How to Copy Material Settings
There are a number of different ways that ShaderSpider makes it easy to
copy material settings from one material to another on a figure. Here's
a step-by-step example, using all of the different ways to copy
materials:
1) Select the material that you want to copy.
In this case, I'm using a scene with the default Aiko 3 figure in it. I
go into the Material Room. I've decided that I want to copy the shiny
red material all over her skin, so I choose that material using Poser's
Material Select tool. The material I picked was "SkinTorso".
2) Load the ShaderSpider Wacros.
Poser 6's Material Room includes a new feature called "Wacros" that
lets you execute time-saving Python scripts from a convenient menu. The
Wacros palette is located on the right hand side of the materials
palette (you can collapse it and expand it just like the Library). By
default, Poser has a full roster of wacros and the "User Defined" menu
button. Clicking on the "User Defined" button will pop up a menu with
"ShaderSpider" as an option. Choosing ShaderSpider will load the
ShaderSpider wacro buttons.
3) "Smart Copy to Skin"
Now hit the "Smart Copy to Skin" button, and ShaderSpider will copy the
shiny red SkinTorso material all over Aiko's skin. "Smart Copy to Skin"
will work on almost any figure, regardless of whether or not they've
been already set up for ShaderSpider.
4) Change the "LIris" color.
Now select the "LIris" material from the materials pulldown menu, and
change the Diffuse_Color to green. As you can see, the irises are now
mismatched. We can quickly correct that using ShaderSpider.
5) "Copy to Matching"
Hit the "Copy to Matching" button, and a new dialog will appear. Copy
to matching allows you to copy a material to any materials whose names
match any one of the keywords you enter. I want to copy the material to
the other iris, so I'm going to type in "iris" and hit OK.
6) "Copy to Surface Group"
You know, that green iris looks so good, I want to copy that material
to all of the other eye materials. Hit "Copy to Surface Group" and you
can copy the material to a set of connected materials. Pick "Eyes" from
the pulldown menu and hit OK to copy. If a figure hasn't already been
set up for ShaderSpider, you can use "Edit
Groups" to do so.
7) "Copy to All"
I'm just such a huge fan of that green that I really just want Aiko to
be all green. Hit "Copy to All" to copy the material settings to all
other materials on the figure. We now have an all green Aiko 3.
8) Add a texture map to "SkinHead" and change the color to white.
Now I want to add a texture map. First, select the "SkinHead" material.
Next click on the "Diffuse_Color" input and drag out into the open
space. Choose New Node > 2D Textures > image_map, and click
"None" on the new node to pick the texture map. I'm using Victoria 3's
head texture. Now change the Diffuse_Color to white so that the texture
displays properly.
9) "Copy to Mapping Group"
Now there's a problem. None of the other materials that use the head
map have changed. To remedy the situation, just click "Copy to Mapping
Group" and ShaderSpider will automatically copy the material to every
other material that uses the same map (is in the same mapping group).
If a figure isn't set up for ShaderSpider yet, you can set up its
mapping groups using "Edit Groups".
All of the other members of the head mapping group are now set properly.
That's all there is to it!
ShaderSpider lets you manipulate your figure's materials much more
gracefully than using Poser's standard tools.
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