Ok - I'm working in Poser 6 now, trying to develope new .MAT poses for my Latchworm. Two questions:

#1, "When I create a map pose - will it require the original 2d texture maps in order to function if I give the mat pose to someone else to use (I'm giving them as freebies), in other words - is it absolutely necessary to give them the jpeg maps also - or is the coloring self contained in the mat pose file itself and portable on it's own?

#2, Will mat poses made in POSER 6, work in POSER 8?

THANK YOU-

Uncle Mugsey,

P.S. - "Have you hugged a fish today?" :lol:

Mat poses made in Poser 6, will work in Poser 8.

When you make your mat pose file, you will have to include the .jpg file with the package.  

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia- how should I do that - should I put the textures in a file labeled "LatchwormTXR" - and then instruct them to put those in their latchworm runtime folder, or does the location of the textures matter?

The location of the texture files matters very much. If they aren't in the place being pointed to by the MAT file, Poser won't be able to find them.

You're best bet is to put your textures in one folder, then point your materials to the textures in that folder. Then resave your materials settings and create the MAT pose files from those new materials settings. Of course, you could also manually fix each pose file if you've already created them.

Laurie

No LaurieA hun that's the problem, I haven't created them yet and I am planning to. Right now I have ten texture sets completed (jpeg, color and bump) and I'm shooting to make at least twelve. They are in folders within a folder that's on my desktop and they are sorted. I just need to clarify making a file tree / associations that are portable so that other folks besides myself can use them. I guess I'll figure it out. I still have to revue how to modify a pz2 file to make it a mat pose - and how to do my poser png images for it.

My recommendation, assemble the runtime hierarchy for your files, I.e., Textures folder, Pose folder, etc. Start Poser, reconstruct and apply your texture in the material room, then save as a material collection in your Materials folder.  Next, open your .Mtl file in a text editor of your choice, change Mtl Collection to Figure and resave as a .pz2 format.  Move this file into your Pose folder.

PNG's thumbnails are easy.  Within Poser, change your render settings dimension to 91x91 pixels and render your final scene.  Export the image into your Pose folder and name it exactly as your MatPose file.  In Photoshop or GIMP, open a rendered image of your scene, select the cropping tool, input 91x91 pixels in the dimension fields, highlight the area you would like to crop and hit ENTER.  Again, save out your PNG into the Pose folder with the identical name of the MATPose file.

THANK YOU HBORRE - YOU ROCK!!! :lol: .
THANK YOU ACADIA- ILOVE YOU!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
THANK YOU  LAURIEA - I LOVE YA BUDDY! YOU ALL ROCK MAJOR BIG TIME!!! :woot:  :biggrin:

Yeah, changing an .mtl file to a mat pose file = REAL easy ;o).

I use Notepad ++ because it lays the files out so nice and it's got a search and replace function, just in case you find you need to change the path of those pesky .jpg files. It's also free, which helps a whole lot...lolol ;o).

Edit: just make sure, in case you need to change a file path, that the path is relative and not absolute.

Laurie

for mat poses , save your material in the materials library, then edit to change the filename from mc6 to pz2 and change the line that reads mtlcollection to figure.

THANK YOU LAURIEA :tt1: !!!!!
THANK YOU MARKSCHUM :thumbupboth: !!!!!
YOU GUYS ARE THE GREATEST!!!

Also if you do the same later on for a prop, instead of changing to figure as mentioned above, use actor $CURRENT

Of course you have to make sure you have the target prop selected when applying the mat pose because actor $CURRENT will apply the mat pose to any material zones it can find by the same name if the wrong prop is selected.

Gary

"Those who lose themselves in a passion lose less than those who lose their passion"

Thanks Gary!