This is from a thread I saved when it came out. I couldn't find this post anymore and the thread appears to be different so I'm reposting kupas words in their entirity. I've run the spellchecker but that's all I've done to this post from Kupa - one of the the fathers of Poser. I tried to email it to the Doc but the Email has a 2000 character limit so I'm posting it here as supplemental material. I'm not trying to steal anyone's thunder. - I've got too much respect for the Doc to do that. FWIW, it talks about those shadowmap cameras. -----[Begin kupa quote]---------- 22. Re: Poser 5 REVEALED! by kupa on 8/21/02 13:08 Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com Rob, I'm glad to hear that you're working on creating your own light sets. I know that they aren't the easiest lights in the world to control but there are a few good solid tips that can make positioning and controlling them a lot easier. I personally really like using our lights and have found that they can be set-up really fast and with a few tweaks the results are great. I guess folks like Gabriel have also had good luck building creative and useful lights. Glad we didn't change the system, that would've have hit artists like him pretty hard, and would have switched horses midstream on folks like you that are getting their feet wet is learning about lighting. One the really important issue to master is learning when to use infinite lights versus spotlights. Spotlights yield much more precise shadow maps. In Pro Pack, a feature carried forward into Poser 5, we have a unique camera type called a "shadowmap camera 1,2,3".. etc. By selecting these cameras and viewing through them, you can precisely focus the spotlight and shadow fall exactly where you need it. Plus by zooming in or closing the angle down, you can bring up the fidelity of the shadowmap by spreading it across a smaller surface. Controlling the camera and lights jointly, by viewing through the camera and dialing in the light's parameters takes a little practice, but what good skill doesn't? A curve ball when it comes to spotlights and the shadowmap cameras? If the spot light is set to point at an object. The light will behave differently as you are "driving it" via the shadowmap camera. Another good technique to remember is to set-up an auxiliary camera to provide a high or wide view of the whole scene. Then you can easily switch to that view and manually grab the visible spotlight and drag it anywhere in the scene, positioning it very quickly, and finetuning the shadow via the shadowmap cam. Don't forget to turn up the shadow map settings to get better shadow resolution. 1024 is the max setting, 256 is the default for any light. Be aware though, speed decreases with larger shadow maps. Another good tip? Not all shadows need to be set at their full default value. Turning them down to .5 or .2 can subtlely or radically change the amount of detail preserved in the shadow areas of your scene. Plus in Poser 5 we are also enabling the use of Raytraced shadows on a per light basis. Raytraced shadows in P5 can be set with a few pixels of blur at their edge, but personally I'm more a fan of realistic soft shadows. Raytraced shadows are something that lots of artists have come to accept when using raytracers like those in Bryce. They can produce a luscious image, but the shadows aren't very realistic. Our eyes are trained to forgive that, but the fact still remains, raytraced shadows typically don't look like any real world shadow. I use infinite lights when I'm quickly illuminating a scene and don't need that much precision. Infinite lights do a good job with provide a soft ambient light source. They can be controlled with the shadowmap cameras, as well to fine tune their focus point. Another really important point to remember that lots of Poser gurus seem to not do, and to be honest it's surprising, is "memorizing" an element. What memorizing a light will do is save that light, in it's current state, with every parameter permanently ascribed to that light. That way when you reset the light, it goes back to your memorized position, not our default setting. Like a light? Memorize the element, and save it into the library. The memorizing trick is especially important for props that require a world position to work correctly, like hair, or for a set of parameters in a character that define that character, like nose and eye width. If you get into a bad state and need to hit reset for that memorized character, it'll revert back to it's memorized state, leaving your character morphs intact. Anyway, just wanted to share some comments about lights and Poser. Kupa

Before they made me they broke the mold!
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