How to Use Partial Shaders

Partial shaders (FX6 files) let you save and load branches of the shader tree. They're very quick ways to reproduce effects, while preserving your other settings. Here's a step by step example:

1) Add figure to the scene with desired starting materials.

I'm going to start out with Victoria 3 using her standard texture maps (which I've applied from a MAT pose). Go into the Material Room and select the "SkinHead" material.

2) Add glowing veins to "SkinHead" material.

Now to add an effect. Change the Ambient_Color to dark blue and set the Ambient Value to 1. Create a Spots node off of the Ambient_Value (click on the plug icon and drag into empty space. From the menu, choose New Node > 3D Textures > Spots). Set the Spots Base_Color to white, Spot_Color to black, Spot_Size to 1, Softness to 0.2, and Threshold to 0.25. Now connect the Spots to the Displacement input by clicking the plug icon on the Spots node and dragging it to the plug icon on the Displacement input. Set the Displacement to 0.001.

If you render, you'll see that Vicki now has glowing blue veins on her face, but how to copy that effect to the rest of her skin without losing the texture maps?

3) 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.

4) Click "Save Partial Shader (FX6)"

Clicking this button will prompt you to choose a new file name for you partial shader. Then you'll be asked pick which inputs you want to include. Select the Ambient_Color, Ambient_Value and Displacement. All of the nodes and settings associated with these inputs will be saved in the new FX6 partial shader file.

The next dialog asks if you to pick an action to take for anything that's already plugged into the inputs that the partial shader uses. You can choose to have those nodes disconnected, or have them plugged into your partial shader.

In this case, leave them set to "DISCONNECT". Click OK to save. Now you have an effect that you can reuse again and again.

5) Click "Load Partial Shader (FX6)"

This wacro will prompt you to select which materials you want to apply the partial shader to. These options are functionally the same as the different ways that you can copy materials (see "How to Copy Material Settings"). Select the Surface Group option and "Skin" from the drop-down menu. Hit OK and then find the partial shader you saved in Step 4.

6) Render

The effect is now applied all over Victoria's skin, and her texture maps are still intact. See the Partial Shaders section for more info on using this powerful new tool.

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