Here is another example for PBR textures made with Substance Painter. NB: BOTH renders are FIREFLY renders, NOT SUPERFLY. I often make a joke asking Poser users to estimate the number of material zones on this instrument panel in one of my products. The correct answer is: one single material zone in Poser for the entire instrument panel. If a user really wants to modify and have his own color on the outside hull, he/she can still do this with a blend node and a mask, to put a traditional node based material on a specific part instead. However, even me as a really experienced and knowing user of the material room in Poser for so many years, I would never be able to create THIS with traditional Poser nodes and shaders...

Miss B posted at 2:00AM Mon, 27 April 2020 - #4386810

Ladonna posted at 5:44PM Mon, 20 April 2020 - #4386752

Different Mat zones makes your texturing live more easy. Even when Texturing with SP is really like a walk in the park, different zones gives you more flexibility and let you more easy manage different body or prop parts.

I agree whole-heartedly. I can't think of anything else that could make texturing something easier than using Mat Zones.

I am using Substance Painter and Filter Forge since around 2014. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Both are capable of creating PBR texture sets, especially since Filter Forge 9. Filter Forge: You can use a large library of material presets, you can also modify and adapt these inside Filter Forge, if you learn to handle the filter editor room (a bit similar to the advanced Poser material room). The reason why I use Filter Forge beside Substance Painter is, that it is very good in creating TILING materials. Tiling materials are good when you need to texture a large surface (like the outside of a house, or a parking or asphalt road). If you UV-map these traditionally and apply a texture map, it will look blurry from close distance, even if you crank the texture size up beyond 4000x4000. But a tiling texture which is done in a good way (no obviously repeating texture parts) can cover the entire region, but you can also approach to a close distance and see crisp detail even if the map is only 1000 or 2000 size.

Substance Painter: This software, on the other hand, is extremely good in analyzing your object geometry and automatically create and bake specific utility maps like curvature map, ambient occlusion map, thickness map, position map and more. In Filter Forge, the texture is being created with no knowledge about the target object and geometry. Opposed to this, Substance Painter loads and analyzes your model and knows it in every aspect. Now when you create any material which should depend on sharp corners (i.e. chipped off paint), SP knows automatically where to chip off the paint and unveil any underlying different material (like bare iron or wood). Also if you apply i.e. a filter to create scratches, which you can define in length and width and density and so on, you can also use the utility maps of the object to automatically place scratches only on exposed parts, and not in protected areas (like concave geometry or corners). This is something Filterforge is not capable of, since it has no knowledge about where you may later use the texture and which the geometry will be.

Another word about "Material-Zones": These have been implemented in order to allow for different material properties (like multiple colors and different glossiness on one object). So for a long time it was a state of the art and good quality indicator to create as many MAT-zones on an object as a user might ever wish to modify. Me myself I did the same in my content for many years, always proud to offer a maximum of versatility for my customers.

However, when I got into PBR texturing years ago around 2014 or 2015, I realized, that PBR textures offered much more power for different material properties on an object than MAT-zones could ever do. Here is why: In the traditional way, you can have as many different materials on an object, as there are MAT-zones existing on it. I.e. one for black plastic, another for orange plastic, one for corroded metal, another for a painted metal section, and so on. But when I learnt about PBR, I realized, that this is just a clever way to encode material properties in some few texture maps. One map determines the base color, another map the surface roughness, another map the metallicity (i.e. important for reflectivity and especially for the specular color which is always white for non-metals, always tinted for metal materials). With about 4 (or 5 for emissive materials or another map for transparency) you can create as many different materials on an object texture as there are pixel existing on the maps. So theoretically on a 4000x4000 texture map you can create as many as 16 million different materials if you wish! USING ONLY ONE SINGLE MATERIAL ZONE in Poser!! This versatility is extremely powerful when it comes to small scratches, dust and dirt variation, chipped off paint layers, and so on. This is why PBR textures can look so extremely realistic, because they can mimick all the small little details from the real world, without needing hundreds of MAT-zones for the variations. I know that we can add variation also in the advanced Poser material room, believe me, I know this material room extremely well, studied it evers since Poser 4 and always went to push it to the limits. However: as compared to possibilities with PBR encoding, this is a lame duck.

