Attached Link: Kiera's Gallery

Hi All, Would like to invite some brutally honest constructive criticism of my gallery. In the comments everything is always wonderful and nice but what I really need now is a bit of a slap to reality (so don't get a swelled head!). I know I still have a lot to learn and that there are lots of ways that I can improve, I'm just not always sure where to start. I started using Poser 6 at the end of July so you can see pretty easily how I have progressed. Previously I had Poser 2 which I hadn't done much with for years, so it hardly counts. The kinds of things I am looking for specifically : * Obvious flaws I overlooked - particularly any repetition of mistakes across multiple images (because I am obviously missing them if I did it more than once.) * Any suggestions for how to improve on any of my images specifically or just in general. * Next steps for the kinds of challenges I should set for myself as far as mastering the tools offered in Poser. - I am considering going into doing illustrations at some point (possibly as a career change in the long term) and so I am interested in the kinds of things that would make my images more appealing commercially. - I could use some challenging suggestions for future images using the characters in my current poserverse. I realize that's a lot of different things I don't expect everybody to cover them all, I am just trying to give you some ideas of what I think I need. If I have missed anything feel free to add. Thanks in advance! :-) Kiera

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showforum.php?forum_id=12424

One thing I can suggest would be to post in the Art Theory forum we've got here ;)  They even have a monthly critique thread :D

Another thing I'll suggest is...when you post that you need real criticism, make sure you take your ego out and put it away.  put on that "thick skin" armor, and really REALLY read the criticisms.  Because, sometimes, even though it's meant with the best intentions, some people give harsh crits. 

Thanks JenX, I will cross post to the other forum as well. I have donned my asbestos jumpsuit and am ready for whatever comes. :-)

Well, I have one suggestion that I have for probably 95% of the images in the galleries: Lights! Learn how to paint with light. Study some photography books, pay attention to how movies use lights to set the mood (just compare "Sin City" to "Amelie"...) and above all, experiment! Here are some basic 3d light tutorials: http://www.warpedspace.org/lightingT/part1.htm http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/indoor-light.htm Try this place for heaps of inspiration and information: http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=185

just to agree with stewer, who is a recognised expert in poser in more ways than I can discuss. what I noticed first in yer thumbnails page: there are either no shadows (nostril glow) or poor shadow maps. this is not an easy thing to learn (apparently) as most of the poser images in the gallery here have similar problems. I would suggest a tutorial on how to set up shadows in P4/5/6, but I don't know of any, other than reading the manual under shadowcams, shadowmaps, etc. it's my sincere hope that the default render settings in P7 will eliminate this problem.

*I agree with the above, bad lighting can totally ruin a perfectly well composed image. Try taking a look at photos, especially studio lighting.
For example try lighting your scene using only three spot lights. Set the map size of the light to 1024, this will allow a smooth light and make it softer and set the shadows to 0.5. Then experiment from there with colours etc. However, personally i tend to do all my lighting one colour, and change the scene colours in postwork.

I hope this helped, feel free to look through my gallery and look at my work, as in most of my peices i only use 2-3 spot lights. Its only occasionally i'll use infinite lighting. 

Cya

Anna*

In addition to what others already said....

Experiment a little with a different genre. This is not to take you away from what you like, but sometimes while pushing yourself to try something new and different ends up breathing new life in your favorite subjects. Whether it's ighting or a new compositional trick or a new postwork trick or something else, it's frequently possible you can adapt what you learned and use it on your favorites.

Kiera, here is my professional advise:
Have fun! Art is no more than having (and sharing) fun. As long as you are having a good time doing what you feel like doing you are fine. And having visited your gallery I can tell that you enjoy doing these pictures... :) Therefore you are fine............:biggrin:

Panos

With lighting, take a look around the real world. Light follows the law and it comes from somewhere. Look at the scene you want to create and keep that in mind and keep it simple. Cheat to fill in the gaps. Try lowering your focal length some and see if you like the results. The pics look  a little flat. Otherwise they're pretty cute. You've got a much better chance of being commercially successful than me. :O)

