How to Make a Material Layer Preset in Poser 11
Poser 11 has added some interesting new options to the material setup room. It is now possible to add
multiple layers to a material. Upon learning this I immediately thought of all the uses for skin texturing
most especially makeup that can be used on any skin.
The setup is fairly simple and this tutorial will walk you through how I set up a one layer makeup look.
You can add as many layers as you like on one material using this method, so you can for example
build a complex makeup look by setting up the lipstick, eyeshadow, blush and so forth as separate
layers.
1
In your image editor export your effect as a single
layer on a white or transparent background. Make
a bump and displacement if needed, These MUST
be isolated to just the area of the effect or will
change the whole material.
2
Make a transparency mask for your effect. White
where it will show, black where it does not and
gray for shades in between.
Here most of the skin is black, the eyeshadow is
mostly solid white but the blush is dark gray.
3
Load a base skin onto your figure in poser. I am
using Pauline and my Pauline Base Skin. In the
Material room select the material for which you
want to make a new layer, in this case Head.
4
I already have a second layer active, for the
eyebrows. I am adding a third layer by clicking
the plus sign next to Layer: Base in the top left of
the material room screen.
5
Think of your effect like building a sticker. The
main image goes in diffuse , the mask in
transparency and linked to specularity as well. Set
your specularity to black for matte or a shade of
gray for glossy. Apply the bump and or
displacement as usual.
6
A test render of my makeup effect. You can also
see the eyebrow layer in this render.
7
To save this from the material room first select the
nodes. Then save to the library as usual, choosing
the Single Material option with the Selected
Nodes Only box checked.
8
To test, load a new base skin onto your figure, I
am using my Pauline Expansion Skin 3. Now go
to the Head material, add a new layer and apply
the effect preset layer
8
and the makeup rendered again, this time on
Skin3. As you can see my transparency isn't quite
right, she has a bit of a panda line around the eyes.
In theory one could build the makeups on the a
specific characters base skin instead of solid
white, but then the makeup would only really
work on characters with that skin tone.
Things to note:
You must mask any spirituality bump and so forth so it effects only the area you are working with and
not the whole head
Effects stack. If you have a full face bump on layer 2, and again on 3 and 4, the effect will multiply.
You can apply any special node treatment you want to the masked off area. Yes you can make a glass
layer over lips if you really want. This has some interesting possibilities for complicated layer effects in
automotive paints for example.
As far as I can tell this only renders in Superfly. That seems to be the catch.