:) So now we have have renderings of a lady shielding a candle and have the light coming from between her fingers? If this program gets artists thinking about their light sources, it is worth it. (I am sooooo tired of looking at gallery images with bloated suns and full brightly glowing moons... and no shadows.) Carolly

And better yet: quality renders in less than seven days! Sometimes think you have to be God to create quality renders in Poser...

this looks mighty fine. Can you do a portrait ?

"If this program gets artists thinking about their light sources, it is worth it. (I am sooooo tired of looking at gallery images with bloated suns and full brightly glowing moons... and no shadows.)" Excellent point. Does anyone know if Shade supports Network Rendering or distributed rendering? That could make a world of difference in rendering high quality GI as far as render times are concerned as well. Instead of having just one processor slaving away on calculations, you can have several.

Shade Pro 7 supports network rendering across unlimited nodes. LE and Standard do not.

Interesting. Very interesting. Getting the lights to do what I want usually takes over half of the time I work on an image (20 test renders is not unusual for me). Now if anyone knows exactly what Poser 5 features can be imported into Shade 7 Pro, I know whether to buy it or not.

the light thing is what bugged me the most about poser... you really have to play with them quite a lot to get a decent render.. the above portrait.. i think is the best i've ever done.. and only 2 light.. and 8 mintutes render time.. it took about three renders to get the lights right..

wow.... that is about the best hair rendering I've seen in quite some time. very nice render overall.... I quess its decision time :) i see a couple of tears, or whatever...near the shirt collar and on the forhead/hairline. Any ideas of what that is about ???

by the way, which version of Shade do you have? I guess the rendering is the same in all versions, but a bit difference in the lights ????

In the portrait there is also a lighter area to the left of her head just above her shoulder...

I think the hairline is actually transparency setting not quite right. I noticed the same thing with a close-up of V3 eyebrows. When I checked the material settings, transparency was set at 90%. I couldn't get anything at all though when I changed the transparency to 100%. I thought I was applying it only to the eyebrows. I am going to try again, though!

Grey_Tower: Reflection on the wall, maybe? I also seem to see the reflection of the front of the floor.

Message edited on: 09/03/2004 21:28

These renders look great. so far all renders I've seem to have hard shadows, is there any way to make it softer? The outline on the character looks like reflection from the wall behind her.

In the light settings, there is a slider to set softness of shadows.

i've been scanning the Japanese shade sights, and I gotta tell ya...this program does some unbelievable renders.

From the fact sheet at CL I gather that rendering is not the same in all versions, Shade 7 Pro has the ability to combine raytracing and shadow mapping, the other versions don't. Which is strange, I usually use a mix of mapped shadows and raytraced shadows in Poser 5. I'd expect Shade to have more advanced render possibilities than Poser, even the LE version....

version= i'm using shade le... the outline = i added a 10% reflection to the wall and floors. don't ask me why i made a reflecting wall...maybe cause i could.. i've done dumber things before... the tears in her shirt near her neck..(wow you guys are good.. i didn't even notice that!)= me being lazy setting up the model in poser.. .......... anyway.. i think that's it for my tests.. at least one i'll be posting... unless someone would like to see something specific... i really do apreciate all the comments.. they've been very helpfull. bottom line= i think for $50... it's an amazing addon for poser users who are looking for a little bit more flexibilty when it comes to lighting...

i can buy Mimic 3 for $33 with a voucher... or shade 7 LE for $49..... which to do ???????????????

Go Shade, Dave-So...

Nice test renders. I brokedown and bought Shade 7 Standard. couple of reasons. glow, particle, and Anisotropic Reflection Rendering. something only available in higher end applications, poser 5 and Daz Studio cannot really do these things. The little extra in standard I think will make a big difference once people play with the settings. LE looked way to good to pass up at the intro price and the test renders here and other places. Looking forward to more.

You can't beat the price for the quality of rendering combined with the speed. Not to mention, you know, the ability to model stuff. For people looking for a quality renderer, Shade 7 LE is a $49 well spent.

