Please, somebody more patient than me, write a tutorial or three "Material Room For Dummies" style. I'll pay $$$! I've read and re-read the manual and, although it does a good job telling me WHAT things are and SOME of what they do, it doesn't tell me WHY they do what they do, and I'm feeling overwhelmed and clueless how to put things to use. For instance, in playing around with the DAZ MilDragon and its MAT files, I can observe what Nodes get plugged into what, but I haven't a clue why they do what they do (which means I won't have a clue in how to apply materials on my own). Why do P4 bump maps get plugged into the "Gradient Bump Node" and not the "Gradient Node"? Why do some surface texture maps plug into just the "Diffuse Color Node" and others get plugged into other of the "_ _ _ Color Nodes" in addition? How am I suppose to know what to plug into what? Also,is there an option to replicate the old P4 method of being able to assign a texture map to the entire figure so they won't have to be assigned item by item? Etc., etc., etc. Whine, whine, whine. I just know that this new Material Room is going to open up infinite creative possibilities, but inquiring minds want to know how to use the darn thing beyond what the manual states (or understates, as the case may be). OK. I'll quit whining now and dive back into P5. (BTW, as long as I'm in a whining mode, I think the P5 interface should be called "The Waiting Room" because it sure is slow in it's redraws sometimes - and I have brand new a 2.4 GHz P4 with 2 gigs of RAM!) But don't get me wrong here, I think P5 is a powerful follow-up to P4, and I'm (impatiently, perhaps) looking forward to moving on down the "ol learning curve.

Relax. My intro to the material room should be up tonight. ;)

LOL! Fabulous title on this post. :) Phoenix

I'm with ya on that one Terry! All the jargon in the material room is makin' me nuts!

Me too. I will say that the new material room does a better and clearer job of dealing with existing materials, and the new parts of the interface are designed very well. Everything shows up with visual and numerical equivalents, arranged in a way that looks like it SHOULD be easy to work with and easy to learn, once the first step is jumped. (In other words, it's very much in the Poser tradition, not the Amapi tradition!) But there's just SO MUCH STUFF! Some kind of template -- or just a copyable list of settings -- is needed to make that first jump into the new pattern. A good start would be the list of settings, including render settings, to make a Box prop into a reflecting mirror.

It's the old Poser Manual problem -- lots of good information, but all on some higher, more abstract plane than that of actual use. Users ask, "How do I -- ?" and in some places, like the Material Room, it's almost impossible to find out.

My pet peeve, by the way, has always been the Create Perspective UVs Button in the Group Editing section. It sounds like such a great thing, in the manual. Does it just not work? Or is a Perspective UV actually created every time you press it -- somewhere? If so, where? What is it named? Can I have one?

Bill Adams

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=118024

Bill, Perspective UV's were something dealt with extensively in the past. Darth Logice first played around with it and here are the results: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=117265 http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=117284 And the clickable url is a thread where thip gives a detailed picture tutorial on creating perspective uv's. I'd be interested to know if this is still available in Poser5's grouping tool. A very quick fix when using other people's textures that stretched in certain areas is to just grab the parts that stretched (mostly shoulder - collar) and create PUV's just for that rendering. It is also very useful for applying tatoo's in areas that are at the seams on the map.

Bless you, Kalypso! At last an "How do I --?" for the Create Perspective UV button. (My own dumb fault for not searching these forums.) And yes, it is supposed to be in Poser 5.