Poser 7 tutorial, Poser 8, 3d rendering tutorials

Material Room Basics

The Screenshots are from Poser 8 but areas covered for Material Room Basics are the same as Poser Pro, Poser 7, and Poser 6.

1. Material Dictionary

1 : Material Dictionary - "What does it this do?"

To start open the Material Room by clicking on the Material Tab located at the top of your Poser. You can use the full size screenshot to use as a reference guide

Terms for the Material Room Reference Guide

Features only found in Poser 7 are shown with a Yellow Arrow
Features only Found in Poser 8 are shown with a Blue Arrow
Features found in both Poser 7 and Poser 8 are shown with a Multi Color Arrow.


A: Material Room Tab: The Material Room tab opens Poser's Material Room. The material room allows you to make changes to the 3D models material (skin). If you are trying to change the skin tone of a character, the color of a car, or to create reflections on floors and other models, then you will need to make the changes in the Material Room. The Material Room is also the place where you will change the texture of your models from bumpy to smooth as well as more advanced changes in how the material responds to the light settings. For the most part as a beginner there's not much that you'll need to do in the Material Room. The Material Room is mostly used by Intermediate and Advance users that wish to add more advanced effects. B: Pose Room Preview: The Material Room gives you a smaller version of your Pose Room (the first room that shows when you open Poser). The Pose Room Preview shows the changes that are occurring when you make changes in the 3D model's material. You can also render a preview image while in the Material Room so that you can see what the rendered changes will look like. Rendering an image while in the Material Room is much faster so you don't have to way 15 and 30 minutes to see the effect. You'll still need to render in the Pose Room for a finished image with better quality. C: Material Room Option Tabs: This is where you can switch between the Simple and Advance Material Room option and features. As a beginner, the Simple Tab will be all that you need for 99.9% of the time and it will make working with materials very simple. The Advance Tab is just what it says. It's for the advance Poser users and it is far from being "basic." If you are still a beginner in Poser and want more confusion then simply take a look at the Advance material options. In the same row as the Material Room Option tabs, you'll find the Object (which is just the 3D model you want to select) and the Material for that object. If you want to change the skin tone of the character's (June in the example) t then you have to select Object: June and Material: Skintorso (as shown in screenshot). If you have a V4 character and wanted to change the color of V4's torso then you would would change it to Object: V4 and Material: Skintorso. Depending on the type of 3D model that you are using, you may have different parts in which you can apply material settings. D: Diffuse Color, Highlight, Ambient, Reflection Boxes: These boxes show the current color, highlight, ambient, and reflection settings for the material of the 3D model selected. The Diffuse color box changes the color of the 3D model. If a model's color is red then you can change that color to blue changing the color within the Diffuse Box. When the Diffuse color is white it will show the original color of the material. The change of color will be shown in the Pose Room Preview window (Arrow B). The Highlight color box allows you to change the color of light being reflected off the material. Sometimes an incorrect highlight setting will give some models have a plastic look. It is also used to help put the shine on eyes, metal, and glass.