A few days ago Ockham posted a thread asking about a silk hosiery hosiery texture. A couple other people showed interest, particularly Acadia. Since Acadia is always so helpful, I decided to do a massive freebie. Here it is.

Attached is a Poser material file, stockings.mt5. I had to add ".txt" to be able to post it here. Save the attachment as stockings.mt5 (or any name you choose) somewhere in your materials runtime.

The purpose of this shader is to simulate the appearance of various styles of hosiery directly on your figure's legs. Of course you can use a clothing prop, but those often have all kinds of complications with poke through. Plus, you can't even find any for some figures.

So here's a solution using your figure's legs alone. Of course it works best if we can't see the figure's toes. The reason is this shader will be applied to the leg geometry, instead of a "sock"

over the foot. The toes will look like they're in a glove instead of a sock. Also, this isn't going to work too well if you're looking for stocking tops on the thighs. But if your character is wearing shoes and a skirt or dress, this is a great solution.

There is a long of math in this shader. You don't need to worry about that. I've tried to make it as simple as possible to use.

There are only 4 parameters you need to deal with. Each of these is in a clearly marked node in the top left corner of the shader.

I'll be posting quite a few replies to this thread with plenty of instructions and hundreds of demonstration renders, so please hold questions or comments until I say I'm done.

Ready?

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