Well, I guess I can't Show You My Render using gpu: Poser 11 and 13 give blank images and Poser 12 crashes.  C'est le guerre.

I can't render anything past about 48 samples, either.  And when I try to run the GPU (which Poser apparently recognizes), Poser complains about the lack of a GPU kernal. I have an older NVidia GTX 650 Ti, which may or may not be part of the problem.  (Going now to run and older version of Poser to see how the GPU fares.  Given that I don't use the GPU, I suspect it doesn't work for me and I simply forgot.)

Speaking of that, does anyone know if it is possible to run more that one version of Poser at the same time another version is running? It's sometimes useful to run an older version when a newer version won't run a script, as one example.

Y-Phil posted at 4:31 PM Wed, 12 April 2023 - #4461950

Two things:

- the blue makes me think to a second layer: this color is often the default PoserSurface's dîffuse color
- the fact that while moving around or zooming in/out makes me think that there's some Cycles-based material

This is what the Support ticket response said:

"What you are seeing is known as a Z-depth artifact. It happens when the display isn't sure which layer of the figure is closer to the camera. Material layers are known to cause cause z-depth issues in preview. This is something the development team is working on.

Hither and Yon are the near and far clipping planes for each camera. They limit the z-depth the camera renders. Try increasing the Hither and/or decreasing the yon. This creates a smaller z-depth and reduces z-depth artifacts."

Over time, I bought the 10 volumes of Shana's tattoos, indeed. And I've never used the provided scripts as I was using EZSkin. I like the idea to use the PhysicalSurface node, but I like Cycles too much (I know: I am not objective... )

I'm not sure how you applied the tattoos without using the scripts: if memory serves, the pose itself calls the scripts. Not that it really matters. You got results you liked.

I suppose I could also use the Cycle root node, especially if I knew a bit more about it, but ironically, it would be more complicated.  With the Physical Surface node, I load in an image file, and connect it to the Physical Surface at the color input and the transparency input.  Dial transparency to 1.0, change transparency Opacity to Transparency, dial roughness to 1.0, and it's done. I'm not sure how I'd accomplish it in the Cycles root as it has fewer inputs, and transparency doesn't seem to be one of them.

Found a weird behavior that I just reported as a bug: when the camera gets too close to the figure, the materials layer "peels" away.  It looks like this:

I noticed that they already uploaded a new version this morning, which included a repair for the online manual link. There were other fixes as well.  That was pretty fast!

And it appears, so far, that creating a tattoo a second layer is just this easy.  I'll want to verify that it is backwards-compatible, as I don't know if transparency being swappable between transparency and opacity is a newer feature or not.  I haven't played much with Superfly.  I must admit they named it well, because is, to use an obsolete phrase, super fly!  I also want to verify that it will work on color tattoos.  If not, I will find a way that works for both.

And it appears, so far, that creating a tattoo a second layer is just this easy.  I'll want to verify that it is backwards-compatible, as I don't know if transparency being swappable between transparency and opacity is a newer feature or not.  I haven't played much with Superfly.  I must admit they named it well, because is, to use an obsolete phrase, super fly!  I also want to verify that it will work on color tattoos.  If not, I will find a way that works for both.

This was done on SASE's (Sabby and Seven) Naisa texture after a quick run through the Python 3 version of EZSkin. (Thanks, Snarlygribbly and Fverbaas!)

Y-Phil posted at 10:36 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461722

Thalek posted at 8:31 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461693

Here is another example.
Using the Color_math, as I showed you:

And here is an example with the same black & white tattoo, but using a second layer:
Here, the tattoo picture serves as a filter: the white parts force to use the TransparentBSDF and the black parts force to use the Closure1, in this case whatever bitmap
but it could also be a simple color 

For a colored tattoo: simple get a copy turned to black & white and use both bitmaps accordingly
The second layer has one advantage: you may control the specularity of the skin independently of the the tattoo.

Thanks!  I hope to eventually convert all of Shana's Inked series into usable tattoos for Superfly, sans all of her Python scripts.  (Well, Volumes 1-10; when they started doing the Genesis figures, I dropped out.) It's a shame that second layers don't work in Firefly, as this would certainly simply the process for it, too.

Thanks again.

That's a lot to assimilate on no sleep and a bit too much wine, but it IS useful data, and it's a lot more than I could do 24 hours ago.  Thank you!

Not certain if the tattoo on her chest is even rendering, but I got most of what I wanted out of this image.

