Lately, my rendering is getting worse OR I haven't taken notice before (Taken it into more consideration). I read the manual, did Forum searches (Going page to page 'teadius hour used') and the quick search of similiar problems. Web searches, and other. Not getting anywhere. If you look at the skin texture. I always get the head texture rendered nicely, but on the neck and below, it gets worse. If you look at the shoulders, the skin texture gets dotty (red). This happens with all the skin textures I have purchased. So, my rendering technique is the flaw.

Here is my rendering defaults.

Here is another one. A very good example. Now what am I doing wrong?

Turn texture filtering off, it often produces seams in the texture. TF is only supposed to be used on objects which are far from the camera which acquire a moirpattern. The second pic, the only time I have seen this is when I had a spotlight with a really really tight focus. What kind of lights are you using?

Oh and turn raytracing off as well, there's nothing in there that's casting a true reflection is there? If you're using reflection maps, you don't need raytracing on.

Something else which probably won't affect the quality but it's pointless having set to on is your Displacement maps option. Since your value is set at zero, you may as well uncheck the option.

See..those are the default settings from Poser 5. All I did is uncheck "Smooth Polygons" and "Remove BackFacing polygons". Why not uncheck all? Or not bother with it. Yeah..I am mad now. Like what gives. Tired and hot. No answers. All my renders come out like the second one. No matter what lighting, no matter what texture. They always come out like that in all my characters. I always have to cover it up. And say to myself.."Gees..will deal with it later." Well..the later is times up. For the past weeks, looking for resources, and no rendering guide. Yeah..in the manual..but no examples of what happens, and what doesn't happen. Very Sorry for my ranting...

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

The P5 defaults are crap, enough to drive anyone to distraction. I mean why would you want in the draft P4 mode to leave anti-aliasing off and cast shadows on, when calculating shadows will take a lot longer than to anti-alias? Yeah right... Stewer has written an excellent FAQ/tutorial for Firefly rendering options, check it out at the link - very helpful. Also a thought on bump maps - check your bump value and see which node any bump maps are plugged into. Only .bum files (the old P4 bumps) should go into gradient bump node. .jpg bump maps should go into the main bump node (or into displacement, can be interesting.) But you only want a bump strength of around 0.01 or even 0.005 on close ups, otherwise your model will look like something reptilian!

I tried your settings with default P5 light, V3 and a few skins, but I cannot reproduce this. Which makes me think there is something odd going on in the Material Room. I suggest that we try out identical things: you choose V2 or V3, and a free texture that can be downloaded here from freestuff. We will ender face camera default and the default three lights in Poser5. Then we will use your settings and see whether we get the smae results. Also in the material room. Of course it's your free choice, but this asks for a scientific approach. I do understand your anger and I want to try and help you with this.

I never did anything in the material. Just loaded up a V3, then applied the textures. Then selected a light. When I purchased poser 5, my renders came out good for awhile. Then I touched some things. Then pressed default. Then all went haywire in my renders lately (For the past month). Ever since then, I been doing reading, searching, and so on. I even looked at others render options..that they have posted. Used all my skin textures..all the same. After my crazy rant. I did a render with all unchecked (Except for "Cast Shadows"). Yeah...came out nicely. But doesn't seem right. This is just for the skin texture. How about the props..and other stuff later on. I even maxed "Pixal Samples" to "12". What is bucket size? Raytrace bounces..how large/min can the number be? In the manaul explains "...how many bounces when raytracing" Those two really confuse me the most. No examples or specific in numbers. I will look into the link you gave me Karen. Looks helpfull and I added to favorites. Hope others are doing the same. :-)

Oh ok..I will look into you advice about this science research thing together Aeneas for all of us. :-)

Ok..here is what I did. 1.) Downloaded a freebie character "Lisa For V3" Here is the result. Same..

2.) Here is my light setting..Default in P5..

And no touch in the Material Room. Only posting, what it is. Also the rendering is what I have above.

Dunno if this will help but I'd suggest that you get rid of the shadows on all but one light, unless you're trying to go for an indoor scene with artificial lighting. I also recommend increasing the shadow map size to 1024. This will increase the load on your machine and the render time but shadows will look better for it. Finally - and this is just my preference - change "depth map" to "ray trace". Ray tracing seems a tad faster and I prefer the look of it.

