Hi, I wonder if anyone can help. I have been trying to create a sort of soft global illumination effect. What I have done is as follows

1. create a hi-res ball from the primitive props
2. export  the ball as an obj file
3. re-import it wwith thenormals reversed.
4. increase the size to 600% to create a large dome
5. remove all other lights and add a point source about half way between the ground and the top of the ball
6. bring in james.
7. switch on raytracing and increase no of bounces to 4
8. render.
9. dissapointing single overhead light effect.
10. change ambient light to 1 and set colour to white.
11. render - no change
12. keeping the point light source in the same position, move dome.
    12 . render - no change
13. add reflectance node to dome
14. render - no change
15. Grrr. What's happening ? why isn't it working ? Where are the subtle light effects I was anticpating ?

you'd probably need to use an IBL light to do what you want.  Poser lights don't "bounce" like real ones do even with raytracing

raytracing in poser only works for reflective and refractive fx. one needs to run a python script to activate the GI fx in poser7 (indirect lighting). it' got a different variable for GI bounces, but there were some errors in the implementation. see poser python manual (P7) for more descriptions.

Thanks FrankT,
I'm disapointed to hear this, but at least it puts an end to my frustration. Next time efrontier ask what I would like, this is going on the top of the list.

Quote - Thanks FrankT,
I'm disapointed to hear this, but at least it puts an end to my frustration. Next time efrontier ask what I would like, this is going on the top of the list.

Don't hold your breath :)

I'm not sure how well Firefly will run GI - there are some hacks as Miss Nancy mentioned but I seem to recall them doing horrible things to the render time

Thank you Miss Nancy,

I will have a look and see what the manual has to say.