*"One is pattern - often just dealt with (even by me) using a color map. But, making procedural patterns (for example, wood grain or scratches in painted wood) is a big deal, not easy at all. Goofing around snapping things together, you can come up with some fascinating patterns. But those are just happy accidents and it's like hitting random notes on a piano. Can you make one intentionally? Like fish scales in my avatar, for example? That's math and it's seriously hard. Most people can't do it, even after I explain how. And it's not physics so you can't even go look up what you need to do.

Two is what I used to call texture before I got into CG - bump or displacement shapes, turning a flat surface into something else. Since this sort of thing is usually based on noise, lots of people can stitch together useful noisy patterns. Little math is needed here, although if you're looking to produce something intentionally, it may be called for.*

Three is mediation of light - diffuse reflection, specular reflection, refraction, scatter, dispersion, ... this is where you really really just should rely on presets. Because this is serious math which you can look up, but the problem is it's physics. You have to first know how the world works. Then you have to come up with a way of reproducting that without simulating individual photons - you have to know and take advantage of the statistics of large numbers of photons. Then you have to translate that into a specification that a computer can deal with, which is all math.

This last category is where I really shine and where people get the greatest benefit from just using my shaders. There's not a lot of arguing about creativity here . Glass is glass, metal is metal. You can build it yourself, but you're going to end up with the same equations I already did, and I mostly got them out of physics books. There's not a lot to invent here and call your own."

*Loved this ^^ part.  Simple explanations ftw.  

My luck with this today has been terrible.  Just trying to make a white material that appears to have a high thread count.  I did mess around with those 20s and the 65.  At a loss at this point.

I've tried every angle and camera distance and still getting this.   grr.

Are these due to some mistake on my part in the materials room.  Or is it something else that I am missing?  Any help very appreciated.

HA!  me too!!!  I didn't realize those RSR files were suppose to be the images.  Now I know why I have so many icons missing.  Very good info, thank you!!!

Grrr.

I refreshed the runtime and the thumbnail showed up.  The details panel is still showing the file as scrubspants1.mc6.pz2 though even after the refresh.  So that's still a bit of a concern.

I took a closer look at the other runtimes where I have this issue and apparently somehow those .pngs got eaten.  So that explains why they are not showing up in those folders.  

Thank you for looking BB.  Seems it was mostly user error.  I imagine that is often the case.

EDIT

*HA - I closed the library window and reopened it and now I have a thumbnail, and it is labled correctly in the details pane C:runtimelibrariesposescrubs pants 1.pz2

okay - will get other SS's.  

"The file browser now called Explorer used to be called "File Manager" in Windows, long ago. So when somebody is confused by newer Windows, I assume that phrase will be the ticket. Guess it isn't."

*Don't let my confusion change anything.  I have a terrible memory so I often just don't remember what is called what.  For this I found it in Control Panel/Folder Options.  

I was able to change the folder option in windows.  Thank you for that tip.  That fixed my .pz2 problem.

In this case no I am not using the main runtime.  I do have some of the standard poser content in the main runtime, but I have external runtimes on an extra drive.  The previews don't show up for many many of those files.  This one in particular is simply C/runtime/libraries/pose that I just saved to and the thumbnail isn't showing up.  

I do believe I have UAC turned off.

This is probably a dumb question, but what is a file manager?  I do not have one of those.  Can I just edit the folder options inside windows 7?