Divshare keeps going up and down - grrr.

Semidieu is hosting them on his ShaderWorks site, temporarily. Try once more to get them from divshare, because I like to keep the download count up to date. But if that fails on you again, go here:

poser.rois-sorciers.com/ShaderWorks/AMUCS.html

I must have a distorted sense of what people really want in Poser land. There is a freebie - 8 poses for the Daz gorilla - that philgreg posted about the same time that I posted this shader on Friday.

So far the 8 gorilla poses have been downloaded 217 times versus 203 times for AMUCFS.

You people want me to make gorilla poses?

Naw .. This shader rocks :) I think people see stuff in the freestuff area and just raid it. Sometimes without even reading what it is or just in case. I remember reading people posting that they put an add on to a product in the free stuff. A texture for the dress. The dress only sold around 50 copies but it had a few hundred downloads of the free dress texture that would only work on the dress.

Gorilla poses being a slightly more popular download? Several reasons I can think of, but the simplest is - Gorilla Poses work in Poser artist, P4, P5 & up, while your incredible shaders only work for people who have P6 or 7?
Plus, a lot of P6 & 7 users shy away from the more complicated aspects - they're uncomfortable with magnets and lighting, let alone materials and shaders, that's why most clothing, sets, and characters sell better with MAT poses or material settings than just with textures.

Quote - You people want me to make gorilla poses?

Oh, gaaawd nooo! No gorilla poses!
I love Apollo just the way he is ;), with your shaders of course!

Agree with leather-guy.. You put 'shader' or anything technical sounding in the title, you lose 90% of the audience right there :)

Plus it is for apollo, which is a) not a big boobed female and b) not named v1/2/3/4 or M1/2/3. That takes care of the other 90% :p

Seriously though... thanks a lot for sharing, i'm sure it will come in handy !

methinks someone needs to make 'Natural Gravity Morphs' for Apollo
[ducking and running]

Hee hee.

Of course I'm only joking about the downloads counts. I agree that people collect free stuff just in case.

Still it's curious that AM has been downloaded almost 19,000 times. I expected at least 3% of that for the shader in the first 3 days.

Yeah, one would think you'd get couple of thousand downloads at least. Go figure!
I was taking a peak at the apollo freebie downloads in our freeboe section. Apollo freebie with most DL's is a warrior type helmet, with 2000, followed by facial morphs around 1000's, and couple skin textures are around 500.

Um, look at it on the bright side, reasonable server traffic ;)

on the other hand, i bet 203 of those shader downloads will actually get used, & more than once, while how many people will ever use those goriilla poses once let alone often??

Just adding my Thank You here bagginsbill - Very much appreciated! :biggrin:

I wouldn't worry about it BB, but I would suggest having your shader linked in the freebies section of Apollo's homepage, as well as the content page. I'm sure Anton would be proud to include it.

My Ogre morph has only been downloaded 458 times fron Renderosity according to their counter, but has overall been downloaded almost 5,000 times (last time I checked).

Your shader is in a whole different league to my hack-job of a morph, so I wouldn't be suprised if you hit a few thousand downloads within a couple of weeks, assuming you don't rely on Renderosity for traffic.

I like this pic you rendered of the Bruce Willis freebie for Apollo. I have been wanting to become more familiar with Matmatic and such for ages now. I really want to find the time soon.

This pic and the others you posted are all great. I apologize for being quiet. Lots of real life stuff has had me away from the computer of late.

Anyway top notch stuff. Thanks for the support and interest. I love the reaction when people realize Apollo is exactly 40,000 polygons.

Don't be a stranger at the CP forum for Apollo, It is very active and many Apollo users browse there.

""So far the 8 gorilla poses have been downloaded 217 times versus 203 times for AMUCFS.
You people want me to make gorilla poses?""

For me - honest to god - it was the name that kept me from downloading it until now.  
"unbelievably complicated"  Thoughts to self:  "hmm too bad, would have been super cool"
Today I figured I would at least try it.  So I just got done downloading, scrutinizing the read me.  Soon I will pull up poser and see what kind of mess I can make out of it.  And I am someone who has been WAY frustrated with Apollo textures, so this was something I literally needed.

When I installed Matmatic and there's that part where you're suppose to change the script to create the button - well I could not visually see if there was a space in the text or not, long story short I didn't get it to work because I typed it wrong and have been scared of anything that mentions python since.

crossing fingers that I do better with this one.

