Surfaces Tab Editor Question

vwrangler

I was wondering how to expand properties when they're merged together on the Surfaces Tab Editor.

I've got a product where the Studio mats are pretty obviously not working properly. The product uses custom materials for Studio, and has separate presets for both Poser and Studio in separate directories. The Poser mats DO work -- up to a point. They're also very different, and not just using tweaks to the settings. I think if I could actually see what the custom Studio materials are doing, it would be fairly simple to understand what's happening, but items are collapsed together. (See attached image, the circled areas. That means there are actually multiple items hidden under that slider, right?)

I've tried Show Hidden, Expand on pretty much everything, and nothing I can find gets those things to open up. I even tried looking at it in Shader Mixer but that's like looking at surfaces as rendered in Martian. (And, if I'm even vaguely understanding what I'm seeing, it looks like it's not actually using custom shaders, but custom materials, so there's nothing for Shader Mixer to show.)

How can I make it so I can see what that's doing?

Lissa_xyz

Have you tried clicking on the sub-headings for diffuse, specular, etc shown in your screenshot?

vwrangler

Vaskania said:

Have you tried clicking on the sub-headings for diffuse, specular, etc shown in your screenshot?

You know, I had, but it wasn't until you put it that way that I took a really good look and realized what was going on.

Studio is combining sliders with the same name, even when they have nothing directly to do with each other. When the material file was created, instead of naming things "Ambient Color", "Specular Color", "Ambient Strength", "Specular Strength", and so on, the properties were just named "Color" and "Strength" for each property, and Studio combines properties in the Surfaces tab display when they have the exact same name. I don't know why I didn't see that before. (DAZ should perhaps make it stop doing that, or require items to have full and distinct names for the surfaces properties.)

And now that I can see that, I realize that these are some freaky weird materials. But at least I kind of get what's going on now.

Thanks for your help!

Lissa_xyz

I'm not sure what the circumstances have to be for that to happen. I don't see it very often, but if I do, it's mainly on props and things, and I can't remember off hand if they're older mats or not.

TakeoKensei

What is the shader?

DZ_jared

The reason it is set up this way is so you can edit a channel for multiple surfaces. Generally with a shader (and certainly for the DAZ Default Shader, the Uber Surface Shader, and the new AoA shader) each channel will have a unique name. This way when you select a single surface you can edit each channel. If you select multiple surfaces you can edit the channel for each surface. This feature does rely on shader creators to give unique names to each channel. I too am curious as to which shader you have for the surface. If you scroll to the top of the surfaces pane it will tell you what shader you are using.

vwrangler

The custom Studio shaders come with Midnight Rocketeer. The name of the shader seems to vary according to which material you're applying.

They actually are applying more or less as intended. Ambient and reflection need tinkering, depending on lighting conditions, to keep sections of it from appearing as just shiny silvery white. It was difficult to figure that out because in the main display, they're combined in the Color and Strength properties, since they don't have complete names of their own.

Lissa_xyz

Are you applying via the PZ2s or DSAs? Or are they in the same folder?

Jaderail

Yep. the dsa files should be applied for DAZ Studio Renders. If the Mats are all in one folder do the Poser Icons have a scroll on them? If not your applying the Poser version is my guess. And the DS versions will be in the DAZ Studio Formats Section of your Content Library Tab.

That said I too sometimes adjust things just because I do not like the Default look.

vwrangler

It's a sort of odd setup. There are separate folders for Studio presets and Poser presets. The Poser presets are just PZ2 files. The Studio presets have customized versions of the PZ2 files with DSA sidecars, with the scroll icon. They do radically different things; the Poser files are designed to take advantage of the material room and custom Poser settings, while the DSA files do the same thing with Studio settings. The Poser materials just look weird in Studio, for the most part, and not in a way that just tweaking a few settings can help.

There's nothing for Midnight Rocketeer in the Studio Formats section, but there doesn't need to be. It was just a matter of figuring out what it was doing so I could tell what might need tinkering. Given that the issues were primarily Ambient and Reflection, it makes sense that they'd need tinkering depending on the lighting in the scene.