creating pose files out of textures

[parkdalegardener]

Sorry; got way laid after supper while I was typing this. Good evening sanbie. Supper time for you now. Here we go.

OK. So this isn't PP2014 but it won't matter in the slightest. At any rate, this is how to save a bunch of textures for a piece of clothing so they apply to the required parts of the clothing when you click a pose icon. In other words this is how to save a material collection. We will then manipulate it into a pose file. A material collection in Poser is an MC6. A single texture or shader is an MT5. A texture distribution technique to share shaders between Poser and Studio was to hack the MT5 or MC6 material file and turn it into a pose file. A PZ2. This is effective only for simple texture, transparency and bump maps. Complicated shader connections won't cross over from Firefly to DS.

So let's say you have painted a nice texture with a transparency mask to apply to the MFD like so. The first thing we want to do is make the MT6 file. The Poser material collection of all your wonderful textures.

[parkdalegardener]

You can save the MC6 file from anywhere in Poser. We will do it from the pose room.

1. Make sure that the Materials tab is selected.
2. Click the folder in the corner and make a new directory for your texture file with a name of your choice and click OK.
3. A new texture directory will appear in the list.

[parkdalegardener]

1. Select your dress.
2. Select your directory.
3. Click the little "+" that appeared when you selected your new directory and a new box opens up. The New Material Set. Perfect. This is where we get to pick between a single material or texture and a collection of materials and textures. We will select Material Collection as we want a bunch of stuff saved, not just a single material for a single area. Make sure it is named and all the required material zones are selected and click OK. As you see I haven't included the bodyhandles as I haven't given them a fancy texture.

[parkdalegardener]

After refreshing our runtime we can see that your new MC6 is installed in our fancy named directory.I've opened up the directory to show you what the structure will look like.

[parkdalegardener]

Now for the annoying part. The file hack that makes materials into poses. Make a copy of your MC6 file first in case things screw up and open the MC6 in your text editor of choice. We need to be careful not to add extra carrage returns or spaces to the file or it could get ugly.

We need to change the "mtlCollection" at the top of the file to "figure". Exactly this. No extra spacing. If we were converting the MC6 file to work on a prop and not a figure we would change "mtlCurrent" to "actor $current"

The only other thing to do is check the file referances and change the paths to point to any image files needed for your textures.

Save the file and change it's extension from MC6 to PZ2

Done.

[sanbie]

I knew you would do it all pdg...it's great to see the screenshots of it!

[CardinalBiggles]

yes, I use the template, enlarged for better detail

[sanbie]

Okay so those images(jpegs) go into a folder in your texture folder...saves changing the path in the file...I always have a folder called Sanbie...then inside that I have a new folder with the name I am calling my textures...then when I add them to the clothing the path will be right...then just follow pdgs screenshots

[CardinalBiggles]

thank you very much!  I do feel much daunted but I've saved all this to a word document so I can print it out and see if I can manage it. I fondly believe I am attaching a pic of what I've been up to most recently.
 

[parkdalegardener]

I knew you would do it all pdg...it's great to see the screenshots of it!

Yeah; did it last night but I'm a little slow these days.