aight guys....i was inspired by Brian the DefaultGuy's Lightwave renders on his Poser page...... so i said...man....i think Poser can do some of em LightWave like renders....so off to work i went... lookie here....that pic has no postwork whatsoever....well except for the notes i put in.....her hair needs postwork one thing-------> 1. the reflection comes out a bit jagged...the default setting in the reflect node is------> Quality = .2 (later changed to "0") Softness = 0 whats weird is the manual says if you increase the quality the reflection realism increases....well if you increase it to a more positive number the reflection gets more jagged....so i set the quality to "0" then later to "-1" and the reflection improves a lot....but if it goes less than "0" the reflection doesnt improve anymore.. i tried all i know like increasing the "Raytrace Bounces" in the Render Options from 4 to 20....also i changed Softness values....but still no improvement....render was Production quality..... anyone know how to improve the reflection quality besides postworking it? thanks!! Oh ye....thanks stewer for your suggestion about decreasing the Diffuse_Value.....it works!! =)

Very good! Thanks for the information.

To get rid of the jaggies, increase the number of pixel samples. Optionally, you can also change to a gaussian filter and set the filter size to 2. The quality setting of the reflection node does not make a lot of difference for flat surfaces, it's more effective on rough or curved surfaces.

Attached Link: http://brian.curiouslabs.com

Biggert, glad you were up to the challenge! In the past, I've tried to balance out my test images with FireFly and LW renders. This year, my goal is to represent the rendering apps I have that Poser can port into: Carrara, Vue, Max 4 (a little behind the times) and Cinema 4D R7.3 ( I just re-installed onto my XP machine). I haven't used Bryce in years so I think I won't get to it. I'd really love to render in Maya buy can't afford the app. Josh Reiss is providing excellent Poser 5 plugins to host in Maya and Max. Thanks Stefan, as always, for providing this needed information.

thanks again stewer for the suggestions....much appreciated!! =) i'll try your advice and post the results here.

y'now how i rendered this?

oh my god! forgot some tag... and, just to mention, they are maya doll amd vicky2. actually, don't blame me for imperfection, this is just torn out of a process - final result not ahead yet.

Sebastel

Sebastel, you have my attention ... how did you do the water in this one?

illl guess displacement map on a clothplane...then transparency decreased and spotlights used to highlight bumps.... now where's my prize money?!?!

i changed the pixel samples and increased all the way up to 12 then rendered....same jagged edges showed up....no change... then i did the post filter but it blurs the whole image... do you know of another thing i can try? thanks again. =)

povray offers quite an interesting approach to modeling material and surfaces. this was done with a set of macros freely available on the net. the surface is done with what is called "bozo" in povray (with some modification), imposed on an isosurface. since the pure refraction done with the material definition was not dramatic enough, i overlayed it with a "crumpled" normal map. no highlight bumps. export of poser figures made compatible to povray using posray (also freely available). so this is not the result of my work alone, but heavily relates on communities like this one. and one tip for those who are interested now to try on their own: povray is a language. it's not WYSIWYG, it has no graphical interface, but your efforts are rewarded! ;-)

Poser might attempt to pose as Lightwave. But Lightwave will never pose as Poser. Poser is a good app, and does its job. Lightwave can be pure magic.

Firefly is a decent basic renderer and with the ability to add shaders and play with materials can produce some good results. How ever if you were to truly compare it to lightwave with a similar scene i think that you would find that the poser render would be less realistic, a flatter looking render. Lightwave renders look good even when projected on a theater screen, and their realism can be breath taking. Ron

Firefly is a pretty good renderer offering some seriously advanced features for the price point. It is really unfortunate that it has taken so long for the community to (collectively) get over being annoyed about Poser5 and just now start realising how GOOD some of the changes were. Ah well, that's life. Lightwave does soem good stuff but the rendering engine is definitely showing it's age in the mid to high end. With Max and Maya both integrating the fantastic Mental Ray LW is goign to have to make some changes soon or be left way behind. BTW - you could probably do the water as a procedural displacement map :)

I agree with soulhunter, poser 5 is now pretty good. With service release 3 installed it seems quite stable and, if you use the cloth room properly, then it hardly ever crashes or locks up.

concerning the displacement map: actually you're right, "bozo" IS a function.