Not so long ago I got acquainted with Mat poses. If I understand correctly, then it's a practical way to manage many textures for one object. What I do not understand, is how do I create Material poses myself. Another question that is on my mind, you may think it's silly, but I sometimes I see Vicky as: "DAZ3D Vicky" and sometimes as "Zygote Vicky" Is that a mistake? Are they the same, or not? (And when, if ever, will they be free for use:)) Thanks for listening... Aya

When Vicky first came out she was a Zygote product, later Zygote's poser division branched off and became Daz3d. Similar to Curious Labs buying Poser from Metacreations. As for creating mat poses, do a search in the tutorials section, I hear there are a few for making your own Mats there, but I haven't tried that yet.

Well I'll try to answer the second part of your message. As Shadowcat replyed; When Victoria first was produced, it was a "Zygote" product. But then a few of the people at Zygote decided to customize a department that was a Poser Only company. And DAZ 3D was born. All of the Poser ready objects and textures were ported over to DAZ 3D from Zygote. So when you see something for Poser that has a Zygote label it just means it is something that started in Zygote. Anything NEW to DAZ will not reference Zygote. But it all is the same great quality. Now here's something I know you won't want to hear. Victoria will not appear in any FREE section ever. It is a copyrighted product and can only be purchased through DAZ3D. But if you look around and price any other figure of this quality and Poser ready at any other company, you'll find that you will have to spend hundreds of dollars for what In my opinion DAZ sells at a very affordable price. And she has been on sale before and I'm sure will again. Hope this helps. James

To answer your first question = practice and experiment. Open a MAT pose file in a text editor and look at what it contains. The easiest way is to set your textures for a character and save the file to the library. Then open it in a text editor and transfer the data from the cr2 to the MAT pose file, overwriting what is there. Later when you get it, you will be able to do the whole thing in a text editor without the cr2. A principle to remember: if you do not want to change it leave it out of the MAT pose. Put another way, only include those lines that you are changing. For example, if you are not apply a bump map, do not include the line that has "NO MAP" for the bump. If you do, then if you have a character with a bump map and you use the MAT pose to change a texture, it will erase the bump assignment. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Attached Link: http://www.fallencity.net/lore

I have some tutorials on what MAT files are and how to make them.

i would almost bet that when Michael 2 comes out we'll see a Vicki 2 sale, also. It would be a nice promotion, anyhow.

MAT files are great! Excepting a few details, you basically take a CR2 file you like, and leaving the header & footer, lop out everything except the materials you want to change. And you can do it very easily in a plain text editor like WordPad. i have recently made a bunch for my own personal use, for older textures that i like a lot, or my own textures i like to use. That and a quick render & trip through RSRConverter (in free stuff, i think) and you have a nice looking and useful MAT pose!

I need to ask a question now. I went to the link above and you talk about setting the lights at 235/244/251, but I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean a spot light? And what do I need to change--I'm assuming it's the rgb setting. Is that right?

Which page is confusing you? Could you Copy/Paste the confusing sentence? I'd be glad to clarify it.

"I use my favorite lights which are set for 235/244/251 to mimic a Photographer's flashbulb." This one. I did visit www.awakemm.com and read through Sydd's tutorial on lights, but I guess I'm still not sure what I need to do.

I find that the Cr2edit program works well for making MAT, and MOR files. So you might get that program as it helps with a lot of poser type stuff.

Yep, Cr2Edit works great, too. The interface is a little non-standard, but it does the job.

That must be the RGB colors for the lights. You can set up colors for different lights. Select a light. Hold down the Control key (don't know what it is for a Mac) and click on the color button for that light. You'll get a color panel that will allow you to customize the color you need.

I'm making a Perl MAT file creator/modifier for my Perl class. Humorously enough, my Perl instructor knew what I was talking about!