Hi mysticwinter, Eszter is not remapped, I decided to keep her own uv's since they are better than Vicky's, makes less smearing especially around the nose. I hope you will see other textures for her soon :)

Ok, after reading the regular manual, I found out :) Poser Native units.....ok.....so I guess it's better to use PNU in this tutorial so there are no mixups between people using different real world measurement in their scenes?

Message edited on: 07/16/2005 09:20

The thing is I need to do this part of that tutorial:

" are multipled by the normalized vector from the main light (0.742592, 0.513875, -0.429522). To work this vector out, take your main light, convert it to a spotlight (if its not one already), take the X, Y and Z coords (xTran, yTran and zTran from the Transform section of the light info in Poser) of the light and sum the square of coordinates. Then take the square root of this sum (which is called the Vector Length in mathematical terms.) and divide the original light coordinates by this number. This gives you the Normalised vector for the main light "

I've gotten the callbacks to work, the mat node updates automatically as I move the light, but what are these PNU measurements? Can I use them directly in the case of this tutorial?

Message edited on: 07/16/2005 09:16

What is PNU? I kept having trouble finding the animated shader param, finally I looked in the cr2 and they get added under the BODY actor....wish they mentioned these things in the manual... Thanks for your help, you happen to work for CL? :)

Ah damn manuals.....I get the impression there's not a lot of help for newbies to learn Python for Poser although it looks quite powerful. The reference manual has almost zero examples. I looked at callbacks and I think I understand how they work, but do you have any idea why I get such different numbers for the xtran? Seems I have to multiply them with 262...something to get the actual xtran of the light.

What I'm trying to do basically is get to a certain node of a material in a prop....

Well another thing, I have not idea why this is giving me an error:

scene = poser.Scene()

thelight = scene.Actor("Light 1")
lightX=thelight.ParameterByCode(poser.kParmCodeXTRAN).Value()
lightmat=thelight.FindMaterialByName("Preview");

print lightmat;

it says:
AttributeError: FindMaterialByName

Message edited on: 07/15/2005 07:46

Message edited on: 07/15/2005 07:46

I think I'll try the SetCallBack, but I'm still struggling with the basics :)

This is really the first time I'm trying Python and using it with Poser and I'm going step by step. For example I'm just trying to see if I get the xtran param of Light 1, but when trying to test the script, it prints out this:
Parm object at 0x0E24D538

It seems it returns the object instead of the objects property....

The script so far:

try:
scene = poser.Scene()
thelight = scene.Actor("Light 1")
lightX=thelight.ParameterByCode(poser.kParmCodeXTRAN)
print lightX;
except:
print "bleh"; >>EDIT I had to add .Value(), ok makes sense :) But the Lights xTran is: -191.743249 and the printout reads: -0.73148703575

Message edited on: 07/15/2005 05:45

the general noisiness is a problem for me too, even with a 16-bit map. It's not because of zbrush though, i tried just making a map in PS. I guess that conversion trick works but doesn't work as well as true 16 bit support, OR Poser's displacement mapping needs to be improved.

Both :) I always have to smooth some areas from the displacement map generated in Zbrush.

Sorry, didn't have time to finish typing before you replied :)

No...that's wrong :) the electron gun doesn't just display 256 distinct levels of a nuance....it can display many more...it's an "analog" device, works by changing tiny amounts of current. If you talk about pixels we must only think of how they are STORED on the computer. An 8 bit greyscale (so single channel) image, can hold 256 distinct levels of information (2 to the 8th power) A 16 bit greyscale image can hold 65 536 distinct levels of information (2 to the 16th power) If you don't believe it, make a new 16 bit greyscale image in PS. First make a smooth gradient (black to white) lets say horizontally, then take a big very smooth brush, set it to a nuance of grey and paint a little. Now zoom in and convert the image to 8 bit and see what happens.

No, the 16bit RGB file stores 65 536 shades of grey. You must think of R G B channels as a separate grey channel. An 8 bit file stores only 256 levels of grey. 256 levels in most cases is ok, like in your pic example, but when you have very smooth gradations (zoom in close on a portion of a pic too see), you will get banding with an 8 bit image. You are confusing "bit depth". You can either talk about it as bits/channel or total bits. In your 24bit example, you are actually talking about an 8bit/channel image, which would make 16 and some millions of colors.

Message edited on: 06/30/2005 11:21