Well, the actual process is easy. It is just that the shader is complicated but you really don't have to mess with that. :)

Yeah I think its just the way people look at the name of stuff (judging a book by it's cover if you will).  I know very well that I shouldn't.  But if I go to a store and want gourmet shrimp and they have a brand there named "bleach"  Im less likely to try it lol.  

Anyway I DID in fact get both the shaders AND that scarey python script to work in Poser 6.  Both done without any pain whatsoever.  And he looks beautiful!!!!!!!  The fact that I could do it is proof positive that anyone can so anyone who hasn't tried (possibly for the same reasons as I) should!!  Right Now!!!

Thank you VERY much BB this is the answer to my prayers in Apollo textures.  

Now if I can figure out Matmatic I'll be the happiest girl = D

One tiny question:
Is there a way to keep him from just displaying as white before rendering - so that I can get a visual idea of what the dials are doing or is that a no?

~Edit sorry two tiny questions~

Do these shaders transfer over into other renderers ok?

jj

You don't need to edit anything with this shader. 

In a clean new session, you just follow the instructions. The mat pose file will run the python stuff for you.

The only tiny complication is if you exit poser and start it up again. When you load a scene, parmatic does not get re-installed automatically. If you manually load the shader again on a figure, it will install the python callbacks. Or, you can just run the parmaticUpdater one time per session. For the rest of the session, all parmatic enabled figures and props will be active.

Off topic, but regarding your mis-typing of the python window buttons script, you do know that you don't have to do that editing at all. You can load a script into a button just by clicking one of the empty "..." buttons. The only reason to edit your button script was so you could skip that step each time you start poser.

Also, I'm curious why you would TYPE when you could simply copy and paste. When people tell me to type "SOEIJ #J F#I#JF*#FS" into something, I don't type. I copy it and paste it.

Cross post! :biggrin:

I totally don't understand the white thing. Even if you aren't getting white, there is no visual feedback in the preview to what the dials are doing. Maybe if you use the Poser 7 hardware assisted preview, but I've been told that my 122 nodes are too much for the preview engine. Real time rendering of something this good is probably impossible. If it was possible, then games would look like my renders, right? Seriously imagine if a game looked that good in real time. 

I don't think these shaders will transfer out of Poser at all, except maybe in the latest version of Vue. I've heard that Vue just kicks out to Firefly to render things that have complex Poser shaders.

I used every trick in the book, fully exercising the power of the Poser shader engine. I"m pretty sure that none of the other engines can emulate it.

Excellent question BB, 
why would I type when I could copy/paste.  Seems kinda dumb...  as if there must have been some reason why I didn't but my memory fails me.  Maybe I was in fact just having a dumb moment.  GG kind of embarrassed now that I didn't ever think of that-

You are correct.  Carrara wont even open the scene - 
BUT Vue5Inf will open and render it.  (not sure what engine it used but was infinintely faster than posers render.)

Correction and update - 

Carrara WILL open and render this shader.  (pro version I don't know about the others)
Carrara does not like IBL from poser for some reason and I believe that was my previous problem.  

The bump transfers over as very high in the hair area and that needs to be tweaked - but it is all there.

i noticed that with this shader it renders like 4 times longer.

is this normal?

jj:

Are you sure that Carrara is really implementing the whole shader? It was my understanding that it just uses the same texture files that it finds in the Poser shader tree, but that it isn't capable of implementing all the nodes that Poser has. Are you really seeing all the spots and veins and pores and moles just exactly the same? If so that's awesome.

I'm only saying this because several people have asked me to write a "matmatic" for other renderers. If these other renderers can really just read and use a Poser shader tree, why would they ask me to do that?

ice-boy:

This shader uses a LOT of nodes, so yes it runs slower. However, I don't think the performance is unacceptable, considering how much better the results are. If you're using Poser 6, you really should be turning on the reuse of textures so they don't need to be loaded over and over. Also, caching your shadows will help too.

My test renders are finishing in under a minute, for the most part. Final renders at large sizes are like 5 minutes.

The performance will be affected by which shader you choose as well. If you choose the one with AO on the skin, it is very slow. You generally don't need that. I use AMUCFS!RT most of the time. That has reflection and AO in the eyes only, not the skin. The AO in the eye whites is very important, and doesn't cost much because its only a small part of the render.

ok what you wrotte makes me angry. because it took me 5 minutes to render my image and i had to put the texture to 3000. if i have 4000 i get an error. or it doesnt load the texture image.

My question: is this enough for you to understand what's going on, or do I need to write a lot of words to go with it.

The automated rendering is making my life easy. I just set up the values I want it to render and run it. It takes a long time to do hundreds of renders, but at least I can do other things.

