I've decided to go from Poser 4 to Poser 7, i picked it up today, and i'm glad they didn't make any big changes, but i'm still kinda lost on how to apply a texture to a figure.

In poser 4 it went rather easy, but i cant really figure it out in Poser 7, that feature has changed bigtime, any help on this?

Until you get oriented in the Materials room, when you're in there click on the "Simple" tab.  It has the same functionality as the P4 mat room.

If you miss the "Apply to all materials," it's in a dropdown on the right (or is in P6).

John

just to mention - they made some very big changes between P4 and P7, largely in response to user requests. give yerself plenty of time to learn all the new features.

Frick HUGE changes between 4 and 7....  My gosh!  But the basic feel is the same...... awkward.

Attached Link: PRACTICAL POSER 7

BigK: Just made the same leap (from P4 to P7) myself a few weeks ago, so I feel your shock and awe. Pick up a copy of Practical Poser 7 by Denise Tyler. It's a very comprehensive guide to all things P7 and the "User's Manual" that should have been included in the box. It'll really help ease the pain.

It is extremely common (pretty much 100%) for recent character-type content to include a set of MAT (material) Poses - if you check the documentation for whatever texture you're working with, it should be stated either way.  Even P4 content that I've come across still includes MAT Poses.

My Freebies

The big difference for P4 users is the handling of bump maps, and if the MAT pose files I see installed are any guide, the change came with the introduction of ProPack. In P5 and later there are three different ways of using textures to make surface variations. Gradient Bump is for the P4-style bumpmaps, the .bum file, and you have to user the Poser 4 renderer. It won't work with Firefly. In Firefly, the Bump Map is a greyscale, usually a .jpg file, doing the same shifting of normals to give an illusion of surface roughness. Black is low, white is high. The Displacement Map actually moves the surface. An example: Victoria 3 has a Wrist Spandex morph, which gives a raised edge at the wrist, matching the edge of a material zone, so you can create the edge of a tight-fitting sleeve. A displacement map can give you the same step in the surface, when the model is rendered, without any need for a morph. A bump map will look like a step where the surface faces towards you, but you don't see any step in the surface as it curves around the wrist.

What a great jump to make! Forgetting whatever 'bugs" you might encounter, the improvements since Poser 4 are really worth having. If you haven't noticed them yourself already here are a couple worth noting: When you open the drop down menu of body parts there is a little tick mark showing you which body part you currently have selected. This is great when trying to quickly orient yourself among so many variables both L and R. And that drop down list can now be accessed from the parameters window so you don't have to slide your curser all the way back to the main window. The up and down arrow keys can be used to move up and down through the body parts of the first figure. Handy if you are doing pose design for one character and moving through each body part and don't want to keep going to the drop down menu. That won't work if you have many characters, the scroll through only seems to work with the first character. Well, you've probably already noticed lots of other groovy attributes yourself. You've got a lot of fun ahead of you.