Y-Phil posted at 6:14 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461680

hornet3d posted at 3:36 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461670

Once Poser has found a file it should not ask again.

We often have old scenes with file definitions that points to now invalid locations, most of the time because things got re-organized in-between.
Hence my suggestion: add a tab in Poser's configuration dialog, where we could add a list of locations in which Poser should look recursively before asking us.
I'm writing this because more often than not, it's material bitmaps bought online.

hborre posted at 9:15 AM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461532

If I understand what you are trying to do, it appears that may be combining two processes into one.  I would consider scaling a morphing feature as opposed to an actual pose.  So in your requests, you would want to include 'morph channels' as you save.

As a bonus, a given pose works on several different characters with no harmful effects. Yet.  But it worked on La Femme (pose source), Miki 4, and Victoria 4. Now if I want all the characters in a scene to be in the same scale (say, Daz and Poser figures), I'll be able to do that.  According to Ben Margolis of Rocket Software, which created the Universal Sizing Apparatus, Poser figures need to be scaled up by 107.5% to work with Daz's scale.  Daz figures need to be scaled down to 93.02% to work with Poser's scale.

hornet3d posted at 11:43 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461652

Huh, I wonder if that relates to a problem I'm having:  my scenes were created in earlier versions of Poser, and while they work fine in Poser 12, in Poser 13, they start asking for object files and texture files that they never had to ask for before.  I'm set to Deep Search, and I think they're using relative paths rather than absolute paths  I seem to recall reading a thread that indicated that Poser 13 has a strong preference for its own creations over the creations in earlier versions of Poser, even as recent as Poser 12.

I read about the GPU issue, and that's what sabotages my trouble-shooting suggestion, but it's the re-saving the scene and re-starting Poser failure that makes me wonder if there's also an import issue complicating the problem.

So far I have not had a problem with Poser 13 asking for any files.  Thanks to Hborre's timely comment I used the  'link previous runtime script' under utilities which should ensure Poser 13 has access to exactly what Poser 12 had access to.  My only problem so far is that Superfly in Poser 13 objects to the way some of my old content's material had been built which is nothing to do with Poser 12 really,  I do have a problem with Poser 13 locking up using some scenes created in Poser 12 but there is still a good chance that the problem is related to my system rather than Poser 13, I need to do some more tests to prove it one way or the other.

On the plus side I am loving the way Poser 13 allows a scene to be lit solely by a dome and the first thing I do with any Poser 12 scene is to either delete or switch off all the lights.  This allow more accurate shadows and reflections and makes any figure or prop look much more like the belong to any given scene.  

Yeah, I love that lighting feature as well.  It appears to be active in Poser 12 as well, because my beach scene above is lit that way, after watching a tutorial on YouTube. He installed an HDRI as his background, and it worked very well.

Thanks, hborre!  I'll give that a try.  The idea is to  be able to save a size so I can start a character at their envisioned size.  For example, while not all Asians are petite, many are smaller than Victoria 4 or La Femme. Whereas a basketball player might be a tad taller. I understand that not everyone wants scaling stored in a pose, but I do.  And if I'm sending a friend a character, having a separate pose that scales the characterr might be a way of compromising for those who don't want scaling in their poses, and those who do. 

hornet3d posted at 1:11 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461563

Well, for a start I am no expert and i welcome your advice only trouble is Poser will play ball.  Looking at the error log I get this little nugget,

Now here comes the problem, changing the visibility barrels has no effect, deleting the barrels has no effect, deleting the barrels and saving the scene, exiting Poser, restarting Poser and adding the scene has no effect.  Put simply Poser thinks the barrels are still there.  As far as I can see once you have the problem the scene is toast and you have to start from square one.

Huh, I wonder if that relates to a problem I'm having:  my scenes were created in earlier versions of Poser, and while they work fine in Poser 12, in Poser 13, they start asking for object files and texture files that they never had to ask for before.  I'm set to Deep Search, and I think they're using relative paths rather than absolute paths  I seem to recall reading a thread that indicated that Poser 13 has a strong preference for its own creations over the creations in earlier versions of Poser, even as recent as Poser 12.

I read about the GPU issue, and that's what sabotages my trouble-shooting suggestion, but it's the re-saving the scene and re-starting Poser failure that makes me wonder if there's also an import issue complicating the problem.

Y-Phil posted at 9:38 AM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461535

And if you don't want to use a second layer, a simple Color_math node, with its argument set to Multiply, can give the result you want, especially if the non-tattoo part is completely white.