Advanced Texturing Of Scenes In 3D Studio Max with Poser Pro Pak

Author: Anonymous

Tools Needed

• Poser Pro Pack

1. 3D Studio Max

• A really good Poser texture

OK. I'm not going to get into the intricacies of using the Pro Pack plug-in in max, as all this is covered in the manual. I will assume that you have created a Poser scene and saved it as a PZ3 scene file. For this exercise, keep the scene to one naked figure with no props. Think about doing a portrait like the one above.

Open max and import the PZ3 scene into Max via the Poser plug-in in the geometries rollout. Add a camera (camera 1) and align the camera to set up your portrait. Don't worry about adding additional lighting. We will just work with the default global lighting while we set everything up.

Once your scene is set up to your taste, click on the “Materials Editor” icon . Click on any of the blank texture slots to activate it. The first one on the top row is as good as any. Select the “eye dropper” tool on the left of the drop down menu and left click on the figure in your Poser/max scene. This assigns all the textures as “Multi Sub Object” textures to one texture slot. Next to the “eye dropper” it will now say “PoserMaterials” in the drop down menu and the “Multi Sub Object” texture list will appear. Think of this list as like the material editor in Poser, only much more advanced. It gives you access in Max to all the textures on your figure that are assigned in poser to each mapped group

Click on the entry for “Skinhead”.

This will bring you to the more familiar part of the Materials Editor that usually comes up when you want to apply a straight forward texture map to an object geometry.

Click on the “M” button to the right of “Diffuse”.

This will take you to the “RGB Tint” parameters. Just ignore this section and click on the big button underneath the word “Map”.

In the next dialogue click the “Bitmap” button.

This will bring up the material map browser. Click on the entry for “Composite”. What we want to achieve is a blend of two different materials assigned to one Poser material group.

Click the radio button for “Keep old map as sub map” and click OK.

In the “Composite” rollout click on “Map 2”, the button that say's “None”. This will bring up the “Material/Map Browser” again. This time double click on the entry for “Dirt”.

The “Dirt” parameters rollout will now appear. Just leave the settings as they are. You can experiment later.

You have now added the composite material to the “Skinhead” group of your Poser figure. This means there are two textures on the head. One is the texture map that you used in Poser and the other is the “Dirt” texture that is part of Max.

You can now do a test render. Be sure to save first just in case Max decides to bail out. You can go on with the same procedure for other parts of the figure that you want to add dirt to. The lips, the nostrils, eyebrows and the body too.

When you are satisfied, you can then go on to adding your bump maps. To get back to the “PoserMaterials Multi Sub Object” rollout, click on the map rollout next to the eyedropper tool and select “PoserMaterials”

In the “Multi Sub Object” rollout. Select “Skinhead” again. This will give you access to the “Maps” rollout. Drag the diffuse map onto the “Bump” map slot and select copy. Bump maps in Max are much more powerful than standard Poser bump maps. So unless you are using it as a special effect, go easy.

Well that's how you do it. I am planning on doing more Poser Pro Pack/Max tutorials in the near future plus a tutorial on lighting your Poser Scene in Max.

I hope this has been of some use to you and maybe saved you some time and some frustration. If you have any tips to add to this, I would be happy to fit them in somewhere

The Final Image.