Hi all,
I had been working with Apollo Maximus for some time in Poser, and because I was always changing my materials to get the most realistic rendering possible, it became a pain that Apollo had its body divided into so many different materials, each one that I had to update individually. (Maybe im a noob and there's a better way?)

So I finally took Apollo's OBJ file and merged all the materials for the body into one: "Body", and all the materials for head into one: "Head". Eyes, thong and so on I left unchanged. It became so much easier to modify my materials then, and I noticed no side effects at all.

Well, now I get Victoria 4, and that woman has even more material subdivisions than Apollo! And I'm thinking about just doing the same I did with Apollo.

Now, am I missing something? I've been always looking for a reason for so many body subdivisions, never could find one. (Again, am I a noob?) I mean, the authors of Apollo and Victoria knows what they're doing. So, is there a better way to modify materials? Or a reason to have that many material subdivisions? Or anyone else just thinks there's way too many subdivisions?

 I can think of one reason: in the case where you want to modify the shader for a specific body part without resorting to an external graphics editor.  Example - create second skin glove for one hand only, or second skin leggings, or multiple tattoos or scars on various locations around the body.

Also, inside the materials room, you can actually copy a shader setting and "apply to all", but that gets awkward when you have details like finger nails and head.

i want to know if there is a reason why those figures have so many body parts?

Why not try out bagginsbill's VSS utility?

With VSS, you change one shader template (in a prop) and then click a button to apply it to all the relevant material zones in your figure (e.g. all skin materials).

Plus, the pre-loaded skin templates that it comes with are excellent, especially if you have Poser 6 or 7, since they have built-in gamma correction.

Quote - i want to know if there is a reason why those figures have so many body parts?

It makes them more poseable.  For example Apollo Max has teeth separated from the head so they can be moved separately from the head in a way that is much more flexible than using movement morphs.  And with teeth separated from the head it makes them easier to isolate and work with when creating morphs for the teeth.  Also Apollo Max has many groups that are body handles such as ears that can be used to deform their parents with more flexibility that you can get with only morphs.

i didnt mean teeth.

i mean hands-feet,skinbody,skintorso,

or skin-face,skin-beard,skin lips.

My complaint is that people ever started putting head details on body maps!

I would prefer single map layouts like with P4 figures given I could certainly have all the resolution I need with everything on one 4000x4000 if not on 1024x1024 2048x2048 but to have to remember which materials are on the body map and which on the head map when hand loading textures is a real pain...

I wish at least it was just one map for below the neck and one for above and maybe eyes separate need be! :) I really want to see these renders that use 4000x4000 textures to advantage... people doing 8000x8000 renders? I often do well with textures sized down to 1024x1024 and half that for background figures.

I really miss the max texture size setting that was on Poser 5... is there a way to set max texture size in P7 without having to down sample the texture externaly?

Quote - i didnt mean teeth.

i mean hands-feet,skinbody,skintorso,

or skin-face,skin-beard,skin lips.

Those are materials, not body parts. infinity10 already gave some reasons for why someone would want to have a bunch of different materials on a figure. 

But in addition to what infinity10 wrote it can be easier to make parts of the body transparent to hide poke through without having to use transparency maps.  Of course you can just make the body parts invisible as well, but then thay are harder to select, you can’t click on them to selected them.

i understand this. if you want gloves you have seperated hands.

but lips? since when is a hard edge where the lips end and the skin starts?

Quote - i understand this. if you want gloves you have seperated hands.

but lips? since when is a hard edge where the lips end and the skin starts?

While it’s true there isn’t a real sharp edge there, I think a lot of people, such as myself, like having lips as a separate material so they can be made glossy without having to make a separate specular map

but you are aware that when you have a different specular on the lips that there will be a hard edge? 

Quote - i didnt mean teeth.

i mean hands-feet,skinbody,skintorso,

or skin-face,skin-beard,skin lips.