Quote - Kiera, here is my professional advise:
Have fun! Art is no more than having (and sharing) fun. As long as you are having a good time doing what you feel like doing you are fine. And having visited your gallery I can tell that you enjoy doing these pictures... :) Therefore you are fine............:biggrin:

Panos

No offense intended, but that's only good advice if you're doing the kind of art that you're hanging on your Mum's refrigerator. If you want to grow as an artist you have to do a lot more than  just have a good time doing what you feel like. Learn about lighting as stewer suggested, and follow the tips of some of the others. Learn about composition. Study the human figure in different situations and poses. See how a person distributes their weight when standing, sitting, running etc. Break away from pre-made poses whenever you can. Use them only as a starting point if you have to use them. Study other artists images and don't be afraid to ask questions when you want to know how something was done.

One "publishable" image a day is a pretty ambitious goal. You might be better off focusing learning one new thing every day. Learn a new technique, learn something new about a tool. Try different render settings, depth of field, change the camera focal length. There's a lot to learn to master the tools, and how well you know your tools shows in your work.

Tainted_heart,
What you are saying about having to learn the skills of the craft is true, and applies to all crafts and occupations. However, in my opinion, "Art" and "Artists" have been greatly over-rated in the past century and this --as we all know-- resulted to a very confusing situation where the value of "a work of Art" is calculated by the amount of coverage it receives from the media and --of course-- of the commercial place it is holding in the market.

Besides, life being very short --and not always pleasant-- I would much prefer to take some pleasure out of what I am doing, and if possible sharing it with others, rather than striving to sending out complicated "messages" that no one understands (but a small group of "intellectuals" who pretend to).... :)

No offense intended but, for myself, I'll go for the pictures hanging on Mum's refrigerator anytime. (Incidentally some of the greatest works of Art in the past have been exactly that, pictures decorating Mum's refrigerators.......... :))

Panos

Quote - Kiera, here is my professional advise:
Have fun! Art is no more than having (and sharing) fun. As long as you are having a good time doing what you feel like doing you are fine. And having visited your gallery I can tell that you enjoy doing these pictures... :) Therefore you are fine............:biggrin:

Panos

I absolutely agree with that. 

Art is very subjective. What one person likes isn't necessarily what someone else likes.  A prime example of that is that there are art pieces out there that sell at auction for millions of dollars!!  I look at most of them and go cross-eyed in confusion because many are "ugly" to my eye. Yet they still command a high price because others think they are wonderful.

The idea of "art" is to express yourself in whatever genre or medium that you like the best, and to have fun doing it.

For me I know when something is "finished" when i can look at it and say "I like it!". Until it gets to that point it won't see the light of day or be shown to anyone, period!  Once it hits my gallery, it's finished (well, with the exception of a drawing I posted, but because I can't draw faces, I consider it as finished as it will ever be,  LOL) and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks at that point because I've created the image based on what my eyes like to see and not trying to please people who are going to be looking at it. If others happen to like my style of art and what I make, that's just a side effect, but it's not why I like to draw / paint / sketch / poser etc.

I enjoy making what I think are "pretty" pictures and it helps me to relax and take my mind off of life's stressors.  That's the only important thing IMHO.

Quote - No offense intended, but that's only good advice if you're doing the kind of art that you're hanging on your Mum's refrigerator. If you want to grow as an artist you have to do a lot more than  just have a good time doing what you feel like.

I humbly disagree with that.

So many people try to fit into a mold that they don't belong in and that results in image after image looking pretty much the same. I'm not just talking about images of that person, but also images when compared to other people's.  Trying to fit into a mold results in loss of identity and uniqueness.

I'd much rather see someone express themselves in their own fashion and create their own original pieces rather than to try and conform to what is considered the "norm" in an art class.

Get the basic idea of light and shadow and depth of perspective, and go and do your own thing.

Picasso studied art, in depth, yet he created some of the most "ugly" paintings IMHO, yet he had his own style, and that didn't always involve light / shadow or depth of perspective. One thing for sure, he wasn't sitting in his studio in front of a canvass wondering if anyone else would like his painting while he was making it. I'd venture a guess that the thought didn't even cross his mind.

