Reference threads:
http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1677874
http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1685390

SR4 Problem:
All lights added to Poser (4 or 5) other than the default lights get the Internal Name "spotLight #," where # begins with 1 and is incremented for each new light in the set. Like others (see threads), my P5 SR4 does not seem to want to render depth map shadows using Firefly for lights that have the Internal Name "spotLight #." The default lights have the Internal Name "LIGHT #" and their shadows render fine.

Work-Around:
The Work-Around is to save the light set to the library, then edit the .lt2 file to replace all the "spotLight #" entries with something like "LIGHT00#." I think it has to begin with "LIGHT", and if you have a default light as part of the set then you can add characters, like "00" to avoid a naming conflict.

I couldn't find a Python command to change the Internal Name of a light, only dial parameters.

I don't know why this seems to work, or if it's breaking something else. I tried it on a Global Illumination Light set and got all shadows with no ill effects. Try this at your own risk.

Good Luck!

Hmmm! I tried the other stuff last night, delete shadow.tmp files, switch back and forth between P4 renderer and p5, all to no avail. I am so glad you found this! I don't know how you did it. After you've renamed the light in the .lt2 file then you just use the light sets from the shelf without having to rename, right? That's not so bad. I assume you can edit the .lt2 file in wordpad? Thanks very much!

Yes, once you edit the Internal Name(s) in the .lt2 file and save back to the library, you just click on the light set as usual from then on. You don't have to edit the .lt2 file again, unless you add a light to it. You might want to rename the .lt2 file (you don't have to), or save the original somewhere, just to be safe. I used wordpad to edit the .lt2 file.

Give that man a cookie. a quick find/replace brought shadows back into my life :)

Whoo-hoo! I was getting very depressed that I really couldn't do anything with Poser. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I can now go back to work.

Bravo - almost can't wait to try it!

.

Sadly doesn't fix it for me. What I've found is that if I render a scene with the default LIGHT1 it produces a shadow, and THEN I can load extra files (or delete the light and import a new LIGHT1 from the library - one I prepared earlier) which will render shadows... BUT if I don't render first then any light from the library, regardless of internal name, will not render depth-map shadows. Nor will any .pz3-contained lights. This strongly suggests that for SR4 even with "tweaks" like the above I'm limited to 3 shadow-casting lights :( There does seem to be a link to light name with this problem, but it also looks to me like there's an issue with shadow map creation too? Cheers, Cliff (who wishes CL would acknowledge the problem and pledge to do something about it - silence is not the best source of information)

I still can't get anything to work. I've tried all the suggestions presented and I can't get any shadows on any lights beyond the default lights. I finally e-mailed CL tech support.

What an SR4 ;-(. Gives me more doubts about P6, because this is a major feature. Hope CL reacts fast on this...

Well, erm, people have been noticing this issue from days and there's not even been a "we'll look into it" or a repsonse to any of our e-mails on the subject that I'm aware of (and it's a couple of days since I first e-mailed them, at least). There's no sign of them reacting fast on this so far... I suppose "fast" may be down to definition (on a geological scale almost anything is fast). I'm dissapointed, because on the whole I've been positive about Poser 5, but desperately need some of the fixes that SR4 supposedly provides (like stable animaiton rendering). However, I can't allow the quality of my renders to drop through the floor (by losing shadows) just in order to have them render without crashing and manually being resumed. Poor show :( More than ever I'm wishing DAZ good luck in developing DAZ Studio!

Well, I only can hope that their Japanese parents are doing something to raise the quality. I was quite optimistic about SR4, but it seems that we need an SR5 soon and CL hasn't intended to do that. Poser6 will definitely not be the solution to the problems. People won't buy it, if CL cannot provide a Poser5 with major issues solved, and I consider this as major issue. Just my 2 cent - Walter

There will be three infinite lights that cast shadows.

Add a fourth light. It will be a spotlight by default. Change it to an inifinite light.

Save the light set to the library.

Edit the .lt2 file in three places:

------------[stuff above]-------------------
.
.
.
}
camera SHADOW_CAM_LITE 4
{
storageOffset 0 0 0
objFileGeom 0 0 :Runtime:geometries:Camera:Camera.obj
}
light spotLight 1 <---- change 'spotLight 1' to 'LIGHT001'
{
storageOffset 0 0.3487 0
geomResource 7
}

camera SHADOW_CAM_LITE1
{
.
.
.
------------[stuff below]-------------------

------------[stuff above]-------------------
.
.
.
camera SHADOW_CAM_LITE 4
{
name GetStringRes(1025,18)
off
bend 1
dynamicsLock 1
hidden 0
addToMenu 1
castsShadow 1
includeInDepthCue 0
parent spotLight 1 <---- change 'spotLight 1' to 'LIGHT001'
channels
{
focal focal
{
.
.
.
------------[stuff below]-------------------

------------[stuff above]-------------------
.
.
.
smoothPolys 1
cameraModel depth
}

light spotLight 1 <---- change 'spotLight 1' to 'LIGHT001'
{
storageOffset 0 0.3487 0
geomResource 7
lightType 0
name Light 4
.
.
.
------------[stuff below]-------------------

Save the .lt2 file as a text file.