Did you try my suggestions for test renders, as outlined in the readme? You really don't need high detail to get the colors and overall lighting right. I can usually do 20 renders leading up to the final. By that time, I know the final results are going to be what I want.

How much RAM do you have? You really should have a gigabyte of RAM to run Poser well. You may be paging a lot sooner than I am. I have no trouble running my texture size at 4K. In fact, I have no trouble rendering 5 copies of Apollo in the same render, each with different parameters. Like this one. If you were using different texture image files to get these different ethnic effects, you'd not be able to load even two figures.

Quote - You think 5 minutes for realistic skin, teeth, and eyes is too long? Without the complex shader, you'd spend HOURS trying to get the same effect with a simpler shader.

Did you try my suggestions for test renders, as outlined in the readme? You really don't need high detail to get the colors and overall lighting right. I can usually do 20 renders leading up to the final. By that time, I know the final results are going to be what I want.

How much RAM do you have? You really should have a gigabyte of RAM to run Poser well. You may be paging a lot sooner than I am. I have no trouble running my texture size at 4K. In fact, I have no trouble rendering 5 copies of Apollo in the same render, each with different parameters. Like this one. If you were using different texture image files to get these different ethnic effects, you'd not be able to load even two figures.

i need 4000 for texture because of my bodysuit. 
i have 1 GB RAM

i will try outline.

Something like that PM:Stain:Hue series will be just what the doctor ordered.

Although I'm having a HUGE amount of fun tinkering and toying with these myself. I'm amazed at some of the 'extreme' results you can squeeze out of this.

I rendered in less than a minute as well.

Regarding the Carrara render I think you may be right.  There are alot of parameters in there for the different materials.  I got him very close to looking like he did in poser by just adjusting a few things.  In the end I just don't know - so add me to the list of people who really wants you to make these for other renderers as well = D

I just can't justify using poser to render when what takes hours there takes minutes in other programs.  My scenes also require V4 and Apollo and for some reason my poser doesn't like any more than 1 apollo in a scene at any given time - (murphies law it makes no sense, I know).

Carrara is just by far the absolute best 3d program I have ever touched - the ease of use and quality can't be beat.  - I'm gunna stop now before I start sounding like I'm putting on an Ad for it...

I've never had this problem JJ.

I've rendered upwards of five Apollo's, fully clothed and textured on my secondary system (512mb RAM only) and not had any problems.

you think it has to do something with poser  or is it my computer?

can somone post a screencap of you render settings?

I don't have access to Poser right now, but if you use the render settings suggested by BB in the Apollo Shader readme you should be golden.

i now saved the material collection and then i restarted poser. i opened everything .looked fine. then when i render poser it just closed down.

i noticed that it spends at least 1 minute to load texture. i really dont understand what is wrong.

Quote - jj:

ice-boy:

This shader uses a LOT of nodes, so yes it runs slower. However, I don't think the performance is unacceptable, considering how much better the results are. If you're using Poser 6, you really should be turning on the reuse of textures so they don't need to be loaded over and over. Also, caching your shadows will help too.
My test renders are finishing in under a minute, for the most part. Final renders at large sizes are like 5 minutes.

The performance will be affected by which shader you choose as well. If you choose the one with AO on the skin, it is very slow. You generally don't need that. I use AMUCFS!RT most of the time. That has reflection and AO in the eyes only, not the skin. The AO in the eye whites is very important, and doesn't cost much because its only a small part of the render.

i can not find this. 

I'm not in front of Poser at the moment, but  both options are on the bottom of the Render menu.

There's a checkbox textures and another I think is called "Reuse Shadow Maps". 

There are entries next to them to reload textures (clear the cache) or clear the saved shadow maps. So basically once either gets created Poser won't load or build them again.

I start out with my Max Texture Size at 1K. I do many renders without shadows. 

Then I enable shadows and if I've moved anything I clear the shadow map cache. Then I do a check render
Then I change my max texture size to 4K, click reload texture (because I want it to start using 4K not the old 1K), start the render, then go get lunch.

4K textures seem to be the limit of Poser on my machine, and my PC gets a little ill after using them. 3K works fine almost all the time, but there is some loss of detail on hair. If you're not doing a hair closeup, 3K is more than enough.

I've been playing around with these shaders since you released them and they are awesome. The thing I was wondering because I have found a way to do it was, can the shader increase the size of the larger veins in the arms and legs?

It can increase the height of those veins, but it can't make them thicker. Those veins are part of the body displacement map. The parameter Body Displacement controls the height of that. There is more to that map though, it include muscle definition and some wierd bumpiness on the neck which I don't like.

