Okay, I have brought my David Poser character into Vue and now there, I decided I want to increase the iris size and reduce the pupil size. Can I do that in Vue (I've tried adjusting all the Scale properties in Vue to no effect) or can I only do that in Poser?

Thanks.

Michael

I think you can only do that in poser. But I can be wrong.

It's theoretically possible to do it in Vue but it's a lot of work and it's very delicate. Adusting the iris/pupil sizes is not just a matter of material scale adjustments. The iris is a separate object and so is the pupil and so you'd have to adjust the object scale of the iris and of the pupil and you'd have to make sure they still match nicely with the cornea and the eye white.

(note: all these objects will be imported into Vue as one single eye object; to separate these into separate objects, you'd have to double click on the eye object and click on "split" - then you'll have 4 different objects, grouped under "eye").

Anyway, it's too delicate to do this manually in Vue. It'd take a long time to do it right. In Poser it's extremely easy to do it, just a slider.

Maybe you don't know that if you import a Poser object into Vue and later on change it in Poser and save it with the same name, Vue will ask you if you want to reimport the Poser object. It will do it into the exact same space as you placed it in Vue, so the workflow is extremely easy. Just change the iris in Poser, save the file, allow Vue to reimport it and there you are.

Thanks for that, but if after Vue asks me to reimport, and I do, will it wipe out the changes
I made to the other body materials (skinhead transparency, lighting, etc) I made in Vue?

Quote - Thanks for that, but if after Vue asks me to reimport, and I do, will it wipe out the changes
I made to the other body materials (skinhead transparency, lighting, etc) I made in Vue?

Save the materials and reapply them once you've got the final pose imported.

Thanks nruddock, but when I right click on the material in the Materials window and click Save, it doesn't show me where it saves to so that when I then later right click and select Load I don't know where to find it. Looking in the manual doesn't give me any clues with saving materials.

Quote - "when I right click on the material in the Materials window and click Save, it doesn't show me where it saves"

When you click save, It should show you a browse window where you can navigate in your folders and select by yourself where you want it saved.  Don't you see this window?

Another thing: don't forget that you can save all your materials of one object at the same time, as one package. You have to right click on the material, choose "edit all materials" and save from there. If you have, say, 30 materials, it'll be saved as a package of 30 materials. You can then apply them back to your newly imported Poser character (provided it has the same materials - if you deleted or added materials in Vue, you can't reapply the material package because Vue doesn't know which is which).

Ok, there is something wrong here.
Here's what I'm doing:

• selecting my character in the object window
• clicking on Edit all Materials
• clicking save in the lower right corner of the advanced material editor
• it brings up a Save As dialog box with the file name of 72 materials.mat
• I save it but when it comes to reload it nothing reloads - then I look at the file size of 72 materials.mat and it is only 11KB so something is not right here, correct? It has to be
  much larger than that I would think.

So, you didn't say but I guess that you already know where you saved your material. :-)

Quote - "I save it but when it comes to reload it nothing reloads "

What do you mean exactly? How do you know nothing reloads?

Quote - "then I look at the file size of 72 materials.mat and it is only 11KB so something is not right here, correct? It has to be much larger than that I would think."

It depends on what you're doing. There are two checkboxes in the save material dialog box that influences the size of the file.

• "incorporate texture map" does what it says and so the file becomes big. Otherwise, if you don't check it, it's a very small file.
• "Compress file" does what it says and decreases file size.

I know nothing loads or something loads but it isn't the character's materials because
when I render it is black - the character renders in total black.

In my version of Vue (Pro Studio 6) there are no checkboxes that influence the size. The
screenshot shows my Save As Dialog which is the file I retrieve when attempting to Load, but as mentioned when I load them it renders black as if the materials were never really saved.
I save them by clicking on Edit All Materials (after I've selected them) and then click on the Save icon. Not sure what is going on but it seems to load the materials but the materials loaded have nothing in them.

Can't help you further because I have no idea about the restrictions of Pro Studio version. I have always (and only) used the Infinite version.

Anyway, if you can't save all 72 materials together, you can always do it one by one, for those that you have changed. It should still be less work than changing iris and pupil size manually in Vue...

And, additionally, on re-import of the Poser character Vue should ask you (it doesn't, sometimes... some sort of bug) whether you want to keep the material changes you made or if you want to load the original version from Poser. Try it, maybe it asks you.

I always thought being able to save a set of materials and reload it is a great idea and would have simplified (vue)life by a lot. However I never got it to work. I just tried again both in v6inf and v7comp with no success. The steps I took :

• imported a poser character
• edited all materials and saved, including all textures without compression, then left the material editor. A file was generated on my HD, approx 1.5mb
• edited the material of the torso only and changed it into a plain red color, clicked ok and left the editor. The torso in the preview now looked red.
  -edited all materials again and loaded the saved set of materials. There is no error message or indication anything is wrong. Clicked OK and left the editor.

The torso remained red, NOT replaced by the original texture which should be in the saved material file.

So, Artur, how do you know that saving/reloading the package of materials worked for you? was this in v8? maybe they fixed it now? (there shouldnt have been a difference between v7inf and v7comp in this respect, but maybe it works in v7inf for you?)
Very curious.

I give the material a new name and delete the old one so that Vue Infinite is forced to ask me where the material is when I reload a scene and I can then browse for the new material.  Otherwise, Vue Infinite will continue to hang onto the old material and not let go of it even if I made changes to the material. 

In V8.x loading of multi-materials is fixed. It didn't seem to work well before. In V8.x there are two new options, in addition to the "load" and "save" material. Now there's "load multi-material" and "save multi-material". They seem to work perfectly, at least in the short tests I made.

Ah - they fixed it. Good for them. I would have really liked to have this option, not only for poser figures but also for objects I modeled and had different sets of materials.