I.E. - Try making a realistic looking chandelier with 20 or so candles/lights and THEN ADD LIGHTING EFFECTS. :-) Using both Poser and Bryce is fun, but if I want really pretty scenes and effects I export people to Bryce- but unfortunately, as everyone knows, I obviously can't pose them in Bryce, and it would take way to long to export every single frame into bryce for animation... SO HOw has everyone else gotten around Poser's ominous spotlights and superspotlights? I.E. If I want an explosion, or a more realistic looking lamp, or ESPECIALLY a chandelier, I'm looking at a large number of spotlights!

The lighting in poser is all about making the figure look good (which is what I do with it), not to create fixture effects. It has no raytracer. Why don't you shine one of the lights through a prop full of holes and see what effect you can get on the figure. Lightbulbs in poser could be done with transparency for the glass and ambient color for the filiment. This won't cast light however... -JH.

Thanks, Jeff. The holey ball is a good idea, (One that I'll use, no doubt! :-) but I'm looking at using lights to make various objects look like the source of light, as in Sci-fi, fantasy: what do do when you want the light of a bright weapon projectile to reflect off of the walls it passes by? In Bryce, you have radial light sources and object light sources and different shapes and angles of light sources. In poser, it's just one close spotlight, and one infinitely far spotlight.

Hi Folks! Lighting does seem to be a problem in Poser. I routinely have to bring the rendered image into Photoshop and use the Lighting/Contrast slider to brighten the image. I too would love to find out what kinds of light settings y'all are using to get the best images. Peter (Dr Zik)

I know you've probably done this already, but, IN ADDITION TO THE LIGHTS YOU HAVE ALREADY... First, change the color of ambient lighting on your objects to a higher shade of grey. IF that's not enough, try higher shades of grey, BUT IF you know exactly what I'm talking about... Then make three or more light sources (try infinite or move them as far away from the objects they point at as possible.) of the primary colors, but set at something around twice the illumination on the color-change settings. Play with high intensities way past 100% and the locations of those lights on your objects, the farther, the better. IF that doesn't work, then I'm as lost as I say I am in my first post.... and I should be labelled newbie. :-)

Make the ambient color of your prop a light gray and parent one the lights to it, then it will seem to cast light from its glow.

Actually, I was hoping that somebody might read this and say, "Hey! I've got a utility that does that!" or "Hey, I've got a morph target or animation that moves light around like that!" If not, I may make a few preset light positions and animations (and put them into morph dials if possible) and post 'em myself. It would just take a while with so many small lights and 12% intensities... In other words, it would SUCK! :-) But, I'm holding out on the hope that someone else has already done this.... Pretty please?

Attached Link: http://www.handspanstudios.com

I have some free light presets but they are made to help skin look better, (the original lighting made horrible black blobs sometimes.) they are here if anyone wants them: http://www.diatonis.com/handspan/lights1.zip I think that the area of light presets has been overlooked and good special effect lighting presets would be very useful. Ingrid

I have found that the black blobs or polys are caused by using the wrong camera to render with. Use the Main, Dolly or Aux camera's for rendering only. -JH.

I use a camera filter to diffuse the lighting. I posted some sample pics a while back. Basically, its a flat rectangle parented to the main camera and flat to the camera. I set its color to whatever scene color tone I want and set its translucency to around 80 to 95%. Now, when the scene renders, it renders through a semi transparent rect. This greatly diffuses the lights, diminishes the harsh contrast and equalizes the shadow and lighted areas. It literally brings out details in the shadowed areas. I'd post the pics but they are pics of rather endowed women in costumes and some people get a bit touchy about that kind of thing. BTW, can I say endowed?

Mason: That's a very cool idea. jascal: Krel is a fan of overexposed lighting and posted some presets, possibly in Free Stuff, search by name. But Poser is a low end 3d program. Have you seen the demo of Maya running under OS X?

Here's the pic I posted of the diffusion rectangle example.

In response to JeffH- I was using the main camera, the even 360 degree lighting preset just has problems. I don't ever have that trouble with my preset 360#3 which has now become my default. I don't think it looks overexposed despite that it generates fewer shadows. Try it. Or don't :-).

Attached Link: http://www.craigburton.com/pages/posertuts.html

After reading this thread this morning, I did a search on the net and discovered (rediscoverd?) a great set of tutorials by Craig Burton. I can't wait to try out these techniques, because they look very good. I also like the explainations of the classic lighting techniques for film and naming the different types of lights. http://www.craigburton.com/pages/posertuts.html

Thanks for the line on the tutorials. Not seen these before. Look very interesting.