Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/

I wanted to let you know that I'm releasing my free Python script for PPP and Poser 5 that allows you to use light sets created from HDRI probes in conjunction with LightGen and HDRShop. Gets beautiful skin tones right out of FireFly (no postwork).

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/

Looks good on strand based P5 hair, too. Again, straight out of FireFly.

[credits: texture is called "Sharon" and is in Freestuff, the character is Judy, hair is HMann-FMSilky and the clothing came with Poser 5 as well. Both images use P5's skin shader node, Judy's top has a velvet shader attached to it.]

Great Stuff Stewer. I think this is exactly what I was looking for!!!!

Are any of these lightset text files available anywhere to use with this?

You can use LightGen and HDRShop to crate those text files. Unfortunately, those two programs are Windows only.

Looks great Stewer!

And it is not difficult to create those files, even I found out after reading the instructions that come with HDRShop and LightGen ;-)

I mentioned this plugin in the Cinema4D forums, good to see (from Stewer's link above) it can work in Poser as well! One note though when using the LightGen plugin (with HDRShop), it may throw out an error if you set the number of lights to more that 20, (I have done one with 400 lights!) DO NOT click the "OK" on the little error window, just wait and the plugin will eventually generate the TXT file (Or whatever output you are using). This is a know bug in the program, and hopefully it will be fixed? Maybe? :> Happy Rendering! TMG

Great job. Love to see more in this direction.

Combine it with ray tracing and a reflection map for real fun :)

Sorry for my inexperience... but stewer can you tell me how this python script works? I went to your site but didn't mention how, I load it in P4 PP and in P5 but I just can't figure out what to do, it works with *.hdri files? or with something else? Thanks for your help stewer BTW great pictures!!

Forgot to tell ya people listen to stewer playing the guitar nd singing pretty good stuff the in his web site under Music Projects link a little OT but worth it :^"

The script won't read .hdri files. You have to use HDRShop and LightGen to convert them to light set text files, the LightGen web site has good instructions how to do that. Make sure you check "scale total light output", otherwise you'll get hopelessly overexposed images.

I have read the instruction and follow them, the thing is that i keep getting very bright lightining in my renders... Thanks stewer

If the lights are too bright, tell LightGen to scale the total light output to something less than 1.0, or simply use ockham's excellent LightPanel script to change the intensity of all lights in the scene.

Yeah they are, i would give it a try! Thanls again stewer

Last questions: How many time i have to wait until i can click ok in the error message? What were the settings you used for those pictures you posted here (in LightGen)? Thanks

Hey stewer this is just great! Spent last night sorting thru all this stuff, and managed to get it to work. Thanks for your sharing this great technique! Just a question, this process produces lights for my scene (and does a great job with blindingly short render times). I did not use the probelight node for anything. Am I supposed to use the probelight node for something?

Oh, just another question, is there any place to go to get either light probe source pics, or the panoramic derivatives? I assume a pic already made into panoramic format can be loaded into HRDIshop and then run the plugin to get the light set information. I have about five panoramic images I got free from a UK computer mag a long time ago. Are there more somewhere? Any Links? Thanks again stewer!

Attached Link: http://www.doschdesign.com/

Dosch Design has several CDs with HDRI images. The CDs cost a lot but I think there are a few free images in small resolutions that you can grab. If you do a search on the web for HDRI images you'll run across a bunch of sites that have HDRI images that have been setup. Some of the HDRI images used with the lightsets make remarkable renders. stewer thanks for the tips. How well does this work in Poser5? I've been haivng a lot of problems in Poser 5 with lots of lights, Poser 5 crashes or just starts acting weird. mostly happens to me with global lightsets that have been created with Poser 4. wondering how this process works out in Poser5.

How well does this work in Poser5? Had no problems so far with SR3/Windows. W hat is troublesome is deleting lots of lights via Python script, but that issue was fixed in the OS X version, so I expect the fix for Windows with SR4. Am I supposed to use the probelight node for something? No, you don't need the probleight node for these lightsets. What were the settings you used for those pictures you posted here (in LightGen)? Almost the default settings, all I changed was clicking the checkbox to make it scale the total light output to 1.

I played around last night some more and I did notice that if you stick with no textures and just use material nodes that the shadow maps were rendering at about 1 second per shadow map. I was getting great results there. When I put in a texture map, of course the 10-20 second shadow map calc times came back. Pretty weighty rendering times await for really serious renderings. If you just do stills, then this is the best technique I've seen yet. Also ockham's delete lights Python script (I think it's ockham's anyway) really cuts down time in experimenting with the Lightgen plugin output. I found that setting total light output to .6 helped me get less bright renders. Note that these light sets appear to be much brighter than they are until you actually render them. Machineclaw thanks! I'm off to the websites as soon as I get home. Oh, I made up a trick for dealing with the error message in HDRI shop. As Paoli mentioned, it can be a guessing game for when the light set file is done. I broke down and browsed the file output to the desktop and moved the program window over a bit so I can see when its done. Lightgen makes two temp files on the desktop and then a lightset file when its done. As soon as you see the file there you can close out of HDRShop.