Converting poser pz2 format materials to Daz Studio

dbdigital2

I am having problems modifying poser materials. I know it must be simpler than what I am doing and think I might be missing something.

Until now I have purchased content from Daz, however recently I purchased a clothing item that couldn't find here on Daz. It is in poser format and the description said for Daz Studio users you will need to do slight modifications to the materials.

The materials are in pz2 format and do load onto the clothing figures just fine. However the textures are nothing like the product ads. Very flat and grey or dark, and dull.

Upon investigation I see that normally the bump map needs to be raised and in this case I think the specular. There aren't any displacement maps with this. But I am still having difficulty making the textures match the ad images. I know poser is going to look somewhat different regardless as the rendering engine's are different.

I think I am getting there (it is fairly close now but not quite), but I was wondering if anyone with previous experience could offer tips, or is this always going to be different with every product/texture?

Since the product description said "Note for Daz studio users, Materials will need some minor adjustment" I am wondering if I am over working the issue and missing a simple surface combination or setting that would fix it in short order.

Chohole

This may be helpful http://homepage.eircom.net/~neilvpose/tutorial-1.htm

Lissa_xyz

Along with the above, I saved this from the old forums. It was by AdamR.

Specular Maps - They don't get applied by default

Ambient Maps - Again, they don't get applied by default (although these are pretty rare)

Specular Settings - Color, Glossiness and Strength all need to be adjusted. I tend to use "common sense" here. If something is primarily green, I use a near-white-green as the color. Glossiness controls the "size" or "sharpness" of the specular response. Higher values have smaller appearance. Strength controls the intensity of specular response. Think of specular strength like the "distance" from the light source. 100% would be practically touching the light, while 0% would be so far away the light doesn't even shine on it.

Ambient Settings - Often stuff comes in with 0,0,0 ambient at 100% value. Change the strength to zero unless it's supposed to "glow black". Tpically, you only need ambient when you WANT a glow... like I use an ambient color of 255,255,255 and a strength of 100% on the candle flames to make sure they're nice and bright. CAVEAT: Some vendors use ambient colors to adjust the color of the surface.

Bump / Displacement - Remember, poser is unidirectional on these. Flatten the minimum value in DS to 0. I typically set strength to 100% and control the appearance by using the Maximum value. Figure you'll need to jump this pretty high on many things. (Like it'll come in at 0.010 and you'll want 0.20 or more).

Default Shader Lighting Model - Everything comes in as plastic. Make good use of the Skin, Metallic and Matte presets as well. Note that the Skin preset tends to add a tinge of pink to the surface. Counter-act this (if desired) by shifting the diffuse color towards blue.

dbdigital2

Thank you both! My problem was two fold. While I did have the bump settings right, the specular and displacement maps weren't loaded. For some reason I assumed they would be (or there wasn't any to load). Also I didn't notice the lighting shader was "plastic". Adding those maps and tweeking a few other dials fixed it Even without the maps, I was very close but with the maps and shader change it is spot on.

Thank you again..