Hierachical material presets & autofit

Togire

I tried to use a G9 outfit (Sunny road https://www.daz3d.com/sunny-road-dforce-outfit-for-genesis-9) on a G8M character.

There was no problem for the autofit, and I tried to change the matérial. As I am used to do for most clothes, I selected the items and applied the material.

There was an error and the message "Invalid hierarchy for selected node(s) and "preset_hierachical_material" type; no root(s) found"

After some googling, I realized that it was a hierarchical material that must be applied to the parent node.

So I selected the char and retried. Same problem.

The issue was that the char is G8M while the cloth is G9...

I tried to change the scene id of the char, but the result was similar.

I finally succeeded by instancing a G9 char, fitting the shirt on him, applying the material to the G9 char (that successfully changed the shirt material), and refitting the shirt to the G8M char.

So here am my questions:

1/ Is this the only way just to change a shirt material? Am I missing something or is this really a complete brain damage?

2/ For what reason do the artists use a hierarchical mat? There seem to be only drawbacks to their use (in this situation at least).

FSMCDesigns

I agree, hierarchical mats are a pain in the ......! The way I get around them is to load the clothing on the character it is made for, apply the MAT and then save as a material preset. Then you can load it just like a normal material MAT.

crosswind

You just need to change Scene Identification... - Node Name, from to 'Genesis8Male'  to  'Genesis9'... That will work with no problem. Will you give it a double-check?

Togire

What I did previously was to change the compatibility base, and this was pointless. But I tried to change the node name as you suggested, and it works. Thanks!

But this is just crazy. Why the heck do the artists want to punish their customers with hierarchical mats when there is no justification?

Richard Haseltine

FSMCDesigns said:

I agree, hierarchical mats are a pain in the ......! The way I get around them is to load the clothing on the character it is made for, apply the MAT and then save as a material preset. Then you can load it just like a normal material MAT.

They are useful for outfits - they are almost essential for many dForce items, where buttons are often separate nodes. It is also possible to simply parent the clothes to the original figure and apply the presets, since it is parent not fit to target that matters.

crosswind

Togire said:

What I did previously was to change the compatibility base, and this was pointless. But I tried to change the node name as you suggested, and it works. Thanks!

But this is just crazy. Why the heck do the artists want to punish their customers with hierarchical mats when there is no justification?

I would say it just depends on the garments... As for this outfit, there're a few buttons under the primary roots of shirt and short. If the author set the textures for the short / shirt and buttons with common Mats Preset (non-hierarchical), he had to do many times and save many duf files, while using H.Mats Presets will be much easier.... But the funny thing is that the author did not set different texture or colors for the buttons...  so....

I think Daz could give a Ctrl + option when loading H.Mats Preset so as to give users more flexible way of applying the materials..

PerttiA

Even if hierarchial materials were used, it would be better if the creators used the garment as the root node instead of the character. That way one could still apply different materials to buttons etc.

crosswind

PerttiA said:

Even if hierarchial materials were used, it would be better if the creators used the garment as the root node instead of the character. That way one could still apply different materials to buttons etc.

No~~ H.Mats Preset will still check the root node (parent) of the garments as the figure's primary root node is always written into Duf file, only while the garments are unparented...

PerttiA

crosswind said:

PerttiA said:

Even if hierarchial materials were used, it would be better if the creators used the garment as the root node instead of the character. That way one could still apply different materials to buttons etc.

No~~ H.Mats Preset will still check the root node (parent) of the garments as the figure's primary root node is always written into Duf file, only while the garments are unparented...

You sure? Because I think their are for example hairs with scalps, ponytails etc. with hierarchial materials that are applied with the hair selected 

crosswind

PerttiA said:

crosswind said:

PerttiA said:

Even if hierarchial materials were used, it would be better if the creators used the garment as the root node instead of the character. That way one could still apply different materials to buttons etc.

No~~ H.Mats Preset will still check the root node (parent) of the garments as the figure's primary root node is always written into Duf file, only while the garments are unparented...

You sure? Because I think their are for example hairs with scalps, ponytails etc. with hierarchial materials that are applied with the hair selected 

Certainly ~ ever made the test long time ago... the root node of the 'selected' has to be as same as what is defined in preset duf..