Normally, my disappointment with a pro render in P5 has to do with darkness from shadows that need to be tweaked. This is the first time where I've encountered a pro render looking signficantly less dynamic than what is in the main display working window. This is how the figure looks after opening the PZ3 with the provided lights from a John Stewart P4 figure, so I can't take credit for how it looks. Is there something in the P5 render settings that needs to be changed? The original display window image has beautiful dynamic contrasts that become dull in the final render.

You may want to change the specular settings for the materials in the material room. I don't have the character/morph/materials that you are using above, but I did a little playing with another material that I have to come up with the above comparison.

Also, this is just using the basic poser lights (but I made them shades of grey instead of the tan) and default poser firefly render setup for "Production".

--Naylin

Message edited on: 02/15/2006 14:56

Oh, yeah, and this was done in P6, but I just did it again in P5 and had the exact same results. --Naylin

I finally settled on a specularity setting of 4 and the 0.1 highlight size that you used. I hadn't played much with specularity, but I can see where it can do some interesting things on a rendered texture to give a shinier, contrasting look. I learned a new trick and that's always a good thing. I still like the greenish tinge in the original displayed image and will have to play more with lights to achieve that same result. It's still irritating to have P5 so drastically alter the look of the rendered image.

After a slap to the ole forehead, I realized that all I needed to do was play around with the specular color. Some options were overpowering even when the color pick was nearly black and I realized that a lighter shade did a better job of getting what I wanted.

I'd also recommend playing with the anisotropic node (under lighting->specularity). To get an idea of what it does, load the node, and plug it into either the colour or value of the root specularity "socket". It has the effect of "sort-of" concentrating the highlights, making them more intense. Then play, play play:-)) Anisotropic usually (in the few experiments I've tried) seems to darken the underlying material somewhat, so you may need to increase the diffuse to compensate.. I've just (over the last couple of days) started playing with this node and am having great fun:-)) Cheers, Diolma

I'm glad I could help. Thank you for sharing your results with us also! --Naylin

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Thanks for the help! I try to show the images because words don't readily convey the differences. I don't know if it's just my preference, but that little extra green in the texture makes the black areas more vibrant and it was subtle enough that it didn't mess up the skin textures. I've provided the link to more images of the P4 Male John Stewart character that I used and an example of the amazing difference that lighting makes. The character comes in a PZ3 with its own light set and, when I was fooling around with lights to try to get the render to look like the display window, I couldn't believe how much worse a different lightset made the character look. I'm guessing that anisotropic nodes are in P6 and not P5 because I cannot find them. There's still so much that I don't know about the P5 nodes that I'm not in a hurry to jump up to P6.

P5 has anisotropic:-) (captured from P5). I *think* it's intended to be plugged into the specular node (the manual doesn't specify, what's new?), but as usual it can be plugged in almost anywhere... Cheers, Diolma