Well, this whole discussion about art and having fun is fine and dandy when the goal of one's painting is to have fun with it, relax and express themselves.
Remember that several of now very famous ARTISTS were almost complete unknown untill after their death.

This is quite different path from what the original poster mentioned she would like to grow into, which is doing commercial illustration.
Commercial illustration has to be done with deliberate goal and effect in mind, and is more dependent on craft and technique then on having fun and expressing one's self. Sure, lot of most succesful illustrators are either very multi-talented or have found niche markets that correspond to their passions, and their work tends to stand out.

Knowing the techniques and the craft may not make someone an artist, and may result in taking some of the personal fun and expression out of drawing and painting, and make it little more like work... But it may lead towards a decent bill-paying kind of a career as an illustrator.

Relaxing and having fun with it may produce art, but may not make the artist a commercial success (or even allow them to pay meager bills)...  And don't be fooled, not everything that sells for a lot of money or is being offered in galleies is the kind of 'art' that will stand the test of time.

I'm finding out more and more when questions like this come up, one side vs. another, it seems to boil down to each individual finding a comfortable personal balance between the two apparently opposite sides of the argument.

I see a lot of this is this 'art' and similar kind of questions pop up around Rosity forums, and every time I wonder.... how do you guys (we, someone, anyone) define art in the first place?
One person thinks it's art, the other one doesn't... One person seems to 'get' the artist, the other one doesn't... Art seems to be that elusive moment when the the artist and the viewer made some sort of a connection through the image that the artist created. It seems to be a verb to describe the viewers emotional response to the image...

For the heck of it, I went and looked up how merriam webster dictionary defines word 'art'
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/art

In commercial work, 'art' is pretty much whatever the client defines it as... If the client is paying you to do a pink hamster with bunny ears and a miniskirt, then that is exactly what you are supposed to do, to the best of your ability. The question of 'what is art' is a luxury you can afford only when you are either doing it as a hobby or are a genius in the process of redefining the term.

Also i really hate it when some people try to push art as some sort of mystical experience that can only be done from pure intuition. It is nothing of the sort, it is a skill and like any other skill it can be learnt by anyone. Sure, maybe not to the same level as a Leonardo or Michaelangelo, but almost anyone can get good enough to produce decent looking and interesting work. However getting there does require you to read and understand the 'manual' which in this case is Art Theory. The rules of composition, color, perspective have been developed and improved for centuries and if you don't take advantage of them you are only limiting your growth.

Taking a can of paint in each hand and splashing it around wildly only produces a big mess.

Quote -
Taking a can of paint in each hand and splashing it around wildly only produces a big mess.

Oooh, I beg to differ - mildly....   It can be a lot of fun too :D

Before the cleanup, that is ;)

Hi all, Thank you so much for taking the time to look and respond. I am going to mull over all of your comments for a bit longer before I respond. I realized my very first reaction was defensive, and that's silly. So I will let it sink in, put that silliness aside and really take it all in. On the topic of lighting though, ok, the latest one "professor" has some serious lighting probs that I knew, but lighting is something I have REALLY been working on, to the point where that often takes more time than the rest of the image... Here are some of the ones I worked hardest on to get the lighting just so: http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1309229 http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1269650 http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1267729 http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1314296 http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1331971 Do they too give the image I have no idea what I'm doing lighting-wise? I'm just trying to get a handle on the lighting comments and where I am with that particular skill. I will take a look at the links given and think about this some more.

You asked ...  I'll give my thoroughly inexpert opinions on each image.

^^ there.  I'm a terrible artist and I have no class, but you asked!  :P

Well, I'm no expert on lighting by any stretch of the imahination, but maybe I can give you couple more specific pointers... I hope you don't mind me using one of your images and doing a little photoshop work to give you something for comparison.

One thong that came to mind is a lesson that in photos, pictures, paintings and anything natural, nothing is pure black or pure white. What that means in terms of lighting is that for an image to look little more natural and realistic and appealing in general, the range of light doesn't have to go all the way from very dark to super bright.
What a lot of people picked up on, I think, is that the lighting does just that, runs full range, from black to white, and it gives the images appearance that is a little on a stark side.
What that does is causes the viewer to notice the lighting before they notice what's going on in the images.