That's actually a bonus IMHO. Subdivisions are meant to give more control over the texture. Change lip colors for instance without changing the whole map.

Laurie

Sorry Chris! I didn't see your post ;o).

For texture makers it's a bonus and greatly reduces the size of the texture files needed to make a complete texture set. I can make one base texture and then just change out the texture parts.

Laurie

Quote - but you are aware that when you have a different specular on the lips that there will be a hard edge? 

Isn't there a way you can do like an edge blend on the specular map so that it doesn't go the whole way to the edge of the lips subdivision?

Just asking.

Laurie

Quote - but you are aware that when you have a different specular on the lips that there will be a hard edge? 

Yup, and often it is not a level of realism that concerns me.

Laurie this is not how this works.

chriscox: i understand.

Quote - Sorry Chris! I didn't see your post ;o).

For texture makers it's a bonus and greatly reduces the size of the texture files needed to make a complete texture set. I can make one base texture and then just change out the texture parts.

Laurie

No problem Laurie.
But you mention a real good point that content creators can give a ton of extra lip textures without the extra blot from repeating the entire head texture over and over again.  It also allows you to mix and match lip textures with other makeup textures.

Quote - Laurie this is not how this works...

You mean how your subdivision works or the edge blend thing?

I'm not really proficient at Poser 7 shaders, I'll admit it willingly ;o).

Laurie

It is how it works for a number of aspects. The lip texture is one. Many people haven't been using it that way but you can just have the lips and a tiny bit of skin there and the files are much smaller than a full texture.

For anyone interested in realism, the idea of having extra divisions of material zones is a waste.

I didn't let odf put a lip zone on Antonia, because I did not want anybody ruining her appearance by cheating on the lip color as a separate zone. No hard edges. Antonia is a state of the art figure and is easily given new lips and lip colors without resorting to a material zone. You use shaders and masks - it's just not that hard.

For other apps that don't have shaders or they're hard to get to, such as Daz Studio, these extra zones are helpful, especially for users who don't care about hard edges or the edges won't be visible (such as a wrist edge for a glove material).

Since Daz figures are supposed to be easy to use in DS, they have extra zones. You'll notice that Poser figures have head, body, end of story.

The sub-divisions usually don't even make sense for texture based cloths! The hand seam is usually at the base of the palm rather than at the wrist... means you have to match the exposed wrist to the hand and you can't turn off the body parts for poke through... I don't really get it... shouldn't the material zones match up with say the "latex" morph borders? For texture maps putting the UV borders at natural clothing borders would make sense since most people have skin tone variations based on the skin exposed when wearing clothes... a slight color shift mid wrist makes more sense then at the base of the hand. I still think that having figures cut up and morphable for 2nd skin clothes makes a great deal of sense for animations and background figures.

The model is Phoebe for V3.

There's still that bit at the top, but the light is slightly from overhead and the edge isn't sharp. Of course a lot of it depends on how close the lip texture is to the edge of that subdivision too.

Laurie

**The top is the original and the bottom is after I changed the specular.

Laurie

Cool! Thanks for showing.

Thanks.

It's not flat out perfect, but it's acceptable to me.

Laurie

I wish bb would have a look at this: I'm sure some of those nodes are completely unecessary...LOL.

Laurie

Don't be insulted - I don't have time to write a lot so each statement will sound really harsh and abrupt.

You have nodes connected to nothing, so they do nothing - delete them. These are Glossy and the Color_Math.

FastScatter is a node that only fires when there is a light behind your figure. You must have tested with such a light. Try only a front light and you will see you have zero specular effect anymore, even though that is when you're supposed ot have it.

It turns out that FastScatter is pretty much an ambient that turns on when a light is behind. So it has no place in this shader.

Removeing the FS leaves you with Edge_Blend plugged straight into Alternate_Specular. In English, here is what you wrote:

When there is a light behind the figure, make the lips shine on any part that is pointing roughly at the camera.

