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One of the things that makes it confusing is that people use some of these terms to mean different things. Here's the difference using the terminology most common in DAZ Studio:
Texture: This is an image file that has the colors that you want to apply to a 3d model laid out in a 2d image, usually in .jpg format. It's sometimes called "roadkill" or "bearskin rug" because it looks like what you would get unwrapping the skin from a 3d surface and flattening it out. You don't see these files directly in the Content Library, but if you go to the Surfaces pane and hover over the triangle at the left of the Diffuse Color for a figure's face or body you'll see what it looks like.
Material Preset: This is what you'll see in the Content Library, often in a folder named Materials. It can apply all the different textures and settings to all the different surfaces of a figure. So if you have a character for Genesis, there will usually be one preset for applying all the textures and settings called "Full Mat", and often others for just applying particular parts, like different eye colors or makeup options. Since these presets apply to many different surfaces at once, they include the names of each surface and only apply the textures and settings to the surfaces that have matching names. This is why a material preset for a shirt usually won't work if you try to apply it to a shoe -- the names of the surfaces don't match.
Shader Preset: A shader preset also appears in the Content Library, but unlike a material preset it can be applied to any surface. It doesn't list the name of the surface, so it will apply to whatever surfaces you have selected. So you might have a preset for polished gold, or one for red velvet, that you can apply to any surface.
Great question, I'll take a stab (and since I've never been 100% clear on it myself, I could be wrong and if so someone will come along wiser than me and correct me).
Textures is the shortened term for Texture Maps, which are images that are superimposed on a 3d mesh. For example if you had a 3d figure of a man and you took an image taken from a real life photo of a person that was a picture of their skin, and then you took that photo and superimposed it on your 3d figure's skin in such a way that the real life photo looked like it was skin for the digital figure, then you would be using a texture map (of the photo) to add a texture to your character.
Materials refers to anything that is used to colorize your 3d figure. I believe all texture maps are used as part of materials, but not all materials are texture map based. Many materials are procedurally based instead. So as an example instead of using photos to add a 'skin' to your 3d figure, if you instead used a paint program and chose a pink color and then added some randomized bumps to it and combined the two to make a skin-like color scheme, then applied that to your character to form the skin, then you would be using materials.
You're still using textures at that point, just very simple ones. Textures are what you have as soon as you have any 2D picture that is used.
Usually a material is the preset for the 3d program that is used to apply textures, and to tell the program if they should be tinted gray, how strong the bump map is, if it should be tiled, etc. A texture is one 2D picture file. A material is a bunch of settings that describe to DAZ Studio how that picture file should be used..
If there is a material with no textures, where instead it's a preset that tells DAZ Studio, 'this thing is bumpy using X mathematical formula," that is a shader. People call things shaders that involve tiled textures, but when a 3D person says shader, they usually mean the math part that the engine reads.
Does that help?
@fixmypcmike @jonstark @sickleyield
thank you all for your answers!
So if I'm understanding you correctly..
A texture (texture map) is an image file that makes up the displacement map, bump map, or specular map?
While a material is the sum total of all those things and the settings for bump level, displacement level, specular level etc. ? So basically texture falls under the materials "umbrella" ?
Also, and I don't mean to derail my own thread but I just wanted to let you know Sickleyield that your clothes are AMAZING. The morphs that you always include are sooooo useful. I just bought a ton of stuff from your DAZ store yesterday and have some stuff on my wishlist over at Renderosity that I'm going to be getting as well. Do you take requests for new products?
Yes, that's right, and the diffuse map and any other maps can also be called textures. Just any of the material channel maps.
Thank you!!
I don't take a lot of requests. Partly this is because I do fewer clothes now than other products, because the other products are much more lucrative for the time spent on them; so if I do clothing, it's clothing I really badly want to do. So I can't promise anything, but what is it that you're looking for?
Ok thank you all so much for clearing that up for me!
I understand completely, you have to do what makes sense financially! I'm looking for a pair of ankle socks for genesis with undressing morphs to look like they're being rolled down from the heel and another morph to make it look like they're being stretched and yanked off from the toes. If you're not up to it I totally get it though. Admittedly it's probably something I could figure out how to do myself..I have plenty of different socks I just think the morphs would be useful in certain situations.
Ok thank you all so much for clearing that up for me!
I understand completely, you have to do what makes sense financially! I'm looking for a pair of ankle socks for genesis with undressing morphs to look like they're being rolled down from the heel and another morph to make it look like they're being stretched and yanked off from the toes. If you're not up to it I totally get it though. Admittedly it's probably something I could figure out how to do myself..I have plenty of different socks I just think the morphs would be useful in certain situations.
I don't really work with G1 any more anyway, so you'd still be out of luck. Sorry!
I don't really work with G1 any more anyway, so you'd still be out of luck. Sorry!
Ahhh gotcha, not a problem. But maybe you could point me in the right direction: say I have a clothing product that I bought that I wanted to create my own morphs for, what program would be able to make that happen? And would I need to get like a special file from the creator to load it into said program?
You don't need a special file from the creator, you just need to load it up in DS, set the resolution to base, zero it if it loads posed and export it to obj.
Creating morphs requires a modeling software, normally. There are many. I use Blender. Most people find Hexagon or Silo easier to learn.
ok thanks so much I'm going with blender because it's free