I've modeled some jewelry & am adding material zones.  So far my highest count is 122 zones on 1 prop & I'm nearing 100 on the crowns. The crown has 13 Rosettes & each Rosette has 33 stones.  I've got the stones grouped into 7 zones.  I know it's a lot of zones, but there are tons of stones on each crown & I feel it would be easier to be able to change the stone colors.

I'm just curious to know if people like lots of options or if they prefer less on detailed props?

1.) Yes! I love lots of options.

2.) What are you--Nuts?  That's way to many.

 

Thanks!

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Wellllll, I love lots of options - but almost 100 is ... inconvenient.

So I vote for option 2

 

The crown looks good, btw (c:

100+ material zones is nuts, no question about it.

if there are lots of gems, group them into subgroups. in your case there is no reason to change all 7 zones of each of the 13 rosettes individually.
either that, or make a wide variety of MAT poses so people dont have to fuss with all the zones unless they are suckers for punishment. 

Quote - Wellllll, I love lots of options - but almost 100 is ... inconvenient.

So I vote for option 2

 

The crown looks good, btw (c:

Thanks for voting & the compliment.  :)   I thought it would be too many, but always nice to hear from others.

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Quote - if there are lots of gems, group them into subgroups. in your case there is no reason to change all 7 zones of each of the 13 rosettes individually.

Interesting thought.  I may do this instead. Thanks. :)

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If it is a prop, then material collections would be the optimal method for delivering texture to each zone.  MATPoses work for figures, props must be parented for MATPoses to apply.

Quote - If it is a prop, then material collections would be the optimal method for delivering texture to each zone.  MATPoses work for figures, props must be parented for MATPoses to apply.

I understand that.  What I'm wondering is, what number of material zones is too many for a complex prop? I have over 100 zones (stone1, stone 2, stone 3, etc.) on 1 prop. That's kind of :scared:

 

Luckily, all the rosettes have the same UV map.

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Sometimes more is just more.  If you can consolidate and streamline you should. I'm reminded of a quote I heard a character artist at Dreamworks say once:  When in doubt, K.I.S.S. (K.eep I.t S.imple S.tupid).  

Quote - 2.

 

Sometimes more is just more.  If you can consolidate and streamline you should. I'm reminded of a quote I heard a character artist at Dreamworks say once:  When in doubt, K.I.S.S. (K.eep I.t S.imple S.tupid).  

 

LoL Sometimes I forget the K.I.S.S. rule. 

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V4 has 29 different materials. How much fun is it to have to change each of those one at a time manually?

I vote 2

Suggest that you keep it to under ten materials. If someone is that desperate to add more then they will take the OBJ into UVMapper or similar and edit accordingly.

Hi ya, Phil!  I figured you'd say that.  LoL  Yeah, I've decided to lower the number of zones & consolidate, but 10 zones might not be enough.  Would you say under 20 is acceptable?

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It's entirely up to you.

You could include two different versions of the prop, though, no? One with 10 material zones, and one with 20 or 50 or whatever.

I mean, it's surely a lot more work making mat poses. But at least you're not torn with indecision. :)

But if I had to choose (and I love options), I'd still go with fewer.

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I managed to get it down to 21 material zones.  I think if I shrink the UVs any further I'll be sacrificing texture quality for a smaller number.

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Well, I came in here all ready to say "The more the merrier"...but you know, too much of a good thing...Yeah, 100 is a bit much. Around 20 sounds nice. ;)

Quote - I managed to get it down to 21 material zones.  I think if I shrink the UVs any further I'll be sacrificing texture quality for a smaller number.

Just a thought, you might be able to keep the texture quality if you stack some of the UVs on top of each other.  Where the UV's are the same of course :)

John.

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Quote - V4 has 29 different materials. How much fun is it to have to change each of those one at a time manually?

This.  Daz really over did it on V4.  I mean do we really need 5 mat zones for the eyes, 4 for the torso, 3 for the arms, etc?

