I have been playing with hdr lighting today, and tried this experiment. I used a digital photo I took a few months back as the lighting model, imported the poser figure and made an alpha plane of the digital photo as the backdrop. I`m quite pleased with the results, although a better skin texture (with a bump map) may have looked better. I will post any improvements.

Second test, same figure, just changed skin textures and hair. Same light setup

Yup a whole range of possiblities now. Been playing witht he same. Works great ~S~

Looks really good! You may have noticed that certain hair really slows down the rendering once it reaches that part. Some hair is really incredibly slow to render. The Koz hair is my favorite as it renders very fast...

Hair really is a problem. I dont mind so much that rendering slows to a crawl, its just that, when complete, it never really looks real. Veritas, which Koz hair are you talking about? Not sure if I`ve got it

Attached Link: http://digitalbabes2.com/

This is always the hair I prefer to use for Vue 5 renders- especially for IBL renders. --Because of the way that Kozoburo makes them- they render very fast in Vue.

I have other hair styles I've purchased that are very nice looking in Poser- but don't work well in Vue. The straight Poser 4 renderer is Phong based. Ray-Trace and Radiosity based renderers go "nuts" on rendering the hair elements of these more difficult hair models- they are either very SLOW, and or, very NOISY-Looking after being rendered.

Koz hair is both very realistic looking and fast. I don't know why more hair model makers don't use his technique...

This one is 'Long Hair Evolution'. (Base Brunette color).

If you look in Poser freestuff you will usually find LOTS of free color mats (Blonde, Red, etc.) Some of the really good free color mats for Koz hair is made by Wenke. There are HUGE amounts of them for nearly all Koz hair styles on Wenke's website.

Search under HAIR, KOZ, Wenke, etc...

Thanks for the heads up veritas

Watch our for copyright violations as it used to be that some or all of Kozoburo's hair is "for non-commercial use only." However, I just downloaded one set and the readme says: "This Poser hair is free to use without restrictions in your (personal or commercial) renderings . but...Please do not redistribute the files or a part of the file." This has renewed my interest in Koz for hair. ::::: Opera :::::

gaz, Would you be willing to report out the render time for those two images, including size and resolution of the output image, and your rig specifications? The jpg posted is downloaded at 875 x 656 at 72 dpi. :::: Opera ::::