Is there a way to convert Poser Materials so they work in Daz 4?

Wilmap

I have several beautiful Poser materials for satin, silk and other textures and I would like to use them in DS4.

Is there a way to work out what needs to be changed so that I can get something which is near to the texture in Poser?

Are there any tutorials anywhere that might help?

Szark

Are you talking about Poser Mat Room node procedural shaders or texture based? Poser Procedurals No as far as I am aware that hasn't been done yet.

Wilmap

They are shaders. But it states that they won't work in Daz.

Szark

Well if that is the case then I highly doubt they are procedural shaders unless something happened recently to change that. But I am open to be corrected as always. :)

My guess it that that they have texture maps. What format are they?

Wilmap

I've just had another look at them and they are both, some are shaders and some are textures with Mat files.

Szark

So the only ones that will probably work are the texture map based ones but you will still need to set up the surface settings yourself.

Wilmap

So which settings exactly will I have to do myself? Would that be the ambient, specular and probably bump/displacement if they aren't there?

How would I know what was included, or would I have to run Poser and look at every setting for every texture in the Advanced tab?

Lindsey

I use an existing DS clothing texture map that looks good, then replace the texture maps with the new clothing item/set. If I like the outcome, save it out as a DS material preset. I don't know if there are distribution issues if the "templates" originated from commercial products and would only use these derived material presets for personal use.

Szark

wilmap said:

So which settings exactly will I have to do myself? Would that be the ambient, specular and probably bump/displacement if they aren't there?

How would I know what was included, or would I have to run Poser and look at every setting for every texture in the Advanced tab?

I wouldn't know as I do not have the shaders but my guess is yes all of them. As I asked earlier what formats are these in and why DS4 not DS4.5?

Wilmap

They are a mix of pz2 files and mt5 files and I use DS4 because then I can make all my free clothes available to more people than if I used DS4.5 exclusively.

Szark

Well the answer is in the formats. PZ2 will load in Daz Studio MT5 not so much. That should help you out a bit.

Wilmap

I already know that, but the pz2's don't work as they should! Certain parts of the surface tab don't load so they don't work properly. That is what I'm asking about.

Szark

Right sorry, sounds like the PZ2 have a little Poser Node work in there too then.

Looks like it may be trial and error or as you say refer to Poser and see what is causing the issues. This is what I was trying to say too is that since they can't be an automatic translation of mats from Poser to DS due how the poser mats are set up a lot more work will have to be done by you. Yep not what you are wanting to here.

Unless some of the POSER/DS users have any advise.

Slosh

As a solution to converting the .mt5 files, have you tried modifying the mt5 file to be a .mc6? These mc6 files can be read in DS, although I am sure some of the nodes won't translate properly and may require some tweaking afterward. Once the tweaking is finished, save it out as a material preset in DS.

To convert .mt5 to .mc6, open the .mt5 file in WordPad or NotePad or the Mac equivalent and change the following lines, which are among the first 5 lines of code:

{
version
{
number 5
}
actor $CURRENT
}
material Name

Change this to say:

{
version
{
number 6
}
mtlCollection
}
material Name

then save the edited file as "Name.mc6". Of course "name" will be the name of the material you are trying to save.

Wilmap

Done all that and they still don't work. I get an icon but if I click on it nothing happens!!

icprncss

Can you give a link to the product you are talking about?

Without knowing what the product is, it's difficult answer questions.

The mt5 files are single poser materials dating all the way back to Poser 5. Procedural shaders are directly related to the render engine an app uses. Poser uses Firefly where as DS uses 3Delight.

Products can combine texture maps with procedural shaders in the material room. The texture map will apply as will some of the basic setting such as diffuse and specular but they will not look anything like the promos for Poser. It is why vendors either offer both material settings or they state that a product is designed for use in one app or another.

You can also have products that are material settings that are derived completely in the Poser material room. These products will do you little good in DS. The same goes for products designed for DS.

am999

I had a number of (probably very simple) .mt5 files, too. And the above poserpedia method with renaming parts of the content did not work for me either. Finally, the solution was much simpler: I did not change anything in the files themselves, but just renamed them from .mt5 to .pz2. Afterwards DAZ Studio could load at least the simple shader properties (diffuse map, bump map etc.).

decibel

Don't know if this is still an issue for you but since there isn't a solid answer yet I'll do my best to post one for you or anyone else with a similar issue.

All materials are built on top of a shader. Pop use of the word shader has made it synonymous with material and sometimes with procedural texture. The big difference is the shader defines the properties by which it interprets light and what most people are looking for in a material is controlling those properties with textures and sliders.

For example these could easily have completely different shaders and yet, if chosen, could use the same shader:
Glass
Wood
Cloth
Both Poser and DS have shaders pre-made to start users in their chosen direction as the shader writing game can get pretty complex.

For your use with silk and satin:

Take a look in the Poser/Material Room and look at the nodes.
Are there procedural textures?
Are there nodes that point to alternate Specular or Diffuse settings?
If yes, these are the Poser elements that will not be automatically converted by DS.
Make note of what they are and search the DS material files for something similar.
DS has the same standard parametrics as most apps but names and parameters will inevitably vary so you'll have to learn those functions in order to imitate what you liked in Poser.

On a simpler side:

If the Poser material is calling images, DS should do a fairly good job of plugging them into the right places when it comes to Diffuse, Ambient, Reflection Maps and Bumps.
If you have Specular Strength maps, Reflection Strength maps, Blenders, Mixers, theses will have to be added by hand.
In the latter case, Blenders/Mixers will have to be added by sending the current DS material into Shader Mixer and adding nodes by hand.

One last distinction:
.mt5 you can load that material into any object.
For example:
Silk.mt5 made for your silk Shirt and the material is named SilkyShirt
You can call up your Rock.cr2 or MachineGun.cr2 and apply Silk.mt5 to those characters and it will work even though they don't have materials named "Silky Shirt".

.mc6 is good for groups with specific material names
For example:
A shirt with material names:
Bodice
Arms
Collar
Save them all as a group into an .mc6 and all the different setting will go to the right place OR
save out just "Arms" to an .mc6 and when you load it you won't have to pick the "Arms" material first it will just load to the right place.

I hope this added some kind of clarity. : )