I've been around here a bit but some terms I do not understand. Global Lighting Renderosity Lighting Probe Lighting What are these things and can they be done easily in Poser? And then in the nodes with the bim, and the bam, and the bum and the thong ; ) but I don't hope to understand that stuff... just I am hoping to understand the above three terms.

No idea what "renderosity" lighting is. ;-) I'm assuming you mean, Radiosity?

There's Global Illumination (which is a general term describing the method of lighting that attempts to capture more realistic results by trying to immitate how light behaves in the 'real world'). GI has different sub-genres and techniques; like IBL (Image Based Lighting), HDRI (A type of IBL that uses high dynamic range images), Radiosity (a more accurate implimentation of the way light bounces around between objects in a scene, producing realistic light transfer and color bleeding).

These are some of the more common terms used in 3D, but there's different sub-standards to each of these as well. It can get very complex.

Poser 6 can do simple IBL (using standard images a the basis for lighting a scene), but can not use HDRI (high dynamic range images). You can also "fake" global illumination in just about any application using a series of standard lights, forming a 360 degree or 180 degree dome over your scene. In Poser, however, this method can take up a vast amount of resources and slow renders drastically, depending on how many lights you need. Poser 6 impliments IBL in a very efficient and "cost" effective way. However, shadows from the ambient light it produces need to be generated with ambient occlusion (AO), which is a raytraced method of calculating the distance and angle between surfaces, and this can be costly in some cases.

Message edited on: 10/10/2005 20:49

Radiosity is what I meant. I saw a sample of beautifull Global Ilumination at http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue5easel/index.php?Page=4 per Wolf359's post a few down from here. It gott me wondering if it was some how possible to btain this look without using a huge 40 light set or Ambient Occlusion. I need to check out how few lights can work for a "light ball", I have done course work with six above and six below but it was not enough. The RDNARuntime sets kill my machine. Is there a "cheap" way to use standard lights with IBL to fake the AO? Could you explain High Dynamic Range Image lighting? Thanks, maxxxmodelz

Attached Link: http://www.hdri.at/en/hdri_en.htm

The link above will explain the difference between HDRI and LDRI (LDRI being "low dynamic range image"), which Poser 6 uses for it's IBL. Near the bottom of the page you'll see a link to the comparison renders for each method. The main difference being, HDRI maintains a much greater range of brightness and color value, which can be much more realistic on reflective surfaces, for instance.

"It gott me wondering if it was some how possible to btain this look without using a huge 40 light set or Ambient Occlusion. Is there a "cheap" way to use standard lights with IBL to fake the AO?"

If you mean "cheap" as in the render times, then not really. There's no cheap way I've ever heard of to get the same kind of results you can get with raytraced AO without lots of standard lights. Usually, to get a clean result, you'd need more than just 40 lights in your dome, otherwise you end up with what's known as "shadow banding"... or the obvious display of distinct shadows in a "fan-like" pattern on flat surfaces, such as your ground plane. The more lights you use, the cleaner the result will be, but obviously the more expensive to render time. It depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you can get away with less than 40 lights, then definitely do it, but be aware it probably won't work in all scene situations.

You might be able to get away with 40 lights or less on some still images, if you use a lot of shadow bluring, or blur out the banding in post, but usually it will be quite evident if the ground plane is visible. I know shadow maps in Poser seem to take a long time to generate, so 40 lights is usually the maximum anyone would be willing to tolerate. However, in some other apps I use, like 3dsmax, I'll create a dome of 90+ spotlights with soft shadows to reproduce the AO effect It's still faster than actual GI most of the time, and the results are very similar.

Message edited on: 10/10/2005 21:42

AO is one of the quickest ways to get "that GI" look, which is why it is used more and more in movie productions where a full GI solution is still to expensive. Also, AO usually is the easiest to control, as it only attenuates your existing lights instead of adding extra indirect bounces. With full GI, you can't really tell what your lights will looks like until you render, where GI even can be rendered out in a separate pass and reused again and again and composited over non-AO passes in Photoshop (Poser 6 comes with a "render passes" script that can help you there). IBL is useful for integrating 3d objects with existing 2d footage, but it's not very good when you have exact ideas ("I want a soft blue fill from below and a bright white highlight from the upper left").

"IBL is useful for integrating 3d objects with existing 2d footage, but it's not very good when you have exact ideas ("I want a soft blue fill from below and a bright white highlight from the upper left")."

It's also great for an overall "fill" or ambient effect too, even if you're not matching to a 2D scene specifically. I often use a diffuse IBL with no image attached, just a medium grey color node, to supply the ambience of an indoor shot, or a medium blue color node, to supply a "skylight" type effect for outdoor shots. Then I only need two or three standard lights (a backlight and key) to actualize the specific lighting effect I'm looking for. Also, to keep the image from being too overexposed, I darken the diffuse color swatch on the IBL light in the material room, from it's default white to a muted grey color.

This is something I wish they had in Max, where I have to use light domes to get the same effect. I rarely use actual GI, especially for animation, as it's far too expensive (and not easily controlled, as you pointed out). Message edited on: 10/10/2005 22:12

I apreciate this detail and the link. How does putting a gray node into the IBL work? How does it differ from using a gray infinate light with a low shadow setting? In that it is some kind of reverse point light? It blows light in from "everywhere"? I wonder if this would help me a good deal... I need to try it... I do kinda conventional studio lighting of spot, soft side fill low and harder cool side fill high on the other side. With rooms I am a mess... trying to shine a dark gray without shadow through each wall the ceiling and the floor to get what we called a "bounce flash with difuser" which was my favorite Real World lighting if I wasn't shooting super fast film on available light. I wonder if this gray IBL would soften things with my regular set up.