Now I suppose it doesn't come with any free buildings does it ie the standard version? Love esther

I often use dynamic cloth and render my images at frame 30 or so. I downloaded the Vue 4 demo and the Shade 7 LE demo. Both import a Poser scene just fine, at frame 1. In both programs I couldn't find how to go to another frame of the .pz3. Both programs ignore the light settings of Poser. Texture maps and transmpaps work OK, haven't testetd procedural shaders yet. But if I can't use the dynamic features of Poser 5, especially dynamic cloth, neither Vue 4 nor Shade 7 do what I want!

alamanos, thanks for the explanation. It makes sense now. bobcat574 if that was done in Shade Standard, you've almost convinced me to get out my credit card! Can you explain why you used negative lights and what the effect of the red, green, blue, were on the render?
Edited to additional comment.

Message edited on: 09/04/2004 06:36

Are there any cel-chade/ toon- renders for Shade?

sdvl, Vue can certainly be used at any frame but you have to have the additional mover add-on. Dynamic cloth does work in Vue.

No one has yet mentioned that, like other 'useful' :) 3D applications, Shade has an SDK for writing plugins! Looks to be C/C++ since they require MS Visual Studio/.Net for Windows version.

"Both import a Poser scene just fine, at frame 1. In both programs I couldn't find how to go to another frame of the .pz3. " In order to see the animated frames from the Poser scene in Shade, here's a quick tut. Please refer to the Shade docs for more explanation: In Shade 1. Select the Poser scene in the Browser palette 2. Open up the Motion Palette View > Motion or Ctrl+Alt+2 on Windows 3. Click on the Sequence and Auto Key checkboxes 4. Click on Settings button to input your animation settings 5. On the Animation graph, move the scrubber to the last frame and then move the object slider up to the end of the Range.

Have not seen a cel shader or toon renderer yet, only played with the program for 20 minutes so far. Have to printout the manuals today. ONLY Standard and Pro have the plugin manager and the use of sdk and plugins, from the litereature that I've read. If someone comes up with a cel/toon plugin then I don't think the LE version would be able to use it. There are a bunch of plugins for Shade 6, don't think they work in Shade 7, and they are pretty much from the Japanesse community. Have to look more into what they've been up to with this program. but LE can be upgraded, same price as poser users get their standard for.

I've tried the LE Demo a bit. What I don't see, and the tutorial doesn't mention it, is the ability to import a texture for use on an object made in Shade. Maybe I'm just not finding it. And if you can't import a texture in LE does the Shade Standard have that ability?

Yeah you can apply an image to an object the settings and options are unser the Surface panel. I have Shade 7 Standard, I only have options for file formats of BMP, TGA, Quicktime, and something else. No JPG which I found odd, since when I imported a Poser figure the JPG texture came into shade. I'm not sure how or what is going on. Only still learning how to pull up the menu's and trying to crash the thing. Interestingly enough when I open a sample model, say the bed which is included as a model, when I go under File and Close that model it asks if I want to save I say no and Shade 7 exits and I'm at my desktop. Its like Close and Exit are the same or something. weirdness.

Thanks. I found it. Importing bmps I just got an error message but when I converted the texture to a tga it worked.

"but LE can be upgraded, same price as poser users get their standard for. " so basically, if you buy LE, you're paying $50 to demo the program...then pay the same upgrade price for the standard edition ???? which makes it $200 instead of $149... Doesn'r seem logical...I'll have to go and read that. Can't afford standard anyway right now...bought the LE version....but that was my plan...learn via LE and then upgrade to Standard at some point.

The prices are intro sale prices. not the normal prices. Shade 7 LE is retail $99 not the intro of $49. I don't think that people are taking that into account, they are looking at the prices listed as THE Price. The CL newsletter stated that the prices were intro.

The $49.00 is if you own Poser. The regular intro price, I think, is $89.00. It could be the Poser price is only an intro as well and they will drop the special price for Poser users. I hope not though.