Hi folks

A stupid bug I cant understand. My worst thing about Poser6 is some nonsenses it does with lights. Sometimes, I move a light that was rendering ok in the same scene, I pose it in front of the character, and Poser6 render the pic as if the light was at the left side of the scene!!!. I tried it with infinites and spots. Ever the same!!! But if I open the same scene in Poser5 the lights are rendered in their exact place. This is becoming me MAD !!! What the hell is and how can I fix it???? Im using Poser4 mode render. Its related with this mess?

Message edited on: 10/24/2005 05:43

UNcheck "Shadows"

In Poser6 there is a new option called 'reuse shadowmaps'.Maybe your Poser is using the shadowmaps from a previous used light set.To uncheck this option click on that little black triangle that you see on the frame of your preview window(the one next to the hand symbol).

Thanks to both :)

Well... no solution. I tried all written up here. First, enabling 'reuse shadow maps'. Render and the damned wrong shadows again. Second, 'clear shadow maps'. No changes. Disabling 'cast shadows'. Again poo. Disable shadows from light 1 sheet first and light 2 later. Again and again...

Finally, the "Outdoors-Poser6" solution: disabling 'Use external binarial morph targets', saving a copy, opened it with Poser5 and rendering. Finally my right lights, the same I had before my camera movement, and a f***** spent morning in a lot of tests, tests, tests...

These things do that I think Poser6 has not overcome Poser5. Improved yes, overcome not. By the moment, I have no reasons to uninstall my Poser5

Message edited on: 10/24/2005 08:41

That has happened to me a few times and I did the same things tying to solve it. I never found the cause. Weird.

have you tried moving the lights via dials instead? I've found that fixes a lot of things... (plus I can't stand that trackball for the lights)

Mmh. I will try tonight when I was recovered lost time with this episode of the infamous PDL (Poser Dummy Lights)

I have the exact same problem in Poser 6, nothing I try will solve the problem, so I use the p4 render engine with the "ignore shader trees" box unchecked, the lights seem to work fine that way.

Did you report this to efrontier?

No, but it's a good idea. How can I report it?

Message edited on: 10/24/2005 12:50

You can report bugs here. Responses aren't instant, but on the last python bug i reported they told me to have that fixed with SR2 ;-)

Reported.-

I've had this happen, and it seems to stem from changing light settings on an animation frame other than 1. Recreating the lights (at frame 1) seems to fix the problem.

Does this happen in scenes with fewer lights? Could be that (for some reason) Poser 6 can't handle as many infinite lights in a scene as Poser 5 could- a workaround to get a globally illuminated look would be to use a single diffuse image-based light and one or two shadow-casting lights, rather than nine or ten infinite lights.

Three or four lights are all that you need in P6. You have to get used to how to set the shadow, angle end, and distance end before you pull out all your hair. I had quite a problem with this until I got an understanding of how that lighting works from Dr Gleep (A genius!)and Zell, (another gem!)

I totally agree with Sparky. After looking at some of Dr Geep's tutorials, I've learned how to cut way back on the number of lights that I use in a scene(on Poser5). This can really help with render times too. For example, the above pic has only two lights(one spot, one infinite). After all, an outdoor daytime scene really has only one light source - the sun. This can quite often be the case for indoor shots as well(one lamp or overhead light). How well you light your scene really does depend more on the placement rather than the sheer number of lights used (unless you're going for GI or HDRI type lighting).

This might be some sort of refresh problem. Just a thought, but try saving a pz3 (scene file), then move the camera a bit, then select 'Revert' from the 'Figure, menu. This might just force Poser 6 to update the position of the light and associated shadow cam, there again it may not, I don't have P6, so I can't check.

For your help: answered by e-frontier

"This problem could be the result of using too many infinite lights- Poser 6 does not currently support more than eight infinite lights. If you convert some of your infinite lights to spotlights it should help with the problem- or you could use a single diffuse image-based light (IBL) instead of using many infinite lights."

I answered him I was using two infinites. Second email received:

"I've talked to a number of people here and although we haven't actually seen this specific issue, lighting can be tricky- the thing that bothers me is that Poser 5 renders the same scene properly. From your screenshots it looks like the lighting angle is rendering at 90 off- your main light looks like it's coming in from the side rather than the front, and I don't see the red fill light at all (perhaps it's now coming from behind the figure?) I'd suggest rendering with raytracing turned off, also switching cameras (main to auxiliary and back to force a redraw) prior to rendering; you might also want to try deleting your Poser 6 preferences (the Poser configuration file, LibraryPrefs.xml file and Poser UI Prefs XML file, from the C:/Program Files/Curious Labs/Poser 6/Runtime/prefs folder), although it would be odd for the prefs to be involved hereBR>
BKMRK for future renders

Message edited on: 10/25/2005 14:37

"Poser 6 does not currently support more than eight infinite lights." Interesting. I never knew that before now. Nice of them to let us know. :)

Well... I use a lights set called Renderupgrade (freeb at freestuff) which fakes radiosity, a global light with over 30 infinites... and never had a trouble at P6... uh... (these romans are crazy)

I now use P6 exclusively, having decided to learn the new version as well as I could. I have tried many lighing sets over the years, and always come back to the fact that no one set works for every scene. So I always wind up with the three basic lighting system used in photography,ie, key light, background light and fill..if needed, I plug in a spot or two to illuminate the faces, or other areas I want to emphasize, always adjusting the intensity of all the lights so as not to "wash out" the textures.Every render gets individual lighting setups. There "aint't no easy way". Believe me, if there were, I'd be using it, as I am lazy to the bone!

"Poser 6 does not currently support more than eight infinite lights." That,s strange, I have had 20 infinates in P4, and I suspect I could add a lot more, not that I can think of any reason to actualy use 20 infinate lights.

I dont know. I only know that the trouble with my lights remains. And I have no time for spend a whole day (or more) in testing, deleting, trying... my schedule is too much heavy. Simply Ive exported the scene to Poser5 and working with a program that really render my lights as I want. Until the next time I could check all this mess, I use Poser6 for nice single renders, and Poser5 for my comics. A single render needs a single scene. But a comic needs continuous camera movements, and I cant risk myself that the next time I would move my camera 90 degrees, lights start again to do nonsenses, and to lose time and time and time in trying to fix it May be the next time GRUNT