I took one of your images, the one I thought had the best lighting and ran it through about a dozen filters and things in photoshop to try and soften in some. What I did is still far from perfect, but I'm hoping it may give you something to compare to, and some more specific idea, other then just statements to work on the lighting...  (I know if I read about working on lighting, I'd be pulling my hair wondering, um, I'm aware I need to learn more, but could you give me some specifics to focus on???)   so, I hope that helps a little...  If you have questions, please ask :)

And your images are wonderful... bit;'s hard though, when you ask for critique, everyone focuses on critiquing, and forgets to tell you that the fact that there are things that can be worked on, they'e still wonderfuil. Everyone' images have something to be worked on... that doesn't make them bad!  You're doing a great job, don' t you forget that!!!   Hugz, Connie

Agree with Connie, your work is quite wonderful and even your lighting skills are good enough IMO, just you need to render stuff out in layers and try combining them in more interesting ways. eg this

http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1331971

pic of yours is well lit, but it can be made even nicer:

1. Decrease the sat of the background and increase sat of the girl in the forground
2. Add blur to background elements and color correct them to be bluer.
3. Add slight amount of specular bloom to the highlights for a more fantasy/old world look.
4. Adjust the brightness and contrast slightly and lessen the green cast of the scene.
5. Add slight grain to the image.

Ideally I would  render the girl, the balloon and the backdrop separately and composite them together in PS.

Quick paintover, original on the left, modified on the right:

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/3218/paintoverzw2.jpg

OMG, I was typing that last post I made last night just before going to sleep, I apologize for soooo many typo's :(. I must have been half-asleep already!

Thank you to everyone who posted, or just looked, I really appreciate it and have gotten quite a bit out of it so far. I am going to comment to each of you here in this post rather than filling the forum up with a dozen separate posts. :-) stewer, Miss Nancy, LillianaSapphire, fls13 - I have to admit that I only JUST figured out about the setting for "cast shadows" in the light settings so shadows in my work from over a week ago are hit and miss where shadows are concerned. I couldn't figure out why I kept having to photoshop them, LOL. I agree with you on the lights, it is one of my most challenged areas. But I DO a lot of work with the lights, it seems like half the time the darned lights take up more time than the actual image itself with all the poses, texturing etc. I really hate that poser does not show you how the lights will work. I get everything looking JUST how I want it in preview, but then when I render it is ALWAYS too dark, it drives me nuts. I can only hope that they have improved the way lights work in P7! panko - thanks, I get what you are saying, because if you are not having fun you aren't really making art from the heart, right? :-) tainted_heart - I have a method to my "one per day - bedtime is my deadline" method. I know from sad experience that if I DON'T set myself deadlines I will work my images to death - to the point where I am sick to look at them and don't want anybody else to either! Typical Virgo, LOL. In my method I am also learning something new, or improving on a weak skill each day. I have been experimenting with a lot of things, creating my own textures, using textures in different ways, using wardrobe wizard to resize outfits for other characters to fit Kiki so that I can expand my possibilities. I have been tinkering with depth of field and the camera settings and every image is a struggle for decent lighting. I'd like to think that if you look from the beginning of my gallery to now you would be able to see how I've grown in my skills with Poser. I see it anyways, and I have all of these (albeit imperfect) images to show me where I've been. :-) Acadia - I'd like to think I don't fit in a mold. I don't really see much poser art that looks like mine and if anything I try to shy away from the other styles I have seen. I never think much about how people will like the image while I am working on it, but I wouldn't be honest if I said I didn't care at all by the time I'm done... tekmonk - darn, I wish I knew how to model a paint splash because tossing around some paint might be loads of fun for my little Kiki. Perhaps I will have to take that up as a challenge! As a bonus, no clean-up required... :-) You like my lights, yeah! I do try very hard on the lights, but i realize it is a real challenge for me. I only just figured out how to set the shadows on, LOL. Thank you for the illustration on my Aviator image. It does look much better with some depth of field blurring. I think that when I rework the image I will do exactly as you have suggested. I have saved your comments out to my work folder so I don't forget. pjz99 - thank you for taking the time to comment, I found your comments to be good ones. :-) Conniekat8 - thanks for the long and detailed post! The lighting in the image you chose is one where I just about pulled my hair out. I actually had a spotlight just as you have illustrated it, but I had a problem I could not get around so I took it out. That little structure they are standing in has four corner columns, and of course the front left one was RIGHT where that spotlight needed to shine in order to look right. The model was a bit limited so I could not "hide" the column and was forced to work around it. If I moved the light to the right it shone on the background creating a shadow on the moon (!) and if I moved it to the left it was on the girl's face and looked horrible. Thanks for the kind words on my gallery. I think that on the whole I am doing well, esp. given that the maximum amount of time I work on each image is about four to five hours - sometimes a little more if I stretch bedtime out a bit (it has happened, LOL). But then I am under-slept and cranky so I try to keep that to a minimum. My goal at some point is to go back and revisit each of my images with what I've learned and the skills I have picked up and "fix them up" so that I can render them out huge (the biggest any of them are rendered now is 1200x900). Then I can order big prints, maybe a book, of all my faves to show off. Then I can start thinking about building up a portfolio... tpoys? What's that? LOL. No worries, I translate typos on the fly, I didn't even notice! :-D