This is not a good set of instructions UNLESS, there is a light behind, and the figure is pointing directly at the camera. In any other situation, this will produce nonsense.

I'm not insulted :o).

I've stated frequently that I don't know much of anything about nodes, though I'm trying :o).

Laurie

Quote - but you are aware that when you have a different specular on the lips that there will be a hard edge? 

You know you can control this with a mask if required, and it's not even very hard to paint.
edit: err... does anyone want one?  since I'm stopping work on the Antonia suit for a bit anyway

Quote - > Quote - but you are aware that when you have a different specular on the lips that there will be a hard edge? 

You know you can control this with a mask if required, and it's not even very hard to paint.
edit: err... does anyone want one?  since I'm stopping work on the Antonia suit for a bit anyway

Thanks, I can make one too, but maybe some others would want one. That would be nice :)

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - but you are aware that when you have a different specular on the lips that there will be a hard edge? 

You know you can control this with a mask if required, and it's not even very hard to paint.
edit: err... does anyone want one?  since I'm stopping work on the Antonia suit for a bit anyway

but thats my point .
why make this extra lip material if you need to use a mask for the lips ? 

Because as the earlier poster was saying, some people don't give a crap ^^

Quote - ...but thats my point .
why make this extra lip material if you need to use a mask for the lips ? 

Because you only need one mask for lots of lips?

I guess the subdivision thing all comes down to preference :o).

Laurie

Quote - Isn't there a way you can do like an edge blend on the specular map so that it doesn't go the whole way to the edge of the lips subdivision?

I didn't see this earlier, oops.  As far as I'm aware, it is wayyyyy more practical to just do this with a mask, because shaders are drawn across the entire UVmap and have no awareness of the borders of material polygon selections (to the extent that BagginsBill just uses masks for this type of thing).

Not to be super anal, but it is not good to use the term "subdivisions" in this context, as it has a very important and specific meaning (literally, cutting polygons into smaller polygons a la Catmull-Clark subdivision).  A more accurate term is "material zone" or some other way to describe a polygon selection used to apply a material to part of a model.

Yes just so you know, nothing in the material, no nodes at all, can tell us when we are near the edge of a material zone. We need a node like that. Then material zones would be useful for certain special effects.

That would be a pretty cool feature, yeah, with ability to control falloff and add noise/turbulence to it.

Maybe we should request it for Poser 9 ;o).

Laurie

Quote - Because as the earlier poster was saying, some people don't give a crap ^^

ok this was my answer. if they dont care then its better for them.but for us it would better.

so in other words its made for people that dont care. strange isnt it? 

Quote - > Quote - Because as the earlier poster was saying, some people don't give a crap ^^

ok this was my answer. if they dont care then its better for them.but for us it would better.

so in other words its made for people that dont care. strange isnt it? 

And, as has been said many times before, for people to make alternate lip textures without having to include complete head maps for each one.  For some reason you keep ignoring that reason and instead have fixated on the fact the hard edge between material zones isn’t a concern of mine, which has been interpreted as me not giving a crap.  And while you could just do the same thing with blender nodes and a masks instead of a separate material, I don't think it is as straight forward for as a separate material.

yeah and from what i see only poser users dont care if their 3d face doesnt look good enough.and without the mask it can not be done good. you can make a mask in 40 seconds. and it takes 10 seconds to import the mask and connect it with nodes. and lets say that we also drink a pepsi while we do this. this is at maximum 2 minutes of work.

even if you do stylized humans that doesnt mean that you can have a hard edge around the lips. only for cartoon caharacters.

Quote - that dont care. strange isnt it? 

And, as has been said many times before, for people to make alternate lip textures without having to include complete head maps for each one.

Quote -
with the same specular mask you can change the color of the lips. you only need one 256-256 image B/W of the lips. you can use it for specular and for the color of the lips.

One head and many lip colors. Smaller size files for the content creator for the dowloads for their customers=more options. I think this is what Daz had in mind when they introduced this option (which I believe was Anton's idea to begin with).

