anyone here using shade7 as an alternative render engine ?? I spent a few hours doing some test animation renders when first got my Shade/poser6 bundle but found its interface nearly incomprehensable ;-/ The shade gallery here has about 6 pictures in it ;-). just wondering has anyone gotten very far with setting up its lighting,shaders etc???

Like yourself I got Shade 7 with P6 but just can't get into it at all. Time to play with it is one reason but I did try a couple of tutes but that didn't work either so I just went back to using Poser. Sorry!!!! thefixer, poser coord.

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

ShadersCafe is probably your best bet. Yes I've used Shade LE and Shade Standard. The lighting and camera controls take a bit of getting used to, the manual tutorials on these 2 functions are pretty good just takes some time. It's nothing like Poser, or it's interface, but PoserFusion does a pretty decent job of grabbing materials and scenes into Shade. There is a Shade forum here that is worth a look through, as well as a Shade forum at RuntimeDNA.

I have posted some pics in the Shade gallery. Warning, they contain nudity. I decided that I was going to learn how to use Shade, since it came with my poser 6. The interface and navigation takes some time to get used to. I used Poser 6 to set up the scene, then I used Shade for the lighting and surfaces.
I really like how the pics turned out. My next step is to learn how to create objects.

Message edited on: 07/17/2005 11:48

AT LEAST! I've won my copy of Shade 7 Standard on a CG contest, but I've found the manual a bit convoluted (my previous modelling experience is with Wings3D), so I'm glad there's a site with tutorials out there!!!

Blondbear, ive seen your Shade gallery images and im very impressed My biggest gripe is with the Shade camera view system Ive used lightwave and Cinema4D extensively but i cannont for the life of me ,get my imported poser figure centered in front of the Darn Shade camera Ill have a look at the tutes over at Shaders cafe

Thanks wolf, The camera was the hardest thing I had to learn. Like you I couldn't figure out how to center my scene. But I saw other people doing it. So I tried to find some kind of tutorial for the camera movement. I really didn't find any, and the manuel is so confusing. I kind of figured it out on my own. If you like I would be more than willing to post a mini tut on using the camera.

Camera for me was also confusing, though when I sat and did tutorials from the manual it made a bit more sence. if you select a part in your scene that is in the center and use the camera controls you can center on a part and render that way. Also which view is active is also important as you can have different views and the camera is looking at different sections. The Shade forum here at renderosity has an old thread, several actually about camera controls and how to use them, mostly by poser users that were having trouble. If I can find a relivant thread I will post it here. A lot of the Shade Forum is Poser users trying to figure out the program, so don't feel lost, I certainly am still at a loss about a lot of things in Shade and it's a far cry from Lightwave which I'm only sort of learning. Poser 6 has a lot of rendering capabilities that you should explore, as the learning curve might be easyer if you've been using poser for a long time. Shade and Poser do compliment each other, but there is a huge learning curve. I wish I could be more help, I'm learning so many applications all at the same time I keep pullng out my hair. So I can certainly feel the pain.

i did a little tutorial/instruction sheet pdf here http://tyger.xganon.com/poser/Free_Stuff/files/navigation.pdf on camera controls and related them to poser camera controls.

Excellent instruction sheet Tyger. Wish I had known about this when I was trying to figure it out.

"Poser 6 has a lot of rendering capabilities that you should explore, as the learning curve might be easyer if you've been using poser for a long time." Actually I have been a poser user since Fractal poser2 !! I render my poser scenes in Cinema4DXL right now and im gearing up for an animated short and after looking at the shade galleries on the EF website I was considering shade for rendering some of my outdoor daylight scenes. I know all about P6's new render options, but unfortunately poser 6 is WAAAY!! to slow to even consider using it for high quality animation frames numbering in the hundreds or thousands. Thanks for the PDF tyger_purr Ill give it another go :-)

Hi Wolf--

I'm about where I think you are:

(1) tried Shade briefly but turned away since I hate trying to learn non-intuitive programs

(2) was reasonably happily doing long animations for DVD by rendering in C4D (but I became enamored of dynamic clothing when I made the jump from P4 straight to P6... and I haven't found a good, affordable way to export P6 animations with dynamic hair and cloth to C4D)

(3) given #2, I'm still trying to find a lighting setup in P6 which looks good (i.e., reasonably realistic, like IBL with AO) and doesn't take 10 min plus per frame, but haven't had much success.

I did get hmann's lighting magic (or whatever it is called... I can't remember off the top of my head), and there are some pretty good sets in there, but none of them fit the bill for me yet though I plan to start tweaking some of them. But I like indoor scene lighting, so since you mention outdoor scenes you might like hmann's set.

Anyway, if you (or anyone?) ever find a P6 to (fill in the blank) rendering system which has reasonably realistic lighting, transfer of P6 animation with dynamic stuff, and can render at less than 3 minutes per frame, PLEASE let us all know!

Tguy

I hear you Bro :-) I am seeing incredible IBL/Ao images being rendered from P6 but when i hear of 30-40 minute render times for a single frame it makes it obvious that poser6 is NOT viable for rendering high quality animations (not on my hardware at least) And like you, i want to render P6cloth simulations and keep my times at under 10 minutres per frame. and NO I cant afford $500 for vue5 at this time I believe Shade7LE will import poser6 dynamic cloth just not hair. so i will give it another go this week using the PDF camera info generously posted in this thread Good luck ;-)