Quote - stewer, Miss Nancy, LillianaSapphire, fls13 - I have to admit that I only JUST figured out about the setting for "cast shadows" in the light settings so shadows in my work from over a week ago are hit and miss where shadows are concerned.

 

That explains so much, and moves me to withdraw most of my comments, I'm sure you will be flashing around some huge improvements to your already quite lovely and unique illustrations.  I'm not very experienced myself, and you've obviously got loads of skill and creativity, but funny shadows are the things that always jump out at me in CG art.

Quote - I have a method to my "one per day - bedtime is my deadline" method. every image is a struggle for decent lighting.

Don't kill me for saying this then, but maybe you ought to consider rendering your pics in a different program. I gave up on trying to get lighting just right in it awhile ago. Povray is a free application, take a look at it.

It doesn't look like they make Povray for the Mac. I have tried moving my images over into other apps but they always seem to get messed up or things get moved around or textures go missing, it is just too much of a PITA for me. I have preordered P7 so let's hope they have done some work on the lighting, otherwise, you are probably right and I will have to "move up" to something else. Of course I will have to upgrade my iMac to something a bit beefier! :-)

I'm pretty sure they do have a mac version of pov, but I know nothing of macs, so you're own your own there. Conniekat8's earlier suggestion of looking at postwork is a good one whether you keep rendering in Poser or not. I  think you want your renders a little more vivid and bringing up the contrast and playing with the brightness levels individually, hilights-midrange-shadows, can be a help. You can do that with renders you've already done and see what you think. You can also do the same with your textures before you render, particularly your skin textures, as they have washed out a bit in some of your renders.

Quote - tpoys? What's that? LOL. No worries, I translate typos on the fly, I didn't even notice! :-D

Thanks :) 
I think there's benefit to having some of, whatever it is I have, a touch of ADD with a side of astigmatisam and a little helping of dyslexia. I don't notice typos very much, mine or someone else's. LOL

In spite of making comments on your image, I still really like how you lit it, it's great.
The thing with a column being in a way... you could set up two lights, one on eaither side of the column, and turn their intensity way down, half ways or more.  I'm not sure if that would work, it's just an idea.

Another thing I tried doing with your image... I don;t know how succesful I was with it is make the darks a tad less dark, and the highlights not quite as strong, which I thought would soften the image some, but still keep the right atmosphere. Give it a little bit more overall ambient light, softer shadows and little less spotlight.  In photographic studios that is usually achieved by diffusing light with various semi-transparent (milk colored) glass or plastic planes in front of lights, or by those 'umbrellas' you see.

Personally, I tend to tweak ambient light a bit, and on a more rare occasion texture ambient itself to achieve this. I find fine-tuning lighting in Poser somewhat frustrating... perhaps only because I'm more used to other programs...  I should add a caviot to what I'm talking about and say I have much more experience in lighting in Bryce and Max, so I may not be aware of some of the poser specific differences...
So, my comments should be taken in a more general sense, and probably need to be 'psersized'  ;)

Overall, you seem to have a good eye for the lighting... now it's the matter of learning the little tweaks and fine tuning that professionals use, to make their images look really polished up. Learning that does include a lot of time, testing and hair pulling (at least it does for me, and I can't  say that I feel I'm even half ways there.)
I get in a same spot pretty often, I'm not getting the effect that I'm envisioning in my head, but I'm running out of time and patience and know how to make it happen...

