Using Atmosphere Presets
The Create Atmosphere button opens a simple dialog box where you can choose from four preset atmospheric effects, including Fog, Smokey, Smokey Room, and Depth Cue. After making a selection, the wacro sets up all the necessary nodes to create your selection for the Atmosphere node. More on adding Atmosphere effects to the scene is covered later in this chapter.

Defining a Light Style
The Set Up Light Style wacro can only be applied when a light object is selected in the Shader Window. It opens a simple dialog box where you can choose from three light styles, including Diffuse Only, Specular Only, and White Only. After you make a selection, the wacro changes the colors used for the Diffuse and Specular values to white and black, black and white, or white for both depending on your selection.

Enabling Ambient Occlusion and Image-Based Lighting
The Set Up Ambient Occlusion button can only be applied when a light object is selected in the Shader Window. It sets up ambient occlusion for the selected light material by enabling the Ambient Occlusion option in the Properties palette.

Ambient occlusion works only if the Raytracing option is enabled in the Render Settings dialog box.

The IBL button can be applied only when a light object is selected in the Shader Window. It opens the Texture Manager, where you can select the image to use for your image-based light and it offers to enable ambient occlusion. You can learn more about image-based lighting and ambient occlusion in Chapter 7, “Adding Scene Lighting.”

Removing Detached Nodes
If you’ve created a complex material and it includes some nodes that aren’t connected to anything, you can use the Remove Detached Nodes button to quickly remove any detached nodes. Detached nodes have no effect on the material and will only take up memory.

Adding New Wacros
You can add new wacros to the Wacros palette in the same manner as you add scripts to the Python Scripts palette by clicking an open button to open a dialog box. Clicking a script button with the Alt/Option key held down clears the selected button and clicking a wacros button with the Ctrl/Command button held down opens the script within a text editor for editing.

If you place a script file in the \Runtime\Python\poserScripts\Wacros\UserDefined directory, the script will appear under the User Defined pop-up menu the next time you restart Poser

[Figure 8-32] Subsurfacing scattering wacro

Use Subsurface Scattering
1.       Open Poser with the Ryan figure visible.

2.       Click the Material tab to the open the Material Room.

3.       Click the side window control to the right of the Shader Window to open the Wacros palette (if necessary).

4.       Select the Head Camera to zoom in on the head and within the Document Window, click on the head object to make its material active.

5.       Hold down the Shift key and click the Add Subsurface Scattering button. A dialog box will appear reminding you that all lights will have depth map shadows enabled. Click OK to clear the dialog box.

Several new nodes are added to the Shader Window to enable the subsurface scattering materials. The Shift key causes these nodes to be added to all body materials.

6.       In the Light palette, rotate the main light around to the back of the head so light is cast on the back of the head.

7.       Select the Render panel in the Document Window and click the Render button.

The thinner parts of the ear are illuminated as if light is shining through it, as shown in Figure 8-32.

8.   Select File, Save As and save the file as Subsurface scattering wacro.pz3.