Quote - It can increase the height of those veins, but it can't make them thicker. Those veins are part of the body displacement map. The parameter Body Displacement controls the height of that. There is more to that map though, it include muscle definition and some wierd bumpiness on the neck which I don't like.

Oh yeah, did some checking and noticed that. Been looking that the Displacement image file. Too bad you can't control the vein defination without affecting the muscle defination.

Three points on that topic:

1. Nothing stops you from editing the displacement map. You could tone down or remove the muscle areas. (Make a backup of the original first, of course)

2. Nothing stops you from opening up my pz2 shader files in a text editor and changing the displacement map image name to a new one. Then you could make your own map and automatically load those. Again, make a backup of the original pz2 first, or even better copy it to a new name of your choosing.

3. Go edit the matmatic script and add more maps to the displacement calculation. You could then introduce multiple maps that you can control independently.

I'd go option 3 myself, of course. I even wanted to do a displacement veins coloring parameter (you know - make those big veins blue) but the disp map includes muscles as well and they turn blue, too. The muscle definition map should be in a separate file. 

With matmatic it is trivial work to add even a dozen separate maps to control different features. And, they don't all have to be high-res either. Also, with appropriate scaling and offsets, they don't even have to cover the entire material zone. I'm thinking about making some eye wrinkle displacement maps. When I do, they will not cover the whole face, just the region around the eye. This will make them almost free as they will use very little memory.

Quote - Three points on that topic:

1. Nothing stops you from editing the displacement map. You could tone down or remove the muscle areas. (Make a backup of the original first, of course)

2. Nothing stops you from opening up my pz2 shader files in a text editor and changing the displacement map image name to a new one. Then you could make your own map and automatically load those. Again, make a backup of the original pz2 first, or even better copy it to a new name of your choosing.

3. Go edit the matmatic script and add more maps to the displacement calculation. You could then introduce multiple maps that you can control independently.

I'd go option 3 myself, of course. I even wanted to do a displacement veins coloring parameter (you know - make those big veins blue) but the disp map includes muscles as well and they turn blue, too. The muscle definition map should be in a separate file. 

With matmatic it is trivial work to add even a dozen separate maps to control different features. And, they don't all have to be high-res either. Also, with appropriate scaling and offsets, they don't even have to cover the entire material zone. I'm thinking about making some eye wrinkle displacement maps. When I do, they will not cover the whole face, just the region around the eye. This will make them almost free as they will use very little memory.

All very good ideas. When I was looking at the displacement map, the first thought I had was to remove the muscle areas leaving only the veins until I noticed that some of the veins on the body run through the muscle displacements and for me, removing the muscle displacement wouldn't be too easy without leaving ragged edges on the veins or leaving areas of muscle next to the veins. Then I thought about a new layer where I could redraw the veins, but, I can't draw that smooth of a line.  I also noticed that there are few or no veins on the legs. So, my only option is to leave it be and use it as it is.

Baggins,
I created a non-lurking account just to reply to this.

The work that you and Anton have done AND offered for free cannot be praised enough. The generosity of you two is incredible. That a noob like me can download and create realistic human renders without paying an arm and a leg for each arm and each leg is fantastic. Many of the fee-based products pale in comparison.

And so I thank you.

Some thoughts (I'm a software tester by trade - so bear with me)

1. Good - the read me is excellent and easy to follow. With the stock Apollo I was having trouble getting realistic looking renders because of all the variables in the shader nodes and lighting options. Overwhelming. So that I can quickly get to a base look and tweak from there is invaluable.

2. Confusing - the white figure - It took me shrugging and hitting CTRL-R before I saw that this was normal. Workaround - using your lights or setting the defaults to a very low intensity made it easier to see any other changes I was making to the figure. Sure you can pose and morph before adding the shader nodes. But if you find you missed something in the pose, it can be frustrating to go back and try to adjust with the figure detail washed out. I dont know the answer for this - but maybe some notes on the subject in the readme would help.

3. Frightening - As pointed out, the title of the product is daunting. When so many other products are titled "Magic boobies" or "Hair Dance Xpress" the name of your product scares us newbs.

4. Bug?  - if you have the wrong figure selected and apply a pose (i.e. I had the light selected by mistake) the python goes berserk with errors and pops up over and over. I only escaped by closing the window 15 times or so.  I dont know enough about pythin to suggest how to handle the errors. Unless you can catch the error and go to an error and exit function.