Lisa for V3 is not the same in my eyes-- no green shadows, which the other renders oddly had. In fact, it looks rather acceptable. What do you find awful about it? Almost every texture maker over sizes the head texture and undersizes the body texture so that when they are seen together like this there is a drastic flow off of detail and creaminess. I'm gonna tentatively revise that to every texture maker-- I know some wh try to minimise the difference between the two texture maps but there always Is a difference. I think that is what you are seeing here. Emily

hmmm...never thought of that. Two different texture sizes from the head and body. Because the head rendering is perfect and the body texture is wacko.

Something else I just noticed. I believe you're using Poser's default light colours, which are, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking awful. Change to 7 white lights, at around 35% intensity. Position them more or less evenly around the figure, so you get an even spread of light. If you do that in addition to what I said in my previous post about the light settings, it will give you a fighting chance of a decent render. Experiment with coloured lights at a later date, when you're more comfortable with the basics of getting a good render.

Oh for heavens sake. Default or other light settings (DNA')..the render comes out the same. You know what..forget it. No one has an answer. I will go on and figure this out myself...gees Thanks for the help.

I have loaded Lisa, and with your settings, my result is approximately the same. So I took a look at the textures themselves. This is freestuff, so no crits meant! Lisa's bodymap is 1500x1900 pixels The Headmap is 2000x1360 pixels. This means that the width of the neck is more that the total width of the body with the skin "peeled off". There are far more pixels in the head part than in the body, so the head texture is much finer. For a close-up render, these maps aren't detailed enough. I also have the impression that the maps aren't fully based on skin. It's also bizarre that the body is less wide than the head. To give a comparison (once again my excuses to the creator of Lisa. Lisa *is* a freebie!) with the International maps at Daz: Body texture: 4000 X 5333 pixels Head Texture: 2719 x 4000 pixels You'll notice that the body is wider than the head and that the size is much bigger, meaning that there will be many more pixles in the same textured V3. The pixels won't be as visible. Otoh: The result is miles apart from what you showed first.

"Oh for heavens sake. Default or other light settings (DNA')..the render comes out the same. You know what..forget it. No one has an answer. I will go on and figure this out myself...gees Thanks for the help." No, you know what? Everyone here has the answer, or part of it. Thanks for the nice attitude.

Getting the skins to match at the neck/head and shoulder seams are some of the toughest to line up. The 1st skin I do not recognize but it was never meant for closeups. Your settings are fine...Your eye has become sharper. Steffy and many otheres do a wonderful job on those areas. You may need to have a look. There's a new one Shahara by Syyd at DNA that looks very promising due out any day. Bucket size is how big a square you render at a time. Halving it eases the load on your pc. Wish I had a real answer, but this is what I see.

To SamTherapy; And your response wasn't aggressive enough? Why the "F" word? The responses are putting me in a circle. Read...

No, my response wasn't aggressive. That's not me; ask anyone who knows me. "Fuck" is a colloquialism which, I believe, is perfectly valid in describing just how bad Poser's default lights really are. Long and short of it... Everyone here has been helpful, and you'd be as well following all the advice given here. Your renders are bad because of a number of factors; you cannot reduce it down to just one. Pretty much every setting you're using is detracting from the quality of your renders. Summary: Some of the textures you're using are probably not good enough/high enough res to give the results you want. Your render settings are wrong. Your lights are wrong. There is definitely something badly wrong with the bump settings on your second render. Either you're plugged into the wrong channel or the bump setting is too high. Or - a possibility - the texture is just plain weird.

Thanks Everyone for being helpfull. I will take everyones responses in consideration.

Robo, a few ideas for you to consider. post 1 image seems to have a slight red cast over parts of the image and a defect under the chin on the neck. post 3 image to me looks like a bump map on the body texture, or a strange texture map. post 12 look fine. I would bring the body texture up in a paint program or viewer and have a good look to see if the flaw is in the texture. Then render exactly the same image with the default poser 4 and firefly renderer and compare the images. Since the default lighting for poser uses colored lights it can throw off the skin texture colors. You may possibly be having a hardware problem with your video card or monitor. Try putting up an image of the color spectrum or open the color picker in poser and see if all the colors show correctly. best of luck

Turn texture filtering off, I know it makes a huge difference for my body textures when it is turned off. It is good to leave it on for certain hair items that will not render properly unless it is turned on, but does distort the body textures. HTH

Agree. I been rendering all night, Testing and testing.