Forum: Community Center


Subject: Are we buying what we think we are?

Mazanadreams opened this issue on May 18, 2005 ยท 18 posts


xoconostle posted Wed, 18 May 2005 at 9:56 AM

I appreciate it when merchants use promo renders that employ white lights. They may not always be the most complimentary in terms of aesthetics, but they're more "honest" than multihued light sets. Elaborate postwork should be a total no-no in promo renders in my opinion. Some brightness and contrast adjustments are fair enough, but I find heavily postworked "artsy" promo renders to be suspicious and thus a turn-off. When I was a newbie I was very impressed by the globally-lit product renders that DAZ was using at the time (Michael 2 was still fairly new ... long time ago "in Poser years.") I aspired to achieve that look and was frustrated that my renders didn't have that sort of fresh, bright look until I figured out how to do it. After that, it no longer seemed like a very aesthetic option, although it was perfect in DAZ' context of making the product look good. My point is that as one improves with Poser, one builds an arsenal of techniques that pretty much make product promo renders irrelevant. I couldn't agree more with elizabyte's suggestion to check out RuntimeDNA's (Traveler's) free light sets. There are two sets of "soft white" lights there ... #2 is the better one. There are a few lighting rigs in that set that in my opinion would be ideal for promo renders. They aren't "global" enough to wash out and flatten everything, but they're bright enough to show off a product in a non-misleading light (pun intended.)