Digital Art Zone

For a while now I’ve saved poser pz2 mats using CPM in Daz 3. I’ve made tons of freebie textures including both Daz and Poser and placed them in the same pose folder. I started making the poser pz2 mat so that my Daz file would show up under the runtime structure.

Fast forward to now. I’ve been working on a character for selling purposes. Like always I tend to test things as much as possible in anywhich way I am capable of before I send it out to Poser users for testing.  So out of curiousity I moved my Daz mat pose file out of the folder with the poser pz2 mat. Then opened Daz and applied the texture to V4 with just the pz2. I noticed it didn’t look quite right but all the texture images I created were there. So I scrolled through the surface tab and noticed that some of the numerical settings for Ambient and so on were not saving properly in the pz2s but when the Daz mat and pz2 file are in the folder together the settings I wanted were loaded correctly.  So I rummaged through the Daz forum archives and from what I gather is a Poser user would have to adjust ambient and a few other things.

In my opinion if I’m going to offer a character texture set I would want both Daz and Poser users to have the textures applied how I intended them to be without much tweeking. So the way I see it I have a few options.

1. Offer the texture/character sets as optimized for Daz 3 & 4 but with pz2s which may require tweeking in Poser. I fear this option may put people off.
2. Offer as optiimized for Daz only in Poser runtime structure. Again this would cost me potential Poser user sales.
3. Figure out if I can edit the pz2 and input the correct numerical settings for Ambient and so on. (Can this be done?)
4. Offer a portion of the earnings with a Poser user for editing my saved pz2s to reflect the correct numerical settings in Ambient & etc.
5. Get rich, buy poser, learn poser, and then make the pz2s from Poser itself. This option isn’t likely to happen for a long while.
6. Pray that someone out there in Daz universe knows of another option so I don’t loose out on potential Poser sales.

So does anyone have any suggestions?  Is there another tool or something out there that may help me? Do you think selling as optimized for Daz only hurt me?

Poser and DAZ do use different values for settings. I know a texture artist as a friend and they do your fourth choice. They work with a Poser artist that adjusts the textures to the best they can and then save a Poser version. I belive most artist that only work with one Program do it that way.

CPM attempts to adjust the settings for Poser—if you apply the .pz2’s in DS they will look off, because DS and Poser handle a number of material settings differently.  Naturally, a hand-adjusted Poser mat will be better than an automatically-generated one, but having the .pz2 settings different from the .dsa settings is not a mistake, it’s intentional.

Hmm, I have never checked if CPM saves Ambient correctly or not, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t. What is really different is the Glossiness, which CPM doesn’t adjust. it’s DAZ Studio itself that applies a transformation, that doesn’t work, to the glossiness of any PZ2 it reads. There may be other surprises. You can open a PZ2 in a text editor, like wordpad, and see if the values are correct. I sell this to convert glossiness http://www.yurdigital.com/catalog/988-highlight-resizer-daz-studio I’ve .been thinking of selling it to DAZ3D, since that would make the most sense, but I just got a sale on the other script, so I’ll wait a while (couple of months, I think) before contacting them.

No offense to ReDave, I’m sure his script works fine, but by and large the only way to give good texture support for both programs is to own, and use, both programs.  A script will not do things for you like adjust the ambient up for very dark clothing or set up your reflection values correctly on metal.

A pz2 loaded in DAZ will have incorrect bump and spec settings and will often completely lose any reflection or displacement values.  You want to leave your .dsa in the folder with the .pz2 anyway, so that Poser will load the .pz2 and DAZ will load the .dsa.

If you’re looking to sell at Rendo you are required to show renders of any program for which you claim compatibility now, so at the very least you would have to find a Poser user to do one for you.  Other sites may not require that.  Anyway, I applaud that you care about providing real compatibility.  I’ve always kept a version of Poser that I bought on sale (currently I have P8 and PP2012) for making and testing materials.  I would get 8 or 9 if you can.  8 is the earliest to have good advanced shaders, and 9 is the first to allow weight-mapping of figures and clothes.  Considering my interest in actually rendering for fun in these programs is minimal, PP2012 was a waste of my money and I could’ve gone with 9 and had it fill my needs.

True hybrid products, especially props, are selling like gangbusters at Rendo right now.  The market is there.  If you have to, I’d say get someone to help you do the mats and renders on the first couple, give them 20%, and save up the $250 to get your copy of P9 and do your own.