(I'm not sure where to put this post, so I'll start here... perhaps a new thread is more appropriate)

Character Lighting........

The more I look at the images seeking critique, the more one thing is jumping out at me, and it's almost starting to be a pet peeve...

If a person uses a character to tell a story where this character is sort of a main actor (rather then some side shadowy figure) it is important that this character is well lit.  I don't mean a reflector in their face kind of lit, but lit in a wat that speaks 'this is the main character in the scene"  Not in a way where a number supporting actor elements (ground, sky, background, etc... overwhelm it.)

Good check for this is what I call a squint test (I'm not sure of it's proper name)... Back away from the monitor, squint a little bit so all you see is fuzzy shapes, and lights and darks (very out of focus). Ask yourself these things:
What is the first thing I notice?
Is this the first thing I want to have noticed? 
Does it help tell my story?

General art theory rule in the images is that a large contrasting mass will attract the eye. Two contrasting large masses of similar size on the image will compete for attention, and the viewer will become confused as to which one to look at, and that will prevent them from feeling 'drawn to the image'

If you intend to have a fine shadowy image, take a look at PJZ99's work, it's a great example of succesful shadowy images, where not seeing the main characters face is not distracting. 
The reason being is that she doesn't have other bright or sharply contrasting elements making a distraction. Her images send a strong message that you're seeing what you are meant to see.

[Kitty runs off the soapbox before someone reaches for a squirt bottle]

Dagnabit, where's mah squirt bottle? :lol:

That actually is a good point, AND addresses a REAL weakness of poser.  Poser doesn't have Global Illumination, or any kind of radiosity.  That is a real weakness for renders done in Poser. Vue might help a little depending on what kind of render you're doing.

Unfornately ,it chokes and dies on larger poser scenes.. Free render engines, I don't know diddly about. I've heard that Blender can do it, but I'm not sure how much of IT it can do.

This is a topic best suited to Art Theory, maybe.  Light and uses is a vast subject, not suited to this thread.  Thought it is something that should be mentioned at least in passing.

Yeah, I thought about posting it in Art theory, but so few people go there :(
[Kitty runs away hiding from the squirt... bottle that is ;) ] 

You make an excellent point Connie.

Being a contrast junkie myself I quite often suffer from the opposite of this problem. TOO MUCH CONTRAST!

I have to say though, the great majority of 'art' and dare I say 'artists' here at R'osity don't tend to be too concerned with Art Theory. Sad but true.

I say, if you're going to do a naked sword wielding priestess in a temple, at least do it right! :)

I went ahead and redid my latest render to address the concerns of lights and focus.  It was really hard to find any good tutorials on lights and DOF here with the search function. :(  I think it looks better.

Hah! "Squirt"!  I'll get you and your itty bitty kitty,too! Bwahahahahahahahahhahah! :lol: ~__^ V,,

Quote - I went ahead and redid my latest render to address the concerns of lights and focus.  It was really hard to find any good tutorials on lights and DOF here with the search function. :(  I think it looks better.

Hah! "Squirt"!  I'll get you and your itty bitty kitty,too! Bwahahahahahahahahhahah! :lol: ~__^ V,,

I wanna see? Did you put it in your gallery?

Yeppers!  I should have put a link in! www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php There ya go! ^__^ V,,

hey guys... sorry i haven't been able to post or comment for awhile. I had my laptop stolen the first day I arrived in town for my new job from the house they put me up in and just got the replacement today. I won't be able to post for awhile, until I get home to grab my backup install disk for poser. right now I am working with the bare OS. I have about 150 or so posts to catch up on but I promise to be posting again within the next few weeks... Just wanted eveyone to know I wasn't slacking..lol R

Rik, don't worry about us!  Jeez, this is one of those, "REAL LIFE TAKING PRECEDENCE" situations.  Comment when you can, just take care of yourself first.  I hope you took all of the Anti-identy theft step,too.  If you have Firefox or similiar browser with auto-complete and you ever used your credit card on that laptop--they got your credit card number.  Most people don't think of that.  Take care of yourself, and that really sucks.