Hugz, Connie

Connie, I haven't used any of the higher order modeling apps, just Bryce 3 (just upgraded to the latest one but haven't used it yet), so I don't know what it's "supposed" to be like. However, I really hate the lighting system in Poser. It drives me bonkers that I cannot have a single control where I can say "turn up all lights" or turn them down or something like that. If I have to click into each one I inevitably move it enough to cause a problem and if I accidently skip the lack of multiple undos means I am screwed. Some of that will be fixed just by having multiple undos. But I am going to be sadly disappointed if they haven't improved the interface. I have come across some python scripts that can do the all lights up or down but I haven't had a chance to do anything with them. That's my other peeve, the limited number of python buttons makes it really difficult to have all of these sorts of utilities at your fingertips without tons of tweaking and writing some XML, etc. I think I am going to have consider a beefier 3d application but I don't want to try to go there until I have upgraded to a newer more powerful computer. So, I will just chug along as I am for now and learn all I can. Thanks for all the feedback. I am going to be posting today's image in about an hour (it's rendering oh so slowly right now!) - It's called "The Decorator" and I really got creative with the lights, I am happy with how it's turning out. Take a look later and tell me what you think, ok? :-) Kiera

don't worry about the modelling apps. poser6/7 is capable of excellent renders, but it requires one to study the manual rather intensively, and to ask questions here when encountering the inevitable stumbling blocks.

Agh, I'm allergic to manuals, I swear it. LOL. I actually bought Practical Poser 6 and I have learned a lot but I am the kind of person who learns best through trial and error. I do feel like I AM making progress though. I spend some time with my nose in the book today, but I just get so impatient to actually DO something that it never lasts very long. :-) I just uploaded today's image and I spent loads of time on the lighting trying to use the stuff I got from the book. What do you think?

I find that poser pro pack is the best so far. I used P6, and just couldn't see the use in the extra features, since i paint clothe and learning to paint hair. Soo... I went back to pro pack. However i agree, if you wanna get more realistic results try software like bryce or vue. I'm learning vue at the moment, slowly but surely.
I suggest if you cannot get shadows in poser correct and lighting correct, to correct it in photoshop. I tend to find no matter how bad my lighting in poser is, i can correct it in photoshop. However this is down to postwork skills.

 

Regarding your work, i think its excellent how you have a style of your own and please stick to it. BRAVO to you!

I believe your work can only get better with time and practise... keep at it!

 

Anna

Kiera I think you're very brave to push people to give you feedback like you're doing, and I respect that a lot.  Most people would be happy to just sit back and enjoy the huge amount of praise you already get, but you're taking a harder and more intellectually honest route.  Be proud!

Pjz99, Thanks for the great feedback on The Decorator. I am still fighting with the lights, as you can see. I do feel a little better about these lights but you are absolutely right about the shadows. sigh I used an infinite light for outside because I simply couldn't get the part outside the window to look right and when I did that it took the shadows off everything. ARG. I think I need to start playing with the IBL lights, perhaps that will do it. It seems that for my more demanding images I can never get more than one part of the lighting right at a time. It's like with TheLifeguard, I could not get the background water, the mid-ground girls and the foreground pool all with the right lights. I think the problem is that darned light ball that the lights rotate around (in the poser UI). It assumes a SINGLE subject (ala poser 1.0) and that simply doesn't do it for complex images. Or am I missing something??? Ah well, the light war continues, LOL!

I know exactly what you mean, in my own work I have had the most trouble with getting the lighting to look at least semi-realistic - and that is with simple lighting combos, with few obstructions, and fairly uber computer gear.  Poser just is not very good at lighting at all, and it is very hurtful to work with even with serious hardware.  I have high hopes that version 7 will make a lot of this less unpleasant to work with (less of an issue for you since you're a Mac user, you likely have an easier time running Poser).

