Some Facts About Materials

Why do I need materials in Poser?

By using different materials you can dramatically change the appearance of an object. For example, you can turn a high-necked wool dress into a transparent lace nightshirt, or a shiny bar of gold into a rusty lump.
To do this, you don’t have to re-load and re-position the object, you just assign a new material.

For Poser there are different kinds of materials: Mat poses (file extension .pz2), materials (extension .mt5) and Material Collections (extension .mc6). For more info please read on.

What is the difference between mat poses and material files?

Mat poses (pz2 files) have been around for quite a long time; they came with the older Poser versions which didn’t have the Material Room yet. The mat poses were a workaround to save material presets which you could then apply as often as you wanted.

Poser 5 introduced the material room which allowed the users to save presets for single material zones in the file format .mt5. These files didn’t fully replace the mat poses because the poses could contain data for several material zones, e.g. for body, face, lips and eyes - for this you’d need four different mt5 files.

With Poser 6 we got the possibility to save material collections. They are able to fully replace the mat poses. But still many users prefer the traditional mat poses, and they also have other advantages (see below).

Mat poses are located in the pose library, materials and material collections are located in the materials library.

What is the difference between .mt5 and .mc6 files?

1) You can use .mc6 files only with Poser 6 and higher, they don't work in older versions.

2) .mt5 files contain information for only one material zone. mc6 files are material collections which can contain several material zones.
Imagine for example a box which has one material for the main part and one material for the lid. For a prop like this you'd need two mt5 files or one mc6 file.
The mt5 file applies its material to everything, you could apply your box material to a dress, no matter if that makes sense or not. For this reason you always have to make sure that you have selected the right figure/object and the right material zone. mc6 files apply the materials only if the name of the selected material zone matches the name saved in the mc6 file (works like the matposes).

3) About the code: In mt5 files you have the line "actor$CURRENT", in mc6 files it says "mtlCollection".

MT5 FILE:

actor $CURRENT
               {
                material XY <- only one material per mt5 file
                                {
                                KdColor 1 1 1 1
                                KaColor 1 1 1 0
                                KsColor 1 1 1 0.6
                .... bla bla bla (here follow all the material settings)
                                }
               }
}

An MC6 FILE can contain several materials:

actor $CURRENT
               {
                material X
                                {
                                .... etc. .......
                                }
                material Y
                                {
                                .... etc. .......
                                }
                material Z
                                {
                                .... etc. .......
                                }
               }
}
 

What are the advantages and disadvantages of mat poses and material collections?

Many users don’t like the material room, and in Poser 6 and 7 it really is a nuisance to switch rooms each time you want to assign a material. With Poser 8 the handling has improved considerably.

Matposes can contain data about material zones which don’t exist in the object.
An example: A jewellery set contains a necklace with a pendant and a bracelet. For both there is one single mat pose which contains the data for all three material zones. If you apply this pose to the necklace, Poser will use only the data for the necklace and the pendant. It will load the data for the bracelet too but it won’t use that because the necklace doesn’t have a material zone called “bracelet”.
So you only need one mat pose for both items which can be very helpful to keep the library tidy, especially if there are many different style presets included.
An mc6 file containing all three material zones would produce a warning message in Poser, because not all the material zone are present in the object. The mat pose is less fussy; on the other hand it simply creates the missing zone. This has no visible effect but many users don’t like it if that happens, so they prefer mc6 files.

mc6 materials work on figures and props alike.
Mat poses always work for figures, but for props they only work if the prop is assigned to a parent figure. Stand-alone props without a parent figure can’t use pz2 mat poses (see also below).

How can I transform an mt5 or mc6 file into a pz2 matpose?

That's quite easy:
1) Copy the mt5 or mc6 file from the Material folder into the Pose folder.
2) Change the extension to .pz2
3) Open the file with a text editor (e.g. EditPad Lite). Depending on whether it was an mt5 or an mc6 file, after the version information it will say "actor $CURRENT" or "mtlCollection".

If you want to create your matpose for a figure (and also conforming clothes) you have to change this line to "figure".
If you want a matpose for a prop, it has to be "actor $CURRENT". (For props, please read on!)

My pz2 matpose doesn't work for my prop!

In Poser props need to have a parent figure. You can't assign pz2 matposes to a prop without parent figure. In this case you should use material collections (mc6 files).
You can use the procedure described above, in a reversed way, to create material collections out of a mat pose.

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