Baker gives you a preview of the texture once it's done so that right there is a useful time saver for checking if the texture is what you want or if it needs a bit more work. Plus you can export light maps, normal maps and every other type of texture channel from Carrara (highlights, transparency etc.) I haven't actually used it for exporting any textures out to any external applications, but with the messing about I've done to learn how it works I think it looks pretty good. Let us know if you want to see a specific texture (one of the default landscapes in the browser) & I'll post an image of it so you can see for yourself.

Sort of - you have to switch off all file compression and the external binary morph target option to use any Poser content. BUT Transposer doesn't like being pointed at Poser6.exe, it still wants Poser5.exe to read dynamic cloth and hair I upgraded from Poser 5 to 6, I've got both so I'm okay, but it's hardly the ideal solution.

In agreement with Patrick, but still have a look at the Baker plug in from Inagoni - that might be what you need. http://www.inagoni.com/comment.php?comment.news.17

Thanks for all the info everyone. I'm not too comfortable with Poser so all basic & obvious tips are welcome. This one is going to solve a lot of problems between Carrara Studio and Poser 6.

While we're on the subject - is there anything like a utility or python script that can go through a runtime folder and convert all obz files into obj files without me having to do it all manually. Thanks

Cool, I'll go have a look at Travelers stuff. I've only got the free version of V3, but I've got the full Aiko 3 - she's a unimesh figure as well isn't she? I'll look into that. Thanks for your help.

Its www.lavers-place.co.uk Looks useful, thanks for the link.

I'm not sure what you mean by "moving their feet through the floor" - a rotation shouldn't do that should it? I tend to use the manipulators on the object itself anyway, all the axes are there for axis specific movement/rotation/scaling. Or else I'll type the values that I want (you were talking about Carrara weren't you?) For toon pro try the backfaces optimization option. Although I wonder if V3's lips are a separate shading domain from the rest of the face. I remember reading something about all-in-one face textures vs. separate eyebrow and lip textures over in the Poser forum some time ago - that might not have anything to do with this though.

Esther, one more thing from me on the texturing theme. I've just noticed that you are using V3 as your figure. This got me thinking about how she is set up based on what you were saying earlier about adjusting everything in one go: - the Daz figures that I've got: Aiko3, Koshini & Ichiro (they started at Daz) have a really long winded texture map system. The whole skin...hip/torso/neck/thigh/shin/etc. thing for what amounts to the same texture. - Miki, Koji, Terai Yuki, Jessi & Anime/MayaDoll have all the eye socket, tongue, eyelashes extra bits, but the main textures are Head & Body. That makes life a lot easier. You can see the in the Environment/Slope shader image in post 4 the join between the neck and the body - that's all I have to deal with. I'm looking at Aiko3's textures in Carrara at the moment and the following textures are the same (they use the same texturemaps anyway): - SkinHead and SkinScalp - SkinArm, SkinFeet, SkinForearm, SkinHand, SkinHip, SkinKnee, SkinNeck, SkinShin, SkinThigh and SkinTorso Is this what what you get with V3? If anyone knows a quick and reliable way to apply one of those textures to the others in it's list and then save and re-use it in different scenes that might be what you need. Maybe some longtime Poser to Carrara users might be able to shed some light on this process or however they set up their Poser figures in Carrara. Or perhaps they don't and just focus on the lighting? Another thing to consider with this system - if you are going to adjust any skin textures you only really need to focus on the parts of Vicki that are visible. In the images you've posted Vicki's hip, leg and feet textures are irrelevant in the clothing you are using. A bit obvious, but I thought I'd mention it. No need to make the process any harder or slower than it needs to be.

Hi Estherau, I see what you mean with your image, very shiny. You are going to need to work on the textures and thats going to take a bit of time, unfortunately there's no easy options for skin shaders that I've ever seen (I wouldn't say no if one turned up). Have you looked at which textures have made it from Poser into Carrara? The most obvious thing I can think of is to check the Shininess channel in the texture room - if its set to Value(0-100) then the higher the value is the smaller and more obvious the the highlights will be. As I understand Carrara's shaders Highlight controls the intensity of the highlights, Shininess controls the size of the highlights. I could be wrong though, if anyone else knows anything different please let me know too.

Mark beat me to it, so - what he said. I also take the bump map into Photoshop and use the dodge and burn tools to make the specular map above.