So in my humble personal oppinion: use Filter Forge when you plan to plaster large areas with tiling materials, and you don't need the materials to differ depending on your object geometry. Use Substance Painter instead, if you wand complex detail which could even depend on curvature of your geomety, exposed vs. protected areas, position of your surface (i.e. lower parts of your model have more dust than upper parts) or surface direction (horizontal parts have more dust than vertical parts) and so on.. This being said, I have not considered your financial budget here, only functionallity. And about MAT zones: since I use PBR encoding for my materials, MAT zones have become almost completely obsolete. I need one MAT zone per texture template, so if my model has large areas which need 3 texture maps to cover the object, then I need 3 MAT-zones, regardless of how many actually different materials I put on the object (probably hundreds of them!). Here is a sample render from a little prop which I added as a bonus to one of my products. A public phone. The entire phone has only one single material zone in Poser, because I didn't need more than one UV texture template to cover it fully. So, if I can do this with only one MAT-zone, why should I create more? Another MAT-zone i.e. for the outside hull would use exactly the same texture template like the other parts do anyway, so I would double the workload on Poser for rendering, without any reason or benefit. Should I later wish to modify something, lets say the outside color, I can do this in Photoshop on the base color map. Or if I want less specularity in some areas, it is easy to lighten up the roughness map (grayscale) in those areas. Its easy, once you got used to it. In a way I personally call it "next generation texturing". And especially when you try to create hybrid materials which work in Firefly and in Superfly, then you should go for PBR materials anyway.

As a content developer I still have my 2014 Pro Game Dev and my very old Poser 5 installed for testing purpose, side by side with Poser Pro 11. My update for Poser 11 worked well and after this all my 70+ runtime libraries were still in place, also all initially open panels were in place as usual. The update installed in the old original Smith Micro folder, so it was not renamed to Bondware or whatever. But thats okay for me, I don't care, as long as it keeps running.

The side installations 2014 Pro Game Dev and Poser 5 up to now have not suffered after the P11 update. Only I will be curious to see if the 2014ProGD version will cease or continue working when the Smith Micro licensing server will be shut down... I guess Poser 5 will continue running anyway, there was no such thing like "call home to check my license" existing by that time... Good old days ;-)

Just to give a small feedback, to avoid rumors: I just updated my Poser 11 Pro to the new Bondware version. It worked amazingly well. I made sure to select "external drive" during the installation procedure. This way, when it proposed some funny location for a Poser 11 Content directory, I was easily able to change this path to my formerly existing Poser 11 Content path. Second thing I made sure, was to check "use existing presets" (NOT backup existing presets and NOT overwrite existing presets). This way, all my initial startup scene, positions and sizes of open panels which I have open as default when starting Poser, all my library of around 70 differend content directories, everything remained in place, as if nothing had happened at all. I was even in doubt if the installation had really done something, opened the "about" window, but found the new ownership "Bondware" there, indication that I had indeed re-installed Poser. During the installation process I had to enter my license code which I had formerly purchased from Smith Micro (had stored the related mails about the purchase, which is recommendable in any case), and entering this everything worked just fine.

I also appreciate separate zip folders for individual contents, because I had some of it (which I had formerly acquired) already organized in separate folders a while ago, now I could simply use my old locations and am not forced to do a second installation of the same stuff in the Poser 11 Content folder.

Only thing I am currently insecure about: Did the files in the LEGACY content change? Because if they are exactly and unchanged the same like in Smith Micro Poser 11 installation, then I would rather not download all of that again and overwrite existing files. But If something has changed about them as well (license readme files?) then I will need to re-download all that stuff again? Does anyone have reliable information on this matter? In my understanding, the word LEGACY files indicates that they remained unchanged and are only included for those who first time install Poser 11?

MikeMoss posted at 6:53PM Sun, 22 September 2019 - #4362697

Hi

Well it upgraded to Poser Pro and I finally got it to use the Runtim in the Poser directory.

Be careful installing the optional content, a lot of it just takes you to a page to buy things in Poser not actual content, I think I'm going to start over and be more selective from the start.

I would have preferred to leave the old install but it forced me to uninstall it in order to go ahead even though I was installing to a new directory.

It wants to put your Runtime in your Users folder on C: no matter what you do.

So I have some work to do before I can open my old files in it.

Mike

greenpots posted at 1:16AM Mon, 05 March 2018 - #4325495

Remember jenn the emails I sent you almost 2 years ago about all the over production of easy to made stuff? That is what I meant.

Yeah Greenpots, I did the same in a content creator survey run by Renderosity, about a year ago. It didn't help. Place is crowded with that kind of stuff, while products which take a month or so to develop quickly get burried in the marketplace and bring no refund of all the efforts put into them. That's why I'm giving up.

