How to Apply a New Texture to Clothing in Poser

Applying a new texture to a piece of clothing created in Poser is not as difficult as you might think. Most people do not know that you can use any picture to texture a piece of Poser clothing. That means you can use a paint program to create a design, or perhaps use a photograph that has an interesting image in it, like a piece of quartz. This tutorial assumes you have a basic-to-moderate understanding of Poser.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Poser software

1. Open Poser and select a simple piece of clothing you want to re-texture.

2. Bring your choice closer using the icons at the top right of the box that allow you to move the item around in the viewing window.

3. Click on the tab labeled Material Room at the top of the screen. You should then see a window labeled Poser Surface. This is where you will begin changing the present texture of the piece of clothing you chose.

4. Click on the diffuse color box. This will bring up a color-menu box that allows you to change the color. Change the color of the item of clothing to white. f you don't, the present color will bleed through the new texture you are going to add. Then change the Specular and Ambient color to black.

5. Above the Poser Surface box, you will see three drop-down menus: Object, Material and Node Options. Select the Object drop-down menu, then select the item of clothing whose texture you want to change.

6. Select the Material drop-down menu next. You'll notice that the piece of clothing you've chosen may have more than one segment. If that's the case, you will need to texture each part.

7. Select the part of the piece of clothing you want to texture first. Texture each piece by following the next steps.

8. To the right of the words Poser Surface, you will see what looks a small tablet--and, next to that, an eye. Below the eye, you will notice what appear to be small plug-ins. These are called Nodes, and you are going to use them to change the texture of your clothing.

9. Click and hold on the first node beneath the eye, next to Diffuse Color. Now move your mouse to the right. You will notice a small line coming from the node and a small menu giving you the option to create a new node. Do so, then select 2D Texture and Image Map. This will open a new window called Image Map.

10. You will notice that under the Image Map title is Image Source, and to the right of that is the word None (in white). Click on None and a window will open that will allow you to browse and select a picture to use as a texture.

11. Once you have done this, you will see the picture that you have chosen in the preview window under the Poser Surface information. Once this is done, go back to the Pose Room by selecting it from the menu across the top. Your texture will not be noticeable until you render the image.

Tips & Warnings

• There are a couple of different ways in which you can save your item of clothing with its new texture. The first is by simply selecting the + sign in the library to the left wherever you would like to save it. This will save the item with its new texture to your Poser library. Or you can save the rendered sweater as a Poser file you can open any time you like, then add a 3-D human figure and conform the clothing to it at that time.
• If you want to use real textures such as sweater, or satin to name a few, Renderosity has hundreds of photos of textures in their 2D section to choose from. You can also take pictures of your own clothing and then crop the picture to include just a square box, then by making the picture seamless you can use it anytime you like to texture your Poser clothing.
• If you don't change the Specular and Ambient colors to black, you run the risk of having a shiny surface to your texture that doesn't always look right--when it's a knit texture you're working with, for example.

[johnmayer]

on 10/25/2009 Thanks, Regina. I looked all over the web for just these instructions on the basic steps for applying Texture Maps. Not exactly intuitive. Whatever happened to “Action Buttons?” Anyhow, you saved me further hours of frustration. I appreciate it.

John Mayer