• Put the character's bump map in the Highlight channel as a Texturemap (in Carrara).
• Set Shininess to a low value: either Value(1-5) or adjust the texture map's brightness.
• Back in Highlight try experimenting with the invert option (if the image is a pale grey) or adjusting the Brightness slider.
  This should give you a different result from you have so far. From here you can start experimenting with the Operators (add, overlay, curve filter, mixer, multiply and subtract). Like what I suggested earlier mixing texturemaps and procedural functions. Basically lots of trial and error experimenting to see what breaks up the highlights, but as Mark says - not too rough. There's a bit more mixing stuff up in my final texture, but this should give you a rough idea of what I did. You can see from my image that I make my specualr map quite dark to start with - this was to tone the highlights down from before even opening Carrara.

Poser hair: from what I've seen hair comes into Carrara either as part of the character or as a separate object (check the Instances list in Carrara). Either way whatever you do to the face and body textures shouldn't have any impact on the hair, until you select the object or it's shading domain.

Copy & Paste vs Duplicate: whenever you use copy&paste Carrara creates a new master object which probably uses more memory. Duplicate doesn't, it simply takes an instance of the object (check the Instances, Objects & Shaders tabs on the right of Carrara's screen). If you are going to edit one of your objects then you'll need to use copy&paste. If the objects aren't going to be changed then Duplicate is your best bet.

Hopefully more people will join in 'cos I'd love to know how everyone else does skin shaders in Carrara.

Message edited on: 11/07/2005 08:29

This might be useful: some experiments from when I was working on the Miki skin texture. They are all black to white gradients in the glow channel, so I could quickly see the exact effect I would get. 1) For the Colour channel. Veloute - I know it's not accurate, but with the proper texture maps applied it's not too bad for faking veins and skin tone variation. This eventually became: - Mixer operator (colour channel) - Channel 1: texture mixed with slightly brighter texture with Veloute. - Channel 2: as above, but both textures brighter. - Main blender: Shader Ops Invert Fake Fresnel to push the brighter/paler colours back as if the colour is fading away into the distance. If you haven't got Veloute try Cellular and/or Fractal Noise - they should get the job done. I think you've got to put something extra into the colour channel of a texture as well as every where else. It gives the lights in your scene something extra to play with and adds to the final image. 2) For the Highlight channel. Shader Ops Fake Fresnel. 3) For the Highlight channel. Environment/Slope shaders 2 & 3 - might not be accurate, but if they look right in the final image then who cares. Overlay is useful here - put something like Environment in the first overlay channel and some fractal noise in the second. Then adjust the noise until you're happy with the highlight edges. For nomuse - the 'soft glowing highlights' thing, are you talking about sub surface scattering? If you aren't already playing with the Carrara 5 Beta (which has it) then try messing around with stuff in the Glow channel of a texture. Just make sure it's something with a controllable intensity - Shader Ops Brightness might be useful for that.

I did an experiment with this recently, have a look in my gallery. The thing I found is to break up the highlight, shininess and relflection channels with a bit of noise - either a noisy texturemap or a procedural noise within Carrara. This helps break up the highlight edges. Also check if there's a bump map for the figure as well, that helps break up highlights, I think Transposer does the best job it can with importing Poser stuff, but as Poser doesn't seem to play nicely with other software you'd be better off checking everything yourself. Giving the colourmap a bit of variety by mixing two slightly different versions of the original will help give the figure a bit more life as well. Regarding the lights - different lights are going to give you different effects. If you are going to use spotlights and bulbs then you might want to experiment with soft shadow options. Most of the loungeroom presets seem geared towards soft lighting - HDRI and environment lighting will give you a similar soft lighting effect. Sun light and a realistic sky seems, IMHO, to have the best balance between hard & soft highlights/shadows.

I'd go with the dual core 4800+ (I will be soon as well). I've already got an old dual cpu Athlon MP system and it does help - as both Poser and Windows are both system hogs having two cpus/cores means that you can assign Poser to one of them and let Windows do whatever it needs on the other.

I agree with randym77. For myself, if I had to pick one it would be Miki - I've got both, but so far Yuki has only been installed and unused. I think Miki's shoulder and arm joints are a bit odd, but her face is great (more than makes up for it) - really expressive even before you start adding 3rd party morphs and characters.

That's cool. It sounds like we're almost there with Poser 6 then. I posted what might be a solution for you earlier (post 132). It's still the only thing I can think of (bitmap vs Poser procedural textures). In my limited experience with this I tend to modify the basic bitmap textures in Photoshop & then set them up using Carrara only shader functions anyway. As Poser doesn't have any kind of texture baking & export options I've not really looked into it's texturing abilities. Also, if you haven't tried this, do a search on this forum for 'poser' - you'll find a lot of useful info on setting up poser hair and eyes (expanded versions of what ren_mem said earlier in post 126). Hope thats useful