I am soooo tired of just playing barbie dress up and want to do some other things, but I can't for the life of me figure out the material room. I have tried all kinds of tutorials, and I have looked at Dr. Geeps tutorial for it (his images just have too much stuff on them and confuse me even more), and other tutorials I have looked at leave stuff out assuming you know things already. For some reason I find Poser exceptionally hard to learn, and I can't seem to learn from tutorials. I stumbled around not being able to even get clothing on a figure and render it for almost 6 months until someone walked me through it step by step over MSN Messenger. I haven't progressed at all from that point. All I can do in Poser is play dress up dolly with purchased items, textures, poses, and lights, because I just don't have it in me to figure it out on my own or from most tutorials I've tried. I'm not a stupid person, but for some reason I just can't grasp Poser on my own and I feel like a complete idiot :( Is there someone here that understands the material room well enough to give me an "in person" step by step walk through of it and explain what things are and what they do? And maybe walk me through doing a few things in it so that i can see how to do things? I have MSN Messenger, AIM and ICQ. I'll even pick up the dime and telephone if necessary. I just want to learn how that room works so I don't feel so limited in Poser.

I haven't been really up on marking threads lately, but awhile back I bookmarked all the Material Room threads here I found informative or interesting. Do a search in this forum for: AKmaterialroombookmark Also go over to RuntimeDNA, there is a lot of great P5/P6 information.

I know you said you looked at tutorials anyway but I thought I would still mention the links.

Thanks, but I need someone to walk me through it step by step. I read every single Material room thread that I see, and it's not made a lick of difference in my being able to understand that room at all. For some reason, with some things, the only way I can learn is by having someone take me on a step by step walk through. Parallel parking was one (I can now park with 2" clearance front and back bumper :) ), and Poser seems to be another.

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=22411

You might want to check out the "Poser 5 Demystified" VHS tutorial from 3-Axis. People seem to think it's pretty good (if a little pricey). -jjsemp

Personally I found "Poser In Depth 2: Shader Essentials" from poserproducts.com to be helpful. I'm no expert but I might be able to help you with some basics if ya want.

jjsemp... I have that 3 Axis course... but while I understood pretty much everything in it, I didn't understand the material room portion. It just goes too fast :( As for price? Yes, it is pricey, especially for those of us in Canada. At the time I bought it, exchange was high and it cost me about $120 CAD when exchange and S&H were added, not to mention the fact that UPS charged $50 CAD for processing the custom papers at the border. I've had some replies in PM, so hopefully I'll be able to make heads and tails out of it soon.

Stepping through things via Yahoo IM or so other instant messenger is a very effective method. I've helped others and been helped doing things that way.

(The image is how to create Glow in the Materials Room, other materials will be shown on my site) I am planning to create a little space on my website that will contain Images of materials from the materials room so that everyone can see how to change the hair color using nodes or how to use the Gather node so that objects only receive light from other objects. I hope everyone likes this idea as i too have found the material room annoying at the start but hopefully this will help all and act as a meterials resource.

Ohh i did not make the above material and i cannot remember who did, but i will be adding credits for the people who made them.

Acadia, I'm wondering what it is you're trying to accomplish in the material room. Certainly, once you get to know it, it's almost an end unto itself ("hmmm... I wonder what it would look like if I added a Blinn node to the ambient channel..."), but what are you trying to achieve to start with? What are your immediate material goals?

Dan, I have no "immediate" material room goals other than to learn what all that stuff in each "mini window" means and is used for. I want to be able to change the colours of things like hair or clothing or shoes and currently I can't do. I ultimately want to make my own textures and I need to know the material room and what all that stuff in there means and does. I'm sick of playing Barbie dress up. I spent what I consider to be a fortune on a program that I probably know less than 1% of what that program can do and it's just come to a point where I want to learn some of the other stuff. Pete, you might also consider explaining what the list of terms in the poser surface window and the various node windows means, and why you are "plugging" into those instead of something else.

Making your own textures is much more of a photo app skill than anything else.

Acadia,I will be including some text with the materials as some of these were explained in full here in the Rosity forums. and are currently in folders on my hard drive with text and images of them, as i have planned this for a while and started doing this so i had a point of reference to helping me create certain effects, ie in my gallery i have an image with rain splashes in water, all created with nodes, this will also be on my site.

I was looking for another thread and happened upon this one. I can't believe how far I've come since I posted this! :) I'm now in the material room every single time I'm in Poser and I'm even learning a little about nodes now and trying my own combinations of things. I haven't been successful figuring out any working combinations yet, but I'm not longer freaked out about that room, LOL I remember the first time I went into that room. I looked at it and was so daunted I couldn't close Poser fast enough. While it is terribly daunting, I can testify that it's not nearly as bad as it looks... well, almost not nearly as bad hehe. The Node stuff is pretty hard to figure out, but I'm working on learning one node at a time and then once I know them all maybe I'll be able to put them in some kind of working combination to make something nice. Sorry for rambling... but this forum is like my Blog of achievement, and I like to look back at my milestones :) LOL