i heard all about that kind of render...can it be done in poser?? how?? is there any tut out there?? thanx

I think in the Free Stuff section there is a scene called Global Illumination or something like that, try searching in there Cheers

I don't think its possible in poser at least not true HDRI illumination. p5 has a probe light node but don't know how to use it but i have seen it used in one thread try searching for "light probe" or hdri. I think Paoli means the render upgrade by shademaster try that it simulates HDRI or global illumination pretty well as close as you can get i think.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=Shademaster&Topsectionid=0

Do you know, I've been wondering about this myself. Like Dash says the probelight in P5 is supposed to be able to help in HDRI (or fake HDRI) but I don't know how to use it for such, I've managed to get V3 looking good without using ans lights at all except the problight which was interesting. I just wonder if there is a good way to fake HDRI in poser using the various node etc in the materials room ie a combination of reflection, alt diffuse, alt specular etc. perhaps in combination with a global illumination???

One of the things I love about Bryce is the ability to move the image around the sphere. Poser doesn't seem to have that capability internally.

I've spent hours on this one. Plugging in this and that. tried stuff with Shademasters global illumination from freestuff, tried stuff with skydome thingy from RDNA. All very interesting but not what Im after. I'm sure something pretty good could be put together in P5 its just getting the recipie right.

I agree, mit. I don't have shademaster's thingie, just playing with the nodes. Programs like Pandromeda, Darktree, Bryce, Terragen and the like use nodes (though they often use a different name and Bryce seems to have simplified the interface a lot). One of these days I'll read a book on node texturing.

A similar effect to HDRI Lighning (and much faster) can be done with the P5 (SR3) probe light node. Search this forum for Probe Light, there where some posts about it (mainly by stewer, but also others, including myself) in the last few weeks. Stefan

Thats the stuff I was basing my experiments on, stefan. I looked up probe light, hdri, radiosity and a bunch of other stuff. But couldn't find anything were someone had forged ahead on this particular theme in the direction I was interested in. Stewers stuff is amazing, his website really cleared things up for me as far as rendering was concerned. As far as I can see you'd have to fake radiosity, ie not only where the light comes from but also how it bounces of a particular object. therefore youd also have to tweak reflections ie a yellow wall would cast some yellow light from it. Eric, unforunatly I don't know those programs you mentioned except for Bryce and have heard of Terragen. Stefan, does it have to be SR3, i put that on and it really messed with me, I had to re-install poser in the end and upgraded to the previous SR. And also what do you do with it? I had played with probelight plugged into alt diffuse and eventually achieved a self-lit V3, which is all well and good but not what Im after. HDRI in Poser, fake or not, has turned into a bit of a Holy Grail for me just recently. I'm pig-sick of those C4d users :-( and the effects they achieve. I've read about HDRI, seen documentaries on it, I even read a couple of tutorials on how its done in C4d!!! But can I replicate the effect? Can I buggery!

LOL Cross posted with Dash. You in particular make me sick, the fact that you're on my list of favs is niether here nor there. As a side note, I really liked your last gallery post, the nekkid chick with the lion hair. Love that Lion hair!

Sorry, I did not notice you had already tried the probe light. I had read the tread a tad to fast.

I had the impression, the probe light node was introduced in SR3, but I may be wrong.

It is more than a little bit frustrating that CL did not include a program to create the values or this node from a light probe file. On of these days I have to install a C compiler on my machine to compile the program from the web-site Stewer posted.

I think to get results near that Dash posted (but I suspect there is some true radiosity in this picture, no way to do that in Poser at the moment), we need light probe values derived from the same file than the reflection map used as background of the reflection node. Dont know if there is a way to convert a light probe file to a reflection map that poser can use. And you have to mix in some diffuse lighting from an normal light to get some shadows.

Dont have the time to experiment at the moment, but I would try the following as a start:
On Infinite light.
Diffuse strength about 40%.
A probe light node in alternate diffuse with saturation around 0.3-0.8 (depending on the strength of the effect you want). Experiment for the exposure setting. The other values have to be derived from a light probe file that represents the represent the same environment used as reflection map.
A reflection node with a reflection map as background that matches the light probe.

I wonder if it is possible to set up a scene as environment and than render a file that can be used as reflection map and converted to light probe values.

Stefan

Can somebody help me - is the node missing on P5 MAC ? Its not under Node-Lighting Diffuse- there is is only diffuse, clay and toon. Generally after a lot of testing I am disappointed with Firefly (with the exception of the material shaders and refelection). Simulating Global Illumination has become more difficult than under P4 and most of the old illumination sets dont work or even crash, but even re-rendering old stuff brings not the GI results I had in P4. What about the promised "kick-ass" renderer ?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=322767&Start=1&Artist=Cheers&ByArtist=Yes

Well, I'll probably be screwing around a bit. For starters though, does anyone know how to map an image to a sphere where it covers the entire sphere? Look at the 5th post above and you can see the bitmap did not cover the top of the sphere. Bryce and other programs have the ability to remap the texture on the fly. I did notice there's a UV and XY coordinate node with numerical value but it had absolutely NO effect on how the image mapped to the sphere. As for SR3, yeah, that screwed me up too. You don't have to reinstall Poser, just run SR 2.1 and it will overwrite.