Quote - Yeppers!  I should have put a link in! www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php There ya go! ^__^ V,,

Ahh, gotcha! You swapped the image in the gallery... I kept looking for a new one and ignoring the one I was seeing (my bad).  Looking much better! :)
For future renders, is there anything that can be done with the stone exture under their feet, it seems so bright? I wonder if the diffusion strenghth or color on it can be turned down.

It's funky, IRL the stone hit by sunlight would very likely be that bright, but then it would reflect a lot of the ambient light to people's faces too, so they'd be pretty rather bright, with lighting from below. (Radiosity element)   But... we may be bumping Poser renderer limits at this point.
I don't do a lot of final renders in Poser, so maybe someone else who does and has figured out a slick way to fake radiosity could chime in with technical details?

@joelgaine - I did a little bit of searching on faking radiosity in Poser, and have found this thread: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2464976
It may be of some use - I hope I hope :)
[Kitty runs off before the squirt bottle gets her...]

Any help to improve Poser renders is appreciated!  I may play with that render one more time, but I may just file the info for another one coming up.  That scene is CURSED and I don't want to touch it again! Yeesh.

Well, the scene is still awesome, but I totally understand how it goes, too much tweaking can wear a person out.  I know if I do it too much, I lose perspective and get more tangled up at some point... then I need to step away from it :)
I'm just, ahem, pushing you a bit. I hope I haven't totally annoyed you, or made you feel bad.

I like being pushed to do better!  The scene has a corrupt registry list that loads a bunch of stonmason building in different places, instead of the Courtyard scene, and it takes over an hour to delete the buildings, generate the right buildings, and re-position the frigging things with the right textures.

EBIL SCENE!  If I didn't have to re-generate the dang thing from almost scratch, I'd have already re-done it.  I have to much DOF and not enough radiosity, or bump. Meh.  Damned thing.

I want to hit it with a hammer! :lol:

Hi!
Just to let you know that I will have a very limited (and expensive) internet access until sunday so I won't be posting comments until then. I know I will have like 500 ebots waiting for me...

I am late for comments too. I am in the middle of a BIG MOVING and my new house is still completely empty, except for a bed. No computer, no network access... (no bathroom...)

Giorgio

Do I miss something? No critique group picture in the last 24 hours? Or problems with the ebot?

@bantha:

I uploaded one within these 24 hours. Ebot prob? :)

obviously.
I didn't get a message that you posted here either.
I will change to another email address....

Changed. Could anyone please post anything, either here or a picture or both?

Get this?

Yes, and I got the missing old stuff too. Everything working again. Thank you. Nice picture by the way, the skin just does not look wet but oily. I think ther is no really easy way to get believable wet skin....

Pulling a glass of water on it, that's all i know... ;) lol

People i really need help.....I am so mad and i really will smash poser in a trashcan...
I still recieve the fu......error messege !XML Error,,parse error...line not well formed at 98...
Poser freezes and my pc crashes....and what really sucks...all my external runtimes disapers and i have to reinstall them again. I cant understand why e-frontier cant make a real update after 7 month .
I hate it!!!!!!!!!!!!
Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ladonna

Have you installed a face room module recently? If you have I had the same problem, here is the thread at CP
http://www.contentparadise.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2745&page=2

It was indeed the displacement of the closing definition tag, when I relocated it to the end of the file, the problem evaporated.

Kalon thanks, but i cant find the settings ratscloset is talking about.
In my dokuments and settings is nothing about Poser 7.

I'm not at home, no poser here. But I believe the file name is something like faceroomheads.xml. The file opens with a tag something like <definition (then a description)>
The very last line of the file needs to be

Oh, and if you have the closing definition tag before the end of the file, it needs to be removed.

