Can someone explain to me what is happening here. This scene has over 20 lights and renders lit as you see.

<strong>bandolin</strong><br />
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But the Preview is dark. I can't modify the character.

<strong>bandolin</strong><br />
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The problem is that Poser will only show up to eight lights in the Preview window - if none of them are lighting your character, then your character looks dark. It's a pain, but I don't think there's a workaround. jonthecelt

Turn off "cast shadows" in the properties on the hallway prop and it won't block out your lights. Otherwise adjust all those spot lights so that they are not hiding inside all those light props.

Message edited on: 02/15/2006 13:31

The eight light limit is an OpenGL limitation, I think. Possibly if you switched temporarily to SreeD it might show all the lights, but I'm not sure.

Yup...their is a limit to how many lights can be on in Poser, although they all light up in a render. I would turn each light off, until you can find the light you need that turns on. When you turn one of the lights off, another will light up to compensate. When done, then turn the others back on. That is what I do.

Message edited on: 02/15/2006 17:10

Does just turning the lights off work, robo2010? In my (limited) experience, I've found that having a light switched off does nothing - the light has to actually be removed from the scene in order for another to work. But then again, this is only a problem I've encountered myself once. jonthecelt

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K..this is what I made and found this situation out. The interior of the MechBay consists of about 38 Spotlight lights and 2 point lights. One for each bay. I went weeks trying to get the proper lighting. I didn't know about only 7-9 lights only works either until after I posted the problem. Later found out, that deleting a light, activates another. Then turning one off does the same. Well for me anyways. If you delete, you have to redo all your lightings. Do em so many times, then later adding 40 lights is a breeze, becuase you know how to pose, aim..etc.

I have my settings at SreeD.

Message edited on: 02/15/2006 18:33

Yeah, turning off the lights does nothing. The light actually has to be removed.

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can't believe now I am stuck with the eight light limit problem (on Poser 6)... I add a ninth, and it won't show in the preview window...

turning off lights doesn't work for me... was there ever a solution for this found??

Believe... believe. ;)

This is not a POSER limitation.  It is an OpenGL limitation - that is, this is a limitation of the hardware on your itty-bitty graphics card (with ten billion texels and 512MB of super-screeching memory).  If the lights aren't supported in the graphics card, you can't get them in the app - this applies to, but not exclusively to, 3DSMax, Maya, Houdini, LightWave, Cinema 4D, Blender, DAZ|Studio, Deep Exploration, etc. and so forth and so on and for infinity for ALL 3D applications that use OpenGL architecture through the graphics card (which is just about every one of them in extistence).

IOW: THERE IS NO SOLUTION.

The solution - wait for the next late-great Nvidia graphics card which supports 16 lights (and then 32, then 64, ...).

Don't know about older Poser versions (Poser 4/PP/5) that use the proprietary editor display.  Hey, they might actually show more than 8 light sources (?).

One solution that might help is to save your current lights then delete them, add one or two, enough to brighten your figure so you can pose then delete those lights and load the original. That way you don't have to go messing with the lights you already have set up.

How soon people forget the "globalls" that were created for use in Poser4. All as an attempt to create global illumination. I have one globall that consists of 32 individual spotlights.

i'd go with nickedshield,

save you current lights, if that scene prop doesn't come with a add those lights option, then you could either delete those lights, or just replace 'em with some other lights from your lights library, just to finishing posing with, then when finished posing, just put back your original lights.

i came up with nickedshield solution before coming back to check this thread :P... I did save the lights, deleted them, and then figure out the rest....

thanks for the info, good to know not everything can be ol' Poser's fault ;)