Ok as some of you may know i'm getting real closed to finnishing my platemail for posette. So I thought maybe i'll to a few sets of textures for the whole thing and see what happens... then i started looking and said youknow theres like 7 figures here .. and 6 props.. maybe mat posing is the way to go. My question now is ... is there a way with just 1 mat pose to texture the whole set? or am i looking at like 13 mat poses per texture set? kinda new at mat posing so bear with me ...

As long as the material names are the same in the figures you can settle for a single MAT pose for the figures. The props need their own MAT pose. And that MAT pose will only work if the props are parented to the figure. This has to do with the fact that materials in figures are listed in the Figure section, while the materials for props are listed (I think) in the Prop section of the .pz2. Different sections, which means that you need different .pz2 files. This is probably the reason why Baron_Vlad_Harkonnen made the swords, jewelry and staves in his fantasy sets as conforming figures, despite the fact that they do not bend. The material collections and MAT poses he supplies with his sets work on each and every figure.

hrmm... I was afraid of that ... so i'm really looking at 10 to 13 mat poses per set. :( so the next question becomes weather it would be better to organize the mat poses by item type or by texture .. IE: Curiass - blue Curiass - green Curiass - red Hauberk - blue Hauberk - green Hauberk - red or blue - Curiass blue - Hauberk Green - Curiass Green - Hauberk Red - Curiass Red - Hauberk I know it really isn't that importat but i'm picky and annoying about things like that...

Poser 6 doesnt care if your props are parented or not....at least if your using MC6s.... i think MAT poses are the same but i move all my stuff to MC6 so im not sure. I vote for organize by color blue - Curiass blue - Hauberk Green - Curiass Green - Hauberk Personaly i'd put each color in its own subdirectory.

yeah but will poser 4 and 5 see the diffrent mat poses in each sub directory?

remember i still use 4. i have no need for 6 so i see no reason to buy it.

Converting the props (sword, shield and so on) to figures might do the trick. Then you have only one MAT pose per color. If you opt for 2 MAT poses per color (one for the figures, one for the props), I'd prefer organization by color.

remember i still use 4. there are so few of you using p4 you'ld think i could remember you all :P

ok playing with mat pose edit .. I load a figure or prop, don't load morph data (morph data makes it much worse) set all my textures. save my mat pose, go to run it and it break the conforming (loading morph data actually sent the legs into outer space) i think maybe all this mat pose stuff is just too much .. i did it for the archery pack but i don't remember how i did it :( and it doesn't seem to be worth the trouble as I can't really figure out what i'm doing or how to do it. Some items have 4 materials, some only have 2 or 3 .. the sword and shields materials don't match the other figure materials at all. I can't get mat pose edit to build mats for the props at all... It's all just a bit confusing. I may just leave it white, call it done. tyger, theres only what 50,000+ rosity members? you can't remember all of us and what software we use? .. wow you're slackin ;>

theres only what 50,000+ rosity members? you can't remember all of us and what software we use? according to recent surveys only around 7% of users still use P4. even if we assume the 50,000 is unique users... that is to say not a singel person with mulitipe accounts. remove non-poser users and we remove people not active in the forums, im sure that number would be much more managable :> >I may just leave it white, call it done. or you could get poser 6 and make mc6 files in the material room or add ShaderSpider and make mats for all versions of poser and D|S :-D ...but you don't need to do that.... ;-P

There were supposed to be 13 animators. I bet there are at least 15 of us P4 users :-) Mordikar, make Logan do it :-)

Message edited on: 03/01/2006 18:58

I use propack, mainly. Subfolders for mats wont work.

i tested in 4 and it laughed at me when i sub foldered. But at least i can subfolder the textures.

Ive looked at Baron's pose files, and the way he does it is to have every piece have identical mat group names. I made a combo pose file that included all mat groups. This revealed that applying a pose to an item that includes settings for a non-existant group is NOT ignored, but it instead ADDS this extra group to the item (it becomes visible in Material Settings) So to avoid this, Ive made a text matset consisting of: bootsGOLD.pp2 - for boots only, with boot,cuff,trim,sole chainsGOLD.pp2 - for coif and hauberk, with chians zone thighsGOLD.pp2 - thigh only, with armour, trim, rivits, leather, and buckle zones -armorGOLD.pp2 - for curiass, arms, gauntlets, legs. Armour, trim, rivits and leather groups I made thighs seperate as its the only item with a buckle zone. Is there anything special I need to know to make a collected prop pose?

Ok while Logan is beta testing and finsing all my numerous cr2 errors, material mispellings, ect .. (he's very thourough) I have finnished the rsr's and started working on textures. I have a plain set with no emplems, a dragon set, a lion rampant set, and a cross set. I'm looking at possibly doing sets for Unicorn Rampant, Griffin Passant, and Eagle Displayed. just to give you a peak .. i did some renders with the dragon, lion, and cross sets .. note the trim maerial colour was turned goldish to get the gold trim colour. The texturemaps are still grey brushed metal there.

and today while browsing hearaldry sites for references i get tagged by viruses and spybleep.... on a bleep'ing hearaldry site!?!?!?!?! i mean what the bleeping bleep is the bleeeeeeeeeping bleeped up internet copming to .. bleep all this bleep!

Ypu can combine MATs for clothing "figures" with those for prop stuff in the same PZ2, BTW. You can also do it with P6 material collections, but in this case Poser will give you a "there are un-used materials" message.

Hello Jim,

It is very exciting to get tech help from a modeller of your calibre :)

I have opened a .pp2 for coloring a hair prop, and noted the instances of open and closing bracers and the "prop" call. I have checked the .pz2's of all the props for thier correct name:num and made a MAT file with a field for 5 of the props. My first test was flawless, all props converted in one shot!

I now have what I think is the most compact set I reasonably can, with the one mat file shared by cuirass, arms, legs and guantlets, and the one-click-sets-all props MAT.

Here is Mordikar's armor in the test MAT set for the default reflection maps included with the Poser installations for (to my knowledge) PP, 5, and 6. Hauberk and Coif textured with a map created in Photoshop by Mordikar

"Ypu can combine MATs for clothing "figures" with those for prop stuff in the same PZ2, BTW." Jim, how is this done please? I tried to make an all-in-one mat pose for figures, by using a figure instead of a prop call but got an "invalid poser file" error message inworld. Is there a special command or formatting I have to use? Id appreciate an example very much if youve time to provide one! Thanks for reading, Logan

I'm still on P4 too! : )

Here is an example of a MAT pose that sets materials for both a figure (the Day-in-the-Office clothing set) and a prop (the stewardess cap that is included in the Flight-Crew-Only MAT set, the only mat set I've ever done, BTW). Another trick this MAT does is set the materials for up to two occurances of the prop, you could add more, too (the first comes in as "myprop", then myprop 1, myprop 2 and so on, if the prop might be added mutiple times. The screen capture is from CR2 Editor. Note all the materials have unique names, I don't know if they have to be, though.

Opps, forgot the screen capture! ;-)