node tricks. (Shameless plug, lol)

Loni's lip makeup purposely doesn't cover the entire lip, and can be used to mask the lips for outlined lipstick, etc.

More characters are in the works as well..... All of them are designed to be mixed like this as well.... 

Side note: You may have to turn off hardware shading so you can see the preview better when using some of the cycles nodes like this. I get black face with it turned on when doing this style of makeup and hardware shading turned on for the preview.. Keep in mind that the preview wont show the mixes, you have to render it to see the final mix.

Thank you for that quick tutorial.  Definitely, something worth playing with to enhance skin texturing.

It works for basically everything, not just skin. You can apply dirt to props and clothes, decals and prints on clothes, etc, basically the same way.

Awesome, thank you so much!

https://www.posersoftware.com/documentation/12/Poser_Reference_Manual/Materials/Nodes-Cycles/Using_the_PrincipledBsdf_Node.htm

"You can enter a numerical value of 0 for fully transparent, or 1 to fully opaque."