I bought the Apartment Bedroom and my first render worked just fine. The second one - no matter what lights I used or even if I took off the ceiling - renders pitch black as if I am behind a wall (I'm not). There are lights in that room! Why aren't they working? Did the same thing in Poser 6 and Poser 7. tried reinstalling and same thing. renders black. Now, if it was the product, it never would have worked. Why is Poser doing this? I checked to make sure cameras are not behind some wall. Does anyone have any idea what would cause this? Happens in Poser 4 render and in Firefly with raytracing. No difference.

Hi Drifterlee, I have the same set, but have not had your problem. Just out of curiousity, are you using the cameras that come with the set, or are you using Poser's native cameras? The reason I ask, is that sometimes at different focal lengths (50 to 100mm), you have to jockey the cameras to capture the view. By doing so, it places the camera into a wall, or other object. Unfortunately, Poser does not have a clipping plane/ section view tool to help isolate these conditions- at least to my knowledge. Try moving the camera around and re-render. I hope this helps? -Starkdog

Can you show a preview image that shows where the lights are placed?  What kind of lights, infinite or spot or what?

I'll try the cameras. I did not use them. But I did not use them the first time and it worked fine. OK, I'll go try the cameras right now and see. Thanks

OK. That set does not come with any cameras. There are no cameras in the read me. Just props and lights. Arghs!

Hmm, ok. I thought that it might have came with cameras- runtime overflowing here, hehe. Which camera and focal length are you using? Try using the posing camera focused on a prop or whatever, and set the focal length to 50mm. Next, on the properties tab, check the visibility box. Set the "current" camera to Aux camera. Pan around the scene to find the Posing camera- it might be intersecting another prop or wall which will gove you blacked out renders. -Starkdog

I tried all that. I also just intalled it in Poser 5 as a test and it did the same thing. How could it work great the first time and then not?

Could you post a screenshot of preview that shows where the lights are?

To check your camera isn't actually in front of a wall which has been clipped from view in the preview, set your hither settings on the camera to 0. This will let you see what is actually in the camera's view at the time of render.

jonthecelt

Are you talking about my Home One Bedroom set from DAZ? This one?

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=4811

If so, I'm not sure what the problem could be. I'll wait for confirmation it's the same set before making any wild guesses..

mac

Quote - Are you talking about my Home One Bedroom set from DAZ? This one?

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=4811

If so, I'm not sure what the problem could be. I'll wait for confirmation it's the same set before making any wild guesses..

mac

I love the bedroom set Mac! I'm hoping one day you'll come up with a nice bathroom set too. Not many good bathroom scenes for everyday folks.

No, it's the one here in the RMP by Winnston1984. A recent prop. I loaded everything default and still black render.  I will try to upload a screen shot of cameras later today when I have time. Thanks

I have the scene and have rendered with the scene lights and my own lights without trouble :(

I can't figure out good cameras. I have tried all sorts of focal settings and I have even scaled the camera but I can't fit the camera in the scene unless I am willing to accept serious fisheye distortion from low focal settings... any advise on how to get the Poser camera to fit in a room the way a real world camera does?

I think I have a corrupt file or something or I hit a setting by accident. I'm sure it is something simple, but what? I am going crazy over this. Never happened before unless camera was behind a wall. I even took off ceiling - still no lights!

The upper pic is what the dolly sees, together with the relevant settings.

The lower view is just to prove that the dolly is actually inside the room!

One thing to watch for in P7: the infinite lights don't penetrate
in the same way that they did in earlier versions.  You can have
a light setting that formerly illuminated a room, but the same
settings in P7 may leave everything dark.  I haven't figured out
exactly when and why this happens, but the "rules of penetration"
are definitely different.

thank you ockham! great help :)

drifterlee, could it be some weird camera setting like hither/thither or shadowcam coverage? I have had my cameras go totally wonky and had to delete the .pz3 and start over from scratch, reason can be hitting the face camera when no figure is in the scene or some other bug inducing behavior such as something with the orthognal cameras that trashes all the lights and cameras in the .pz3 so they act unpredictably.

I think I sort of figured it out. I redownloaded in case of a corrupt file and looked at the lights. They all say Poser 7 content. This set was designed for Poser 7 . Also, all the lights are parented to something in the room - the inlcluded furniture - even though there are settings for "ambient light - room empty"  The empty room does not light up unless you load a bed or some prop, then the lights work. Then, if you delete that prop the lights still work but are not as bright. You CAN'T load the empty room and light it without a prop in the room first. An included prop - not just Vicky. Very, Very weird.

Glad you figured it out.  That is indeed weird.  

Sounds like the author was relying on Ambient nodes
instead of actual lights for most of the illumination???

In any event, this is the sort of problem that should have been 
caught by testing before sale.  If you load up the scene and
do "the usual things" with it (removing pieces, adding lights, etc)
 you should expect to see the room instead of darkness.

Yes, the lights say "ambient" . All the lights have fancy names.

Quite honestly, I have had a lot of products with mistakes from here lately. I think the testers are sitting around drinking Guiness or something, LOL!

Wow! That is a weird kink. Thanks.

I have  a similar problem. I try to do renders like the promo pics for the product and can't find a way to hide the walls. There don't seem to be separate material zones for each wall, and no poses to hide them.

If I move my main camera around to render from the reverse side (which they have in the promo pics), all Im get is a blurred images, as if the cityscape background is getting in the way. I'm not zoomed out that far, and have changed the focal from 55 to 35 with the same results.

As mentioned above, no camera presets come with the package.

I've IMed one of the vendors who made it, but haven't received a response as yet, and the readme file isn't very informative.

I did hear back from Winnston1984 one of the makers, and he asked for details, and I told him - then never heard back anything. The lights only work if there is furniture in the room - even if you click on the ambient lights for empty room.

This isn't a lights problem. I do have all the props in the room, and the lights are working. The problem is there's no obvious way to render the inside of the room as in their promo renders. No way to get rid of the walls.

I noticed that, too. It is an odd model. Even the way it loads not on the ground plane.

It loaded the Apartment room itself on the ground plane, and I think that was on purpose so figures would be in the right place when loaded, but yeah.

Well, The vendors replied to me, and now I feel like an idiot, lol. When you select the building facade prop, you'll see parameter dials to collapse the various walls. Pretty simple.

They should have put that in the readme, duh! Don't feel like an idiot. There were no instructions for that I could see.

No, there weren't, and I did suggest that. You don't expect to see morph dials on props anyway. But yeah, some basic usage instructions would have been nice.