All our products are POSER content, lately including Superfly and Firefly support. The sales for Poser native content are (to say the least) poor during the past 4 or 5 years, but I stick with Poser because in my oppinion (over the past 15 years) Poser is the better software, in that it leaves all the liberty to the user, while DAZ-Studio has more and more closed up, using cryptografic file formats, preventing users from 'working under the hood, if they like'. I do use DAZ-Studio as a teacher at school, because for students a freeware software is just a good start. So I do know DAZ-Studio quite well. However I hate the philosophy of automatization and making things more and more complicated so that new users become completely depending on automated libraries and one click whatever, instead of learning a deeper understanding, looking into cr2 or obj files and learn how they work. So I tell my students, DAZ-Studio is fine for a quick first introduction and quickly getting 'click one button to quickly make pseudo art' solutions, but if you want to be in full control of everything, go for professional open software like Poser, or even Lightwave, because they don't restrict you with cryptic file formats which can nowhere be found documented... Even Firefly can use PBR materials, Superfly even more, and if you want more you can still go for Lux-Render (through Reality plugin or whatever else), Poser leaves you all the liberty. My 5 pennies, sorry for my anger, am frustrated about the aggressive marketing strategy of DAZ spilling DAZ-Studio for free to make customers depending on their expensive content, and to starve good professional software from the market. Monopoly at its worst... I'm now abandoning content creation as a real income. But I prefer giving up instead of surrendering to DAZ. Others may chose the money instead, its fine, its everybody's individual choice. The Project E character is a killer, it is what was needed so desperately for Poser. A male character of the same make would be all there is needed for the next years to make awsome use in Poser. But still there are customers who are just too lazy to learn a little about handling 3D content, and who prefer the 'one click fully automized' environment in DAZ-Studio. Telling 'I want to make art, but I don't want to learn or read a manual, my art must come out of the machine with a single click of a button. Automated clothing, automated pose, automates lighting, automated camera position, am I not such a great artist???'. Wonderful new world of DAZ Studio, congratulations.

Great honor, thank you so much

tonyvilters posted at 1:41AM Sun, 18 December 2016 - #4292216

The simple trick is to remember is that:

• All colored maps should be loaded at GC 2.2 in the advanced material room.
• All Black and white maps should be loaded at GC 1.00 (Transmaps, Bumpmaps, Displacement maps and yes Normal maps)

Then remove all the old style "faking", (mostly that is to remove that light blue in the Diffuse color, and start with a single Infinite light set to 75% intensity inside a Dome)

• Then remember that we are 2016 now => and ALWAYS render with IDL set to ON and at 100%, and GC set to 2.2 in the render settings.

Yep, very good summary of the basics here :-)

I do this for 2 or 3 years already. My Skydome texture is connected to ambient only, (also to diffuse, but diffuse value set to zero, this is only to make the sky texture visible in the preview). So this skydome set to 0.6 ambient value basically emitts all the light needed (I also have Bagginsbill's light meter and gamma meter in my standard startup scene and only delete them for the final renders). Then a single infinite light which is my sun, set to white and intensity=60%. Crank it up to 70% if I want very strong sunlight impression. Of course the light is set to 'Raytrace Shadows' with a blur radius of 3 or 4. Then with these specifics set as standard in my outdoor startup scene, my standard render settings for scene development (and I have even done many promo images for content with just these settings) are like in the attached screenshot.

Me too I have never again used IBL lighting for at least 3 years, since introduction of IDL in Poser.

Prior to introduction of IDL and GC, Poser users (including myself since 2001) were used to use far too much and strong lighting in our scenes, to compensate for the missing indirect lighting and other flaws. But like Tonyvilters said, this is bad habits from the past and should definitely be changed according to our nowadays equipment (unless you are using an older Poser version without GC and IDL, of course). Back in those days, I could never have imagined lighting a scene with only ambient light from a skydome (set as low as 0.6!!) and a single infinite light (also set as low as 60%)... In those days we used to have 5, or 10 or even 20 light sources in our scenes, and it was common they were all set to ridiculous high ranges, sometimes even cranked up to 200 or 250 percent... Resulting in those redish tints and other colors, this is why Victoria 4 had even a blue tint baked in her texture shader by default (and she looks extremely bluish nowadays in a modern lighting setup, when loaded with her standard shaders :-) )