There's really nothing more to it than that. And it's POSER. At the time maybe a lot more professional people didn't really use the program. It was mainly a hobby for most folks. However, the professional people I would think know how to make their Poser people look better from the get-go. Look thru the galleries. You can tell one from the other ;) For instance, I'll probably never achieve the shader knowledge that bb has, or the artistic creativity of others. And people that don't like the standard figure/props/whatever usually make their own anyway. For those of us that can't, Poser and the figures made for it, meets mosts needs. The individual material zones - when they came out - were actually a good thing and made the figures that much more versitile.

Just my thoughts. I'm sure no one elses ;o)

Laurie

 M4 has the seperate lip material zone. it has nothing to do what happened years ago.

Quote -  M4 has the seperate lip material zone. it has nothing to do what happened years ago.

I won't argue about it.

Perhaps if you don't like them you can take them into UVMapper an assign all those material zones you don't like over to the head and body and resave your figure. Problem solved.

Laurie

as i already said 100 times the lip zone is not the problem. its just one extra material. the problem is the body zones. like torso,arms,......

i understand hands for gloves. i understand that the head and neck is seperate so that you can make a sueprhero suit.

Quote - as i already said 100 times the lip zone is not the problem. its just one extra material. the problem is the body zones. like torso,arms,......

i understand hands for gloves. i understand that the head and neck is seperate so that you can make a sueprhero suit.

You can do that with any zone, not just the lips ;o).

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Because as the earlier poster was saying, some people don't give a crap ^^

ok this was my answer. if they dont care then its better for them.but for us it would better.

so in other words its made for people that dont care. strange isnt it? 

And, as has been said many times before, for people to make alternate lip textures without having to include complete head maps for each one.  For some reason you keep ignoring that reason and instead have fixated on the fact the hard edge between material zones isn’t a concern of mine, which has been interpreted as me not giving a crap.  And while you could just do the same thing with blender nodes and a masks instead of a separate material, I don't think it is as straight forward for as a separate material.

You know there is a pretty serious argument against this. Unless you do equally non-easy things, you will be forcing Poser to load an entire 48 megabyte image just for the alternate colored lips. You'd be really taxing your system for no reason then.

Quote - One head and many lip colors. Smaller size files for the content creator for the dowloads for their customers=more options.Just my thoughts. I'm sure no one elses ;o)

This is not entirely correct. Just because you only DRAW in the lip area, doesn't make the image that much smaller. As a JPEG, maybe, but it is still an image with equal size to the rest of the face. And, of course, forget disk size, how big is it in memory for Poser? Answer: Twice as big 96 Megs instead of 48 Megs for one face.

Quote - You know there is a pretty serious argument against this. Unless you do equally non-easy things, you will be forcing Poser to load an entire 48 megabyte image just for the alternate colored lips. You'd be really taxing your system for no reason then.

I find ease-of-use to be a valid reason for taxing my system a bit more through the use of an additional texture map.  Ease-of-use is one of the big reasons why I use Poser.  I often find myself just playing around with mixing and matching makeup and lip combinations and having to take more time to do this beyond swapping texture maps take some of the fun out of it. While I do like and use the lip materials on V3 and V4 and for me makes things easier, I am not a fan of all those additional materials skinArm, skinLeg, skinHip, skinG-Spot (just seeing if you are still reading this) ect.  I do realize that there are reasons for these materials, but I find that there are so many of them that it makes working with materials on a figure a lot more tedious.

Quote - You know there is a pretty serious argument against this. Unless you do equally non-easy things, you will be forcing Poser to load an entire 48 megabyte image just for the alternate colored lips. You'd be really taxing your system for no reason then.

While I don't think many people do this, there's a way to just load a crop of the texture and then use the U/V_Scale and U/V_Offset params to position and size the image crop where it needs to be, it doesn't have to be 4000x4000 (takes rather a lot of trial and error though).