If I am looking for shadows in an indoor setting, I avoid using Infinite lights except for very low-intensity "scatter" light that you'd expect to be thrown back by a reflective surface like a brightly-colored wall, I try to get most or all of my light from spots and points.  It's a lot harder but imo it's just a lot more convincing, because indoors you simply don't get uniform coherent light like sunlight, it's going to emanate from a light source that is pretty small like a lightbulb or candle or fireplace.

For your Lifeguard image you have a lot more leeway, because it's supposed to be outdoors, and you'd have tons of scatter from all the bright colors and reflection/refraction of the water (which imo Poser cannot model worth a damn, water that is).  What is tough about that particular pic is that one can see shadows cast by the plants in the background, but none of the foreground shadows are casting much shadow at all.  I see that at least some light is coming up from below the girls and the beachball (can triangulate it off the beachball fairly clearly actually) - while that's not necessarily bad, the light from overhead would have to be quite a bit stronger to be convincing.

Infinite lights are a little tricky to get your head around because of the goofy little light ball.  You get the impression that it's oriented at a target, but it's really not.  It's objective to the entire scene.  Everything in the scene gets hit by Infinite lights exactly the same way, same intensity, same direction.  That's why it's a good simulation of sunlight, and why it's not so great indoors, although like I said I do cheat and use very low intensity Infinite lights just to keep things from being completely black, even though that's not too realistic.  The odd little circle interface makes it very misleading.  Think about Infinite lights like the sun and I think you'll be okay, although be aware they by default you have THREE suns, which simply doesn't work except in very simple scenes where you are fine with just disabling shadows, or the image is in a small enough setting that there is no mental challenge in why the shadows will look the way they do.

I don't have much of an opinion about image-based lighting because frankly I don't have a clue how it really works or how to properly employ it.

edit: one pic that I spent a ton of time on trying to get the lighting to look decent - please ignore the green-ness because I have rotten color sense, but I'd like to point out that nearly all the light comes from two point lights in the scene:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1336748

Thanks for the feedback on The Rascal. I posted a response in the gallery but then it occurred to me you might not look back in, so here it is again, just in case. :-) --- Thanks Pjz99 - I decided to go back to basics and add a light at a time until I liked it. I was kind of surprised when the second light did the trick. I would say the light is a street lamp or something because it is much to concentrated to be moonlight. I was having a little trouble where the light hit the backdrop (its a multiplane cyclorama) so I kept it minimal. I just tried it with the infinite and it totally ruins the mood. Agh, lights are so frustrating! But I'm getting there, one light at a time, LOL.

And thank you for your own feeback :)  Agreed that cloth looks a little strange.  Trying to do that scene strictly in Poser hurt me so bad that I'm ready now to buy Vue to do a lot of the scene building and all the rendering (I'd buy 3dsMax if it and Poser integrated a little better).  I really, really wish I could get more than 1/2 (one half!) FPS when moving around in that scene.  There's six or seven dynamic cloth simulations to get the scattered bits of junk and the sheets and pillow cover.  Rendering one angle of that scene at middle quality (I think 1 raytrace bounce) took about fifteen hours!!  >.<

I think the progress you're making with lighting and shadows over the past few days is wonderful, you are definitely on the right track.

15 hours? Yikes!!! I just don't have that much patience. I think three hours (or so) is my longest render so far. Sometimes I just set it to render and go to bed though so I don't know but I've never had one that hadn't finished by morning. I haven't done any of the cloth effects yet... Thanks for the compliments. Just figuring out the checkbox for making shadows was a huge leap forward, LOL. :-)

Much of that is likely because the PC version of Poser is just really, really poorly written (appears to be converted over from the Mac version with little optimization).  I'm hoping that version 7 works better, it purports to be mutli-threaded which suggests that they've re-written it from a lower level and it ought to work quite a bit more efficiently.  Got my fingers crossed for that anyway...

LOL, that has to be one of the few times it went that way and not some sloppy conversion from PC to Mac! :-) Of course, you know, there's always a solution to that if they haven't improved P7. Get a mac, they're awesome. :-D