"How does it differ from using a gray infinate light with a low shadow setting?" Infinite lights are directional. They don't light things from all angles like diffuse IBL does. Whatever is not directly in front of an infinite light, just like any other standard light, doesn't get lit at all. Diffuse IBL is basically allowing you to light every angle of your figures/objects, so you can just use a solid color to establish a minimum lighting value... something other than black. I don't know if a diffuse IBL light will help you in exactly what you're looking to accomplish, but it IS excellent for softening a lighting situation if are looking to rid the scene of any harsh "solid black" areas. It can definitely aid in estabilishing more natural scene lighting.

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=14324

Useful information here. Thanks guys!

I have a question though: what title is given to the lighting effect in the image below (I can't really describe the effect in words, but it seems that despite the fact that the light comes in through the window, many objects not directly in the path of the light still receive some indirect light from it).

Can the below effect be made in Poser6? How about in Vue/Bryce?

Message edited on: 10/11/2005 06:50

I'm actually rendering a pic right now where I'm "faking" the AO. I'm still using an IBL diffuse light, but have resorted to Occlusion Master for the AO. Yes, it's still Ambient Occlusion, but it renders MUCH faster than AO on the light would do. Don't know why, perhaps face_off can explain it? The past week I've been making a series of pictures with full AO and IBL, and allthough they're very pretty and look "real" they each take about 6 hours to render and I'm really not that patient L (and unfortunately, due to the content of those pics I can't show them here)

"Can the below effect be made in Poser6? How about in Vue/Bryce?" That's Global Illumination, and judging from the appication used (3dsmax), it was probably rendered with either MentalRay, Vray, Brazil, or FinalRender. This means the method of GI most likely consists of a two-pass process using Photon Maps, in which the first pass is a radiosity like algorithm that creates an approximate global illumination solution. In the second pass, this approximation is visualized using an optimized Monte Carlo ray tracer. In other words, the direct light in the scene shoots out photons that are mapped to the interior of the room, then calculated to approximate how much of the light is scattered about... giving you secondary illumination inside the room.

Poser 6 can not do this literally. However, you can "fake" the look by using custom IBL and AO, with some material node tweaks, and possibly using the new Gather node. In fact, I'm sure the Gather node can help you get close to this, but it would take an advanced user with lots of patience to get it looking right.

Vue 5 can probably do it, since V5 does have GI and radiosity. Bryce can come close as well, I'm sure, using lots of low-intensity direct lights. I'm not sure Bryce can get the color bleeding, although that can be faked with subtle reflectivity on some materials. Message edited on: 10/11/2005 07:39

"Yes, it's still Ambient Occlusion, but it renders MUCH faster than AO on the light would do." It renders faster, most likely, because you aren't raytracing AO for every single object in the scene, like you are when you use it on a diffuse IBL. OcclusionMaster allows you to put AO via a node on certain mats in the scene, while not having it on others. You can do this without OcclusionMaster too, but Face_Off's script makes it MUCH easier to control. It's the same AO as is on a light source, only applied on materials via a node instead. It's still raytraced, etc.

The effect can be achieved in Poser 4,5 or 6 quite simply.This render shows a figure lit by a single light from the right with 100% shadow.

This is exactly the same light set-up

And this is the same again.

The only difference is in the material settings. The first one uses the normal settings with the diffuse Value set at 1.0 The second has the textures connected to the Ambient Colour node as well as the Diffuse Colour node with the value at .8 for diffuse and ,2 for ambient The third is at .6 diffuse and .4 ambient. This is also used in Bryce, cant remember about Vue.

dadt, the only thing those lack are the soft "area" shadows that GI and ambient occlusion bring to the contours and angles of shapes in the render. Using the ambient channel in the material room is good for bringing out the textures in the darkened areas of the model, but it also tends to wash out realistic detail (note the ear on the "shadow" side of the character has almost no shadow depth and detail compared to the ear on the lit side). This is where simple ambience enhancement falls short as a substitute for IBL/AO or true GI for such things.

I agree if it is overdone as in the third render. The method is only useful up to about 25% ambient. The bg advantage is their is no extra render time needed, good for animation.

It has a kinda cartoon quality in the second image that might be nice in animation (no offence I hope). I have tried to use ambient in P4 renders but did not think of the issue of difuse+ambient=1.0 Do you think there is some trick of compositting two P4 renders to make a passible Ambient Occlusion illusion? There was once some trick of lighting sceens by inverting the intensity or shadow or something but I dont't rember what it was and I have not been able to figure it out. It would be neat if you guys who know your nodes could figure out how to simulate in P4 the more sophisticated rendering with nodes. It seems like it would be an interesting chalenge and might help all the Poser Artist folks. I still use P4 a lot myself for speed (just in start up alone) since it is adequate for testing, setting up rough .pz3 to take over to P6, and for when I know I want to do some serious post-work. I keep a clean minimal P4 install that I copy and load content in for testing etc. and then toss in the trash. I have one evil big P6 runtime that allows me to open these .pz3 and replace v3RR with V3 etc. Snow Sultan long ago combined multiple renders from P4 but I never did figure out what exactly he was doing. I have always suspected there must be some way to simulate simulated sub-surface scatter (SSS) in P4 by compositing two or more renders, maybe with a render inverted in value in the post-work and composited in with screen as method and probably with a hand painted mask. Is this nonsensical? I have to try it out. Has anyone accomplished fake SSS in P4 by compositing?