Kalon..the face room settings are okay. I checked. But i cant find the other files. I have looked in every poser file. :(( I think i need the technical support...

So you can open Poser?

I think you're right, you do need Tech support.

Thank you Kalon.
A friend suggest me now to update my XML Windows files. I will see if this maybee helps.
Yes i can open poser but it commes whit this fu....error. And i have to reinstall all my external runtimes again.
This sucks. I have over 20 extrnal runtimes. LOL And it is really boring me to ad the evry time new to my library.

I hope that help! That can be such a pain in the butt! I just use the P7 FF renderer because it's faster than P6's.

I did find one nifty little feature in P7, I almost fell on the floor, I was SO shocked! 

Select Menu on the Right-click on screen!  OMG!  You can FINALLY select what the hell the frigging pointer is actually on at last!  No more waving the pointer around like Harry Potter's magic wand, hoping what you actually want lights up! Just right-click on it and pick from the menu under "Select--".

It's OT. but I was excited. :lol:

Du hast die falschen up-date files. Für die deutschen Computer wurden welche später erstellt, da die ersten SR bei unseren Computern eben diesen Fehler verursachten. Das Problem liegt an den Dezimalstellen. Wir haben Kommata und P7 will einen Punkt.  So kannste entweder Windows von Komma auf Punkt umstellen, oder die anderen SRs laden ;-)

Habe ich Sivana...habe die SR1.1 oder gibt es da ein andres....gehe jetzt glatt nachschauen...

Please sign me up too ...

Can ya sign me up please???? I want to learn how to be better..:O).ty Karen xoxoxox

I just posted a new one http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1457067

Ja, es gibt dafür 2 Varianten. Aber Du kannst auch Windows direkt umstellen.

Okay people...i have ebot problems. I dont recieve since a few days all my ebots. I miss alot. :(
So if i forget to comment somebody please mail me. Sorry:((

Yep, sign me up.  Please understand that I won't be a very active participant for a while but I hope to change that soon, when I get my own net access back.  I've been rendering quite a lot since my enforced absence so hopefully, you can all point and laugh, erm, I mean, critique my work when I start to upload my rubbish to the gallery.

Cheers. :D

Paul!!!!!!!
Good to see you around, buddy... I'll get you added to the list this weekend.
Looking forward to seeing your work again!

Quote - Paul!!!!!!!
Good to see you around, buddy... I'll get you added to the list this weekend.
Looking forward to seeing your work again!

Eyup, Karen.  Nice to see you, too.  :)

Hey Paul LTNS Hope you're well hun!!!! xoxox

Quote - Hey Paul LTNS Hope you're well hun!!!! xoxox

Thanks.  Same to you. :)

Got to go now, seeya later.

Phew finally got up to date with the thread & the list, I think I have everyone removed / added as necessary. RL issues have calmed down & I hope to be able to participate more now, although my own muse seems to have left me & haven't done a render in a little while LOL.

Just a quick note regarding a comment way back, in regards to blatant advertising, I am sorry that could possibly be me, but I cannot control the ebots & this is why the images are in the Product Showcase Gallery, & have comments turned off, as I do not expect you to view or critique these piccies.

Just an idea Karen, but would it be possible for the ebots to list the Gallery in the email, then people in the group would know it was a commercial render & didn't need to view.

Well, you could also work around that yourself via the image title Anniebel.

Quote - Well, you could also work around that yourself via the image title Anniebel.

Ok I will try & remember to put (commercial) in brackets so that club people know they don't need to view those images, as they will be in the product showcase.

OK new peeps have been added on page 1...

Sorry for the delay, folks... ex troubles this weekend :sneaky:

Thanks Karen :O) 

Those dam exes....I had trouble with mine at the weekend too lol

Please ad me to this list I would love nothing better then to get better!!! Thankyou!!!

Hi All, 

Would it be too much hassle for me to rejoin the group?

Things are a bit more normal now!!

Mark