Greets all

think "poser" models
is there a way to create one texture that will apply to an entire imported model taking in account all material zones?

I have a model which is very detailed and I need a fast way to apply the same material to every import to carrara.  I can do it one item at a time with saved ones..but we're talking 100 or so applications of materials.  I'd like to do it just once.

also

can you apply the SAME material to a model that has been imported via transposer or native importer?

the problem:
Carrara alpha channels suck (well, they do)
if however, you render a white glow for all models on a black background, you can get a great alpha which can be applied as a matte channel.

is there a way to apply this one material at one time to all models at once?

tia
BT

Off the top of my head. Group all of the items. Apply a shader and then click apply to children.'

doesnt work that way
the top material gets it that way..but the domains do not.

any more suggestions?
BT

Brycetech,

 I am not 100% clear on what you are after but you could try applying your textures to your shader domains within the texture room shader tree. Don't use the Shading tab in the Properties tray  to apply textures to the shading domains , leave those blank and just use the texture room and use a Layers list shader with each shading domain having the textures you want.
 I can post a screen grab if this isn't clear enough.

Mike
 

Here is a screen grab of what I was talking about.  Once you have your shader completed just use the eyedropper tool with Shift  to drop the global shader onto all your objects. Hope this helps. 

Mike

When I import the models
they come in with materials already IN the domains.
I need a way to force the drop of the materials on the domains of all (100+ objects...200+ material domains) by just dropping on the top-most object.  Applying to children does not do it because the native importer does not give me the option to not import with domain colors.

and transposer is crap on these files, it applies IK and makes the movements jerky.  I havent tried turning of IK in Poser before saving the file (that may work..just occurred to me to try that)...

but anyhow, is there a way to drop a material on the top object of a group and the material apply to all objects/all domains beneath that parent object?

BT

Is this material that you want to force drop the same texture for each object in the group. If so you could import the group into a new file and then delete all the shaders for this group until you are left with the default shader and then apply the default shader to your object and its children. You may have to remove all the unused shaders by Edit/Remove unused Masters/shaders in the menu.
  Save the file and reopen it again. You should be left with the default shader for all of your objects , now edit the default shader to what you want. 
 You could try something like this on a test file to see if it works for you .

I can do it once.. thats not the problem I have to do this hundreds of times (for a dvd) doing this for each animation in the short will be rediculously time consuming when it should just be a matter of telling Carrara to: 1: apply an all white material to all objects and domains (for the mask render when I want it) or 2: Apply the same parent material to the domains by dropping it on the very top-most object.

for example in instance #2 I have 7 materials
shiny white metal
blue plastic
metal
gold
glowing blue
brown
gray

These colors will go on the same domains every time for the imported bvh animations from Poser.  I want to drop ONE material on the top-most import and have all 7 of those materials go to the same domains on all 50 models of the import every time instead of me having to open every model and apply them the same for each animation to each model to each domain.

I wonder if anyone has any add-ons that do this already?  Otherwise I have to write one it looks like.

attached is a picture of the model to maybe help illustrate what I need to texture.

BT

example of what I'm needing to do in Carrara

Brycetech,

  I have asked for multipass features and I hope we get some in C6, I end up creating duplicate files to do this .
*1: apply an all white material to all objects and domains (for the mask render when I want it)

* With regards to dropping the shader on your figure group I havent found a way to force the drop on top of the Properties tray/Shading tab.  What I would do is the following.

1.Create the Shader you want for your figure in the texture room using a Layers shader and use Basic layers for each shading domain like in my screen capture above. 
2.Make sure the Properties tray/Shading tab  shading domains are not used like in my screen capture from above.
3.Save this shader to the browser .
4.Import your new bvh animation,select your figure .
5.Delete the shading domains for your figure in the Properties tray/shading tab.  If there is only seven  of  them it shouldn't be to bad

1. Select the figure of the new animation and apply the shader from step 3.

 The figure should accept all your shading domains and you should be able to re-use the shader from step 3 over and over. 

  It may be quicker to write something to do this I don't know . Sorry I couldn't be more help and good luck with this.

Mike

actually
its VERY bad...
take that 7 and multiply it by about 40 and then multiply that by every scene I want to render.  I dont want to delete all the domains every time and I dont want to have to apply the material individually to each model's domain.   I know I may have to until either a add-on is written or DAZ does it themselves.

Ive requested to be put on the sdk group so I can work on this myself if I have to ...god knows I dont need more work, but in the long run this would make life sooooooooooo much easier.

thanx for your reply.  I was afraid there was no way to do it in one step.

BT

Hmmm Have you tried just removing the shading domains altogwether then just applying the shader to the object?  With no shading domains it should use the shader over the entire object.

yep
but that means I have to do it EVERY time I import the object from poser.  I dont want to do that.

:)
BT

Brycetech,

 And there is no way to remove all textures easily before exporting from Poser so the shading domains come in empty into Carrara?

I need them in some cases..
in others I do not

I need them for the regular renders
I do not need them for "mask" renders (where I have to render all white over black) because carrara's alpha channels for tif or photoshop are not tight enough.  I can edit them in aftereffects, but I start losing detail when I do that.

anyhow
based upon all the info I'm getting, its not possible to do what I want currently in carrara.

too bad, that means I have to write something (or maybe someone else will write it)

thanx all
BT

Hello brycetech , 
 if im following you correctly you want to import a poser animation , and render out a regular color render , and a seperate mask render. 
There are allot of ways to accomplish what you want.
 If you need to reset shaders it in Carrara to all white , first set default shader to the color white you want. Than go to shaders tab and highlight shift click all the shaders you want to be white , on pz3 characters its all 20+ domains are one group. even so heck even 200+ seperate shaders only takes a minute to shift click .... Anyway hit the delete key. Up comes a question , replace masters with default check the yes for all box. Balm a second later everything you picked is your default white. 
 Or can't you just export a all white version from poser using the python script to set all materials as white ? Or just do a search and replace with a text edit program like ultra edit  , that is fast and flexable on the pz3. save two copies color and mask pz3. This avoids having to manually drop these hundreds of shaders in carrara.
 Another  way I make fast but quality mats is just use a bright background color , red,  blue or green whatever works best not to mix to with my colored object. Take that footage to my video edit  program , pick my bright backdrop color and define it as my mask , or mat. Than I can define mask fring or blur , whatever else , and export what I need. The objects themselves are easly cut from the blue red or green . Of course you can invert that and color replace as well to make black and white alphas.
  If I want alpha or masks I try to plan the project first and make 2 versions required for rendering. :)