Actually the image mapping in the 5th post looks like the ceiling of the bedroom in the texture EricofSD ;-) Cheers

Attached Link: http://www.debevec.org

For using HDRI you must have some render engine that uses more than 8 bits per colour, 16 bit logatithmic is great. But unless you have a special monitor the final image must be converted again to the traditional 8 bits/colour again.

Looks great are those shadows from the light probe/enviroment map? or are there extra lights. have you tried it with one of the figures with a skin texture instead of a relective material? @ mit123 i'll have more naked chicks on a hdri environment soon lol love the grace lion hair too :)

"It analyzes HDR images and generates the coordinates, color info, and intensity for a corresponding light dome. Useful if your application (i.e. Poser ) doesn't support HDRI directly" Now that is interesting, I got HDR Shop on a cover cd a few months back but didn't really delve into it cos I knew poser couldn't deal with the resulting files. I wasn't aware of the extra information. I'm pretty sure probelights are in 2.1. Ericofsd, thats definately getting there. I did an image (on my other comp, will post later) where I had V3 and all of the textures were imported as an image file connected to the probelight connected to alt difuse. which game me a self lit V3. When I next get time I'm going to play about with the suggestions that Stefan made, those look like some interesting settings. Perhaps a probelight could be attached to the environment? just a thought. I'm absolutly gagging to try HDR studio, I think thats what its called, its kinda a global illumination setup that can get various light colours and intensities from a 2d image. Again not real HDRI but reckon youd get some interesting results.

Shadows on the ground are from the lightset. Shadows in the image on the sphere are in the bitmap. There is a specular light spot on the sphere that will move with the lighting, but that's about it. I cannot find any way to get a reflection from a mirror textures such as what you had above, Dash. Bryce does it well, so does Cinema. Poser just doesn't seem to have the capability. I have not tried it with a skin texture on a figure. Seems to me the light probe is too strong for that. Maybe plugging the hdri image into the specualar node would be better?

HDRI images are basically ultra-high contrast images. There are some special file formats associated with them, but they can be saved as TIFFs. Unfortunately, Poser does not support TIFFs above the standard contrast levels. Watch this space.......... H:))

hogwarden; do you mean "Floating Point TIFFs"? And are you inferring that Poser will support floating point dataTIFFs in some form later by saying "Watch this space.........." Cheers

It isn't strictly hdri, but doesn't Environment Creator Deluxe II (@ DAZ) have the ability to make a light set based on the colour values of an image? So you could set up the lighting as if it was from an environment sphere, and then use the image as a backdrop.

Yep... Floating point Tiffs... Sorry about the 'watch this space...' I'm working on a light rigger. H:)

Quote - HDRI is a type of reflection map that goes onto a model. True HDRI can project light. Fake HDRI simply is a reflection in an object. Global lighting is a fake form of radiosity, which is different from HDRI. The bryce forum is well advanced in faking HDRI and radiosity in software that does not have these features. So here's a P5 render with fake HDRI. I just plugged an image into the reflection and diffuse nodes on a primitive sphere with a copper texture to it.

HDRI is not a type of reflection map anymore then any other image can be a reflection map.
ANY image can be used to 'project light' (assuming your application of choice supports that).
HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Image. Its just another image format like jpg, tif, gif, tga etc etc. The difference is that it contains far more color information and a higher dynamic range intead of the usual 256 levels fo gray in a standard 'LDRI' (low dynamic range image) that we use everyday. 

@SplineGod
Yeah I've been scratching my head on this thread....why does everyone think HDRI is a direct lighting method????
HDRI is as you say, and unless you have an HDRI monitor....big $$$$$$, then you would not be able to benifit from the HDRI concept. There are programs that can convert HDRI ingaes to SDRI.
HDRI images allow a  picture to express the full dynamic range that the human eye can precieve. An example would be a dim room with a window. If shot in the HDRI format, three exposures would be required. -2 under, normal, +2 over exposure.
These three inages are then composted together using special software. At this point you view the image on an HDRI monitor or convert it to a SDRI for viewing on our SDRI monitors.
All shadow  and highlight detail is available in the picture.
That's my understnding from the photography point of view.

Now I believe that this effect could be simulated in Poser by paying attention to the shawdow and hightlight details and makinh sure that there is no clipping at either end of the gamma.

Maybe EF needs to explian what they mean by HDRI for Poser. 

I think it just means that Poser (at least 7 anyrate) can use .hdr files

Ive used HDR lighting in poser with pretty decent results. What I cant figure out is how to mix regular lighting with HDRI based lighting. When I add any extra lights they dont seem to have any effect even with high intensities. Am I missing something or is this a limitation? Any workarounds?

I find the results are far too bright - that might be down to the .hdr images I'm using though.  They seem to work ok with other lights but it takes a lot of fiddling with the parameter dials to get it looking good