I only found out about this product via my daily forum cruising. And this is the only poser forum I regularly look at. Frankly I dont have tme to go to a dozen sites to keep up on everything. So spreading the word via the freebies and Anton's site (if he is willing) are good ideas to get more adoption of this wonderful tool.

Another suggestion I would make is that you continue to develop this for Apollo for free (keeping in the spirit of Anton's fantastic release) but DO develop versions for other figures (V4, Aiko, etc) based on the development and testing done on the Apollo version - and charge for them. I would cheerfully pay up. I think others would to.

Again, thank you for this great tool.

Chop

Just installed everything yesterday and I love the potential!  Still working out the lights.

Like jjroland mentioned, the name made me pass this over the first time.  I didn't quite understand what it was since it said it was complicated.  I'm new to Poser (since March) and haven't learned all the tricks yet  - especially the Material Room. 

When I open it up and find a node or 2, my brain crashes - like Windows - the blue screen of doom.  But, when I opened up your texture settings and saw the pages and pages of nodes, I quickly understand that you are the God of Poser's Material Room and I worship you.  I wish I understood even 1 node setting because I love the realism you have created with this little download.

My question is, and I'm pretty sure I already know the answer:  as Gareee mentioned, he has very little use for Apollo and uses girl models - I'm the oposite, I have yet to open a girl model because I use Apollo exclusively.  I have every texture for him and my favorite being the Jepe's Dick AM VI with it's 3 different hairiness textures - demostrated in my avatar on the left.

I like the way the hair shows up, but is there no way to use other textures (like Jepe's) with this system? 

Being that I only use Apollo, these standard textures will limit the number of charaters I can create with this system.

You should be able to swap out the other textures no problem. One of Bagginsbill's earlier shots showed another texture. You just will have to find the texture node (bump and displacment too, if they have them) in the system and swap that out.

Possibly, but image map 1 is the hair pattern which I'm sure wouldn't match Jepe's since it's a lot less hair than Jepe's.  I wouldn't know what to do with it, or would I need to replace it?

I didn't touch the hair displacement map and I think that's my last obstacle.  The skin has all the wonderful textures, but the hair parts look a little flat and steal away some of the realism.

Jepe's Dick AM VI doesn't come with hair displacement maps, so for some reason, I'm feeling ambitous enough to think that I could create them myself using CS3.

We'll see.  The rest of my day is booked, so I'll try another time and let you all know how it goes.

ok it works for me now.

i have still some questions.

is it just me or is the default shader a little dark? i guess i am using the wrong lights.
to me it looks like the scandinavian is more like the europen white people. what do you think?

bagginsbill the shader is incredible. i still dont understand how you did this. amazing.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I am LOVING this shader!

I've been tinkering with oiliness, pores, highlights etc. and getting some really cool results. I'm absolutely amazed at what can be squeezed out of these image maps with some creative dial spinning and a good light set.

BB, I was wondering if you'd allow for people to distribute Material sets created using your shader as part of a character pack (free of course)? I know I could just as easily distribute shader pre-sets (thanks to your idiot proof instructions), but some people are too intimidated to download your shader in the first place. At the very least, if they like the results they get using my Material set, maybe they'll take the plunge themselves.

So, I created the hair displacement map to match the Jepe texture.  (BTW - I still consider myself a noob with lots more to learn, so my terminology may not be correct, but what I intend to mean is: the picture of the hair pattern that is black & white that is loaded into image map 1 in the material room)

I have tried everything I can think of, but the hair just doesn't pop off the picture like the standard AM texture hair does.

I'll wait for the God of the Material Room to return and help me on this issue.

Another query: A non-artist, non-Poser friend of mine critiques the picture by saying: "...the muscles on his upper arms have the texture of an orange."

What dial do I need to tweak to tone the "orange" texture down?

And finally, how do I change eye color?  Do I simply pick another color out of the pose library for AM? Before or after applying AMUCFS?

Woo hoo you guys have been busy while I was drinking my way through Independence Day.

I kept peeking online and reading stuff, and soooo wanted to answer, but my wife kept saying "Are you back on that d*** computer again?" Heheh.

So it's Thursday morning, I have ZERO bugs left on my real job software, and I'm looking forward to responding throughout the day, unless some knucklehead from QA comes and makes me do real work again.

I really appreciate all the feedback I'm getting - thank you all.

I think I'll also post some WIPs from my Parameter Dials manual - and I'll start a FAQ for those questions that seem to be fundamental quickies, like this eye color business. Which couldn't be simpler by the way.

Stay tuned. I've only just got my first cup of coffee.

A special thanks to Anton for his support and interest in the shader. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy.