Use the Material Room in Poser to Change the Look of Your Poser Clothing

Have you ever wanted to change the look of a piece of Poser clothing? Maybe you need different colors to match a different background and setting, or maybe your character's make-up just doesn't look right with the color or texture of the clothing you've chosen. Whatever the reason using the Material Room in Poser is one way that you can change the look and feel of a piece of Poser clothing.

This tutorial will teach you how to use the Material Room to do this.

Step 1: Open Poser.

Step 2: Choose a piece of clothing that you would like to change the look of.

Step 3: Click on Material on the menu beneath the drop down menus.

Step 4: Close the information window, you can always go back later and read it for further information about the material room if you want, but for our purposes right now it isn't necessary.

Step 5: On the Poser Surface menu you will see a Diffuse Color box, click on it and this will bring up the color menu for you to change this color. On each part of your clothing change the color to white, this way the old color will not mix with the new image nodes you will be adding, and giving you something other than what you had in mind.

Step 6: Next to the picture of the dress, you will see a window with three drop down windows, Object, Material, and Node Options. For the moment we will only be using the first two. Click on the Object drop down menu and make sure the piece of clothing you chose is selected. Keep in mind that sometimes the clothing you pick will have more than one piece, so you will have to do each piece separately.

Step 7: Typically each piece of clothing will have different parts such as the hem, and the bodice for example if the item you choose is a dress. So in the material drop down menu select one part of the item of clothing you have chosen.

Step 8: Now in this window you will see what looks like a small picture of an eye, and beneath that will look like something that will remind you of a plug-in. These are called Nodes. Click on the node and move your mouse and you will see a small wire come from it, and then another little window with words New Node. Click on New Node and another window appears with several options, for this exercise you will want to choose 2D Textures, and then Image Map.

Step 9: You should now see a new Node window labeled Image Map. Now you will notice for the image source it says Nothing. That is because you have not added an image source yet. Your image source by the way can be anything, it can be a picture of a piece of cloth, a photograph you took, anything that is an image. Poser wonderfully will take whatever image you choose and wrap it around your clothing item giving it a whole new look!

Step 9: So, click on the word Nothing and this will open a small window that will allow you to choose an image source from somewhere on your computer. Repeat this step for each part of your chosen clothing item until you have it the way you want it.

Step 10: Apply the clothing to the appropriate character, and you have a whole new look!

You can play around with different images to create different looks. Renderosity has several free images that you can use for this purpose under their 2D section in the freebies area. Some of these images are pictures of real cloth which can help to lend a more realistic look to your Poser clothing.

This is just one way to change the look and feel of your Poser clothing. I hope that you find this technique as useful as I have.