ladyperiwinkle opened this issue on Nov 26, 2009 · 11 posts
ladyperiwinkle posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 11:09 AM
What is the best Poser 7 book to buy to help learn the material and hair room?
Thank you to all who reply!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Anthanasius posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 11:29 AM
LukeA posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 11:32 AM
In my opinion the user's manual is the best source to learn how to operate the software and the forums and online tutorials are best to learn to get the visual results you want. So much of getting what you want out of Poser is knowing the stuff that is not in the manuals: color theory, lighting, texture creation, etc...
LukeA
Sa_raneth posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 11:52 AM
All of what LukeA says plus trial and error and use the good results again to get what you want
NoelCan posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 12:06 PM
Poser 7 Revealed by Kelly L. Murdock.
This book is always on My desk..!
RobynsVeil posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 2:21 PM
Quote - Poser 7 Revealed by Kelly L. Murdock.
This book is always on My desk!
Correct me if I'm wrong, Noel... I can't speak for or against your book since I don't have a copy, but for the material room I've found that most manuals show you how to hook up a texture map node to the diffuse_color channel and put a picture file in the first channel: that's it. They don't go into the other nodes hardly at all. I would do a search here on Renderosity for just about anything that Bagginsbill has to offer... you will find it is pretty much gold standard: it just works.
However, be prepared to learn a bit of maths (if you're not already proficient at it).
There are heaps of examples of shaders (groups of nodes to produce a specific material) here and on RuntimeDNA. I've started a collection (but then, I'm a packrat... lol) 
Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2
Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand]
NoelCan posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 3:21 PM
Robynsveil is absolutely correct.. However, there is enough information in "poser 7 Revealed" to get started. There are many excellent tutorials on this Site as well...
Winterclaw posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 3:43 PM
Quote - What is the best Poser 7 book to buy to help learn the material and hair room?
Thank you to all who reply!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Not a book, practice.
WARK!
Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.
(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)
RobynsVeil posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 4:11 PM
Quote - > Quote - What is the best Poser 7 book to buy to help learn the material and hair room?
Thank you to all who reply!
Happy Thanksgiving!Not a book, practice.
I kinda get what you're saying, but I don't completely agree with it. I started as most of us (okay, some of us) do, reading the manual and trying to pose and render figures, but soon found the manual sadly lacking in key instructions, specifically material room stuff. I mean, it would say something like: "you can do {whatever-it-was} in {whatever-circumstances}" but it didn't say how. I'm like a lot of people in that I kinda need a bit of hand-holding to get a grip with how stuff works. Like nodes, for instance. The manual falls down massively in this regard. If it weren't for Bill's generosity with his time and detailed explanations, I would still be floundering.
Too many developers use the "just practice" approach to hooking up nodes to make shaders. They don't actually know what they are doing: they're just after an effect. Whether or not the shader actually has any basis in reality is immaterial to them... once they've sort-of achieved the look they're after, they're happy. And bogus shaders result.
I don't pretend to understand shaders all that well myself: but I can appreciate the difference between a good shader and one that's just kinda cobbled together through hooking node a to node b and looking at a render and going "yep, that'll do".
Whilst there are excellent Poser manuals out there for most of what Poser can do, how to approach the material room would still be very much black magic except for Bagginsbill's mathematical/physics/scientific explanations and examples. If he ever writes The Book, I'll be the first one in the queue with my fist-full of hard-earned shekels. To my knowledge, though, there is nothing out there to approximate what that book would have to offer except what you'll find on this forum and on RDNA.
More's the pity.
Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2
Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand]
NoelCan posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 5:01 PM
Again.. I STILL agree with Robynsveil..
However Ladyperiwinkle did ask about a "BOOK"
bantha posted Thu, 26 November 2009 at 5:43 PM
I cannot name a best book because I learned most things here in the forum. I would assume that you would learn a lot about materials and shaders if you search for BagginsBill's postings and read them - I doubt that you would find better informations in any Poser book at the moment.
A ship in port is safe;
but that is not what ships are built for.
Sail out to sea and do new things.
-"Amazing
Grace" Hopper
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