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Quote - > Quote - I managed to get it down to 21 material zones.  I think if I shrink the UVs any further I'll be sacrificing texture quality for a smaller number.

Just a thought, you might be able to keep the texture quality if you stack some of the UVs on top of each other.  Where the UV's are the same of course :)

John.

I stacked all the rosettes after my last post then decided to keep them as separate rosettes so each one could be different.  I tried a shader on the crown  & the zones seem to be holdng up their quality.  So hopefully, disaster averted.  :)

 

@Zaarin,

Hi! 

@ Winterclaw,

I kind of understand all the zones on the eyes to be honest, but elsewhere... meh.

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Hi, Lynn! :)

 

Quote - This. Daz really over did it on V4. I mean do we really need 5 mat zones for the eyes, 4 for the torso, 3 for the arms, etc?

Actually, I have to say yes. We could live without the eye surface, but it is useful to have separate sclera, iris, pupil, cornea, and lacrimal. The nostrils could be merged with the face, but having the lips seperate is useful for, for example, makeup (now if only the lips material zone were actually limited to the lips, but I digress ^_^). Having the different material zones for the torso is useful for second skins; same for separating upper and lower arms. So the short version is that yes, Gen4's material zones are useful. 

Option 2. Still, flexibilty is nice... 100+ is bizarre, though.

Moriador's suggestion of including both versions sounds good. If you go with one then definitely I's say use a few as possible (#2). It's good to give people options but try to consider what most people would actually use and the effect of burdening the majority with the added complexity in this case. I don't really know about crowns but I wouldn't think the average one would have more than 4-5 types of stones in it. & they'd be organized in a pattern

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

With 2 versions of the crown already & 14 props total, adding 2 version of the crown would bloat the file, I think.  If there was a way to include two material zones with 1 object, I'd add 1 with all the stone options.  It's a good idea, but I don't think it's feasible with what's already in the files.  The choker had so many different zones that I ended up knocking it down to 4 to keep from driving myself crazy too.  LoL

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Maybe an alternate UVS file. The user would have to use UVMapper to create the alternately mapped .obj(s) but it would presumably be an option for some. I'm assuming the .uvs file would be small but I may be completely wrong on one or all popints :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

That could work too.  Not sure how to go about it, but I could try.

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I like lots of material zones because I suck at painting inside the lines.

For those rosettes though I would look at the uv map. If it is faiely easy to edit I would have two zones for each rosette, the background metal and the stones. Then an image map per rosette to specify the colors.

 

 

I've been modelling for years ans just have to ask 'what are materiel zones'? I make a model and apply textures and no one ever said said anything about materiel zones, which I assume are the bits that that accept materiels. I'm not sure i'd have got into this if If I'd been told I had to understand materiel zones.  Please, can we have a more precise terminology or a  dictionary of terms such as 'Material zones', 'transmap' and etc.

There's some basic information here:

http://voices.yahoo.com/understanding-textures-materials-3d-6448982.html

You can create material zones in your modeling software or in an application like UVMapper: http://www.uvmapper.com/

Ducky here has three material zones (represented by different colors), allowing you to use different colors or image maps for the beak, eyes and body. You can open the template (created in UVMapper) in any image editing program and paint the zones as you wish. You can also assign simple colors to each one in Poser or create procedural textures for them.

Transmap is short for transparency map. It enables you to make part of an object fully or partially transparent. The maps are simply image files using colors from black to white where white is completely opaque and black is completely transparent (IIRC) shades of gray range in between in transparency. They're often used for clothing e.g. a dress with tears in it or a scalloped hem. If Ducky were in a shooting gallery, you could put holes in him by using a completely white transparency map with black circles where you wanted the holes to be. Hopefully that is correct. You should be able to find all of the information you need inb the Poser manual or various web tutorials.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

In Poser every end user can create new material zones.
But no end user can remove material zoens from inside native Poser. => Some scripts do.

The first thing I do with each and every figure is remove material zones up to the minimum practical.

Phils V4 example is a good example.

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