If you used Wordpad, it may have appended ".txt" to the file name. Rename the file to end in ".lt2"

Set up a simple scene. I used the ball prop and a visible ground plane.

Make sure you check Firefly and Cast Shadows in your render options.

Load your edited light set.

Arrange the lights so they should cast four distinct shadows.

Render and count the shadows.

The image is what I get using P5 SR4 on a W2K machine.

I will try today the step by step method, cuz now I see that maybe I wasn't doing it right. Question, if you changed the new spotlight to an infinite light, why would it still read as spotLight in the .lt2? That's what I had a problem with last night. All my lights (20 in all) were infinite lights (I use homemade HDRI light sets). The .lt2 unless I was looking in the wrong place, didn't list the lights as spotlights. I tried to do the same test with Don instead of a ball, and I could not reproduce the results. I will tonight with your copy of the code try to reproduce the results above. I have to confess I don't see why this would work. Changing the name to lights that cast shadows seems simple enough, but why would P4 renderer call them correctly while Firefly wouldn't? With the number of lights I use, I now see why you've called this a tedious workaround. I guess I can change them all at once, so it's not so bad. This bug makes Daz3d's global lighting packs useless, right? Unless you do the hack on the .lt2? Man I am starting to get depressed again! LOL! I think I needed to find the light listings under the shadowcam calls. I'll try again and let you know. Thanks for the more details!

I had a scene that only had infinate lights. i set up the lt2, opened it in notepad, did a find/replace for 'spotLight' to 'Light' and hit "replace all", saved the file. reset the lights from the lt2 and rendered. It worked for me.

Whether Poser recognizes a light as an infinite light or a spotlight doesn't seem to depend on the Internal Name of the light, but rather a parameter called lightType. The lightType value does change as you convert a light from spot to infinite using the gui. The name doesn't change probably because it's internal (not visible to the user via the gui) and it didn't used to matter what the name was to the renderer. Now in SR4 it matters! Not whether it's a spot or infinite light, but whether it renders depth map shadows.

O.k. I did for sure what Tyger_purr did since the previous post said to use find replace. I created the light set. Closed Poser. Opened .lt2 in wordpad. Did find and replace spotLight with light00. Saved the wordpad file. (did not check to see if it had .txt on the end.) Reopened the file on Poser launch. Used python script to delete old light set. Applied the modified light set. Rendered. Still no shadows. I'm not sure if wordpad changed the extension, but the lightset applied. I was suspicious that it hadn't changed anything, but I could see the altered code in the wordpad file. I saved over the original lightset from wordpad. Should I name it something else? Did I go wrong anywhere else in the procedure? Also, I am interested to know about working with the file and the lights after this had been done. Say I delete lights, alter the pose of the figure, etc, etc. (It seems that adding lights as needed is going to be a problem right off, cuz everytime you add one you'll have to go thru this just to see what it's doing.) Can now we just save the file and have the shadows working when the file is opened? Without having to reapply the light set again? I can spend a week test rendering lights. Thanks so much!

Things probably not significant: I didnt close poser, I used note pad, I didnt delete the previous lights Something that may make a difference: I did not put 00 on my find/replace, and I did capitalize Light I have saved and closed my fixed file and rendered it several time now. The fix seems to be permanent.

If this is working for most, I'll have to try it.

If you used Wordpad, it may have appended ".txt" to the file name. Rename the file to end in ".lt2" A bit OT but if you 'Save' from Wordpad it will append .txt. If you do not save and close WordPad you will get a warning message that says if you want to save, click yes and .txt does not get added.

O.k. I got it to work!!!! Thanks for all your help!!!

Your very welcome, and there is new hope:

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1690930

Should be "you're"; or "y'all are" We all learned a little something about lights in Poser!

Jeff01 I'm not a moron - honest, I promise I'm not. That's exactly what I did last time. I'm sure it is. At least, it's what I meant to do... ...however, starting with just a 4-light set I have managed to get it working exactly as you describe, even working on larger light sets (like the one I'm actually using in an animaiton now!). Last night for the first time EVER I rendered a (fairly low-res, draft) version of the animaiton out to bitmap files in one pass. Without crashes. With shadows. Cool! Many MANY thanks not only for the (VERY tedious!) workaround, but for being patient enough to slow us down and go through the motions step-by-step. It seems I CAN now render shadows and use some of SR4's positive benefits. Now - off to read my IM and that other thread... Cheers, Cliff