BastBlack,

Thanks for the renders. I just want to remind you to read what I've said, because you raised the Displacement issue again and I've talked about it 3 times already. Perhaps I am not being clear.

I'm going to type in CAPITAL LETTERS now.

----- UNINTENDED DISPLACEMENT
POSER 6 IS TELLING A LIE about images files that are not there. Because Poser 6 has a bug, VSS thinks displacement should be on for all figures. Figures that HAVE no displacement map end up with FULL DISPLACEMENT - FAT FACES. This is not intended.

I have fixed it already. FOR THE PC. I CANNOT TEST THE MAC. Next release you will see this problem gone on the PC and you can test for it on the MAC.

----- SPOTS ON YOUR FIGURE
Quoting myself, "Poser 6 users will find many more AO artifacts"

Poser 6 sucks at ambient occlusion. It is slow, it is buggy. But without AO you will have nostril glow and ear glow and other funny things and the eyes will not look real.

You have four choices:

1. First, try turning off Smoothing in render options. (Poser 7 - this can help. Poser 6 this usually isn't enough.)
2. Edit the VSS templates - remove the Ambient_Occlusion nodes. Your spots will go away, and so will some realism.
3. Edit the VSS templates - increase the RayBias on the Ambient_Occlusion nodes. This can make spots stop while still getting some AO. However, you may see AO break-away (the opposite of AO spots - AO spots is AO where there should be none - break-away is absence of AO where there SHOULD be some)
4. Switch over to Poser 7 or Poser Pro - now you have a reason. Realism and speed.

... bmk...
Looks fantastic! 

bagginsbill,

Hi, Sorry about that. I'm very excited about what you are doing and I want to helpful so that your product can be as best as it can be. I've been treating this like a beta test. When I do beta testing, I report everything I run across regardless if it's already been caught and/or addressed. I will ask questions and make suggestions (sometimes they are bad ideas, sometimes they are good ideas, it's not for me to decide if they are good or bad. Sometimes even a bad idea can lead to a good idea, so I just throws things out and maybe if it's lucky, one will stick. lol). I think it can useful to know if the Mac has the same issues as the PC, or if the Mac has different issues. 

I did read the thread, however if there are pictures that are NWS (Not Work Safe), I will scroll right past them as fast as possible!  ^^;;;   Sometimes tech-talk will throw me, and problems I run into may be similar to what the average user runs into, so it can be valuable to know what confuses people. And, imho, it's also valuable to know how common a problem will be, so it can also be useful to know if several testers run into the same issue or if it's just an isolated case. I know it can be annoying to have the same thing reported more than once, and I'm not trying to be annoying, -- just reporting things as I find them. Make sense? 

I did read about AO artifacts. If I remember correctly, the solution is to change the light's shadow min bias settings. Is that right? If so, then maybe a light set that safe for P6 or making the lights safe for all versions of poser by default is a good idea?  

Okay, now I will go and reread thead....

BB

I came off sounding annoyed. I wasn't. I was worried that you were going to get frustrated dealing with mistakes I've already fixed, but haven't had time to ship yet.

Quote - I did read about AO artifacts. If I remember correctly, the solution is to change the light's shadow min bias settings. Is that right?

No, that's not right.

The AO is not on the lights, it is in the shader. You cannot adjust the AO by anything having to do with the lights. As I said above,

You have four choices:

1. First, try turning off Smoothing in render options. (Poser 7 - this can help. Poser 6 this usually isn't enough.)
2. Edit the VSS templates - remove the Ambient_Occlusion nodes. Your spots will go away, and so will some realism.
3. Edit the VSS templates - increase the RayBias on the Ambient_Occlusion nodes. This can make spots stop while still getting some AO. However, you may see AO break-away (the opposite of AO spots - AO spots is AO where there should be none - break-away is absence of AO where there SHOULD be some)
4. Switch over to Poser 7 or Poser Pro - now you have a reason. Realism and speed.

I am using Poser 7.02.132 on a Mac and I can't seem to get them to load. I followed the steps but when I hit synchronize nothing happens and then when I hit render, nothing happens again. I have tried it with a few figures, with clicking synchronize on the figure aand on the prop but they all seem to fail. Any ideas? Thanks and sorry to be a pain.

Quote - I am using Poser 7.02.132 on a Mac and I can't seem to get them to load. I followed the steps but when I hit synchronize nothing happens and then when I hit render, nothing happens again. I have tried it with a few figures, with clicking synchronize on the figure aand on the prop but they all seem to fail. Any ideas? Thanks and sorry to be a pain.

Mungopark had something similar. I don't get what's going on. This is only P7 MAC I've heard this about.

Let me get this straight:

Before you do anything with VSS, you open your Python Buttons window and they work. You can click them and they do things. Is that right?

You then run vssMainButtons.py. My buttons show in the menu? But the Render button does not cause a render?

Forget VSS and synchronize and all that, simply pushing Render does nothing?

Pushing "Designer..." does nothing?

Pushing "Python Main Buttons" does nothing?

You're saying that as soon as VSS runs, all Python buttons stop working?

I have other questions but I'm racing down deductive paths without answers to these questions and I'll just be wasting time.

The behavior you describe is what you see when there is already a script running. The buttons seem to press and release but they don't do anything. However, in this condition, the Python Scripts menu also does nothing, and attempting to explicitly do File/Run Python Script also does nothing. However, Mungo ran my Wacro1.py file somehow to synchronize. Now it turns out that my Synchronize button is in fact Wacro1.py, but how did he run it?

If Poser is in a stuck state, and running scripts is not allowed, the buttons behave as you say. But then how did he run wacro1.py?

Mungo didn't say how he ran it.

Literally I need to know how he ran it.

I'm on a Mac and I am having a problem with the buttons.  I use File -> Run Python Script to run vssMainButtons.py and it runs fine and adds the buttons to the Python Menu.  However if I click on any of the three buttons, nothing happens.  The bottom Main Menu button works fine.  I can run macro1.py using File -> Run Python Script and it looks like it's working (I think I remember you saying that macro1 and wacro1 are the same - if not, I need to re-do all of these renders).

I added a print stqatement to vssMainButtons.py to show me vssFolder and it's getting the correct path (without using the hack), and I quickly got lost trying to figure out what was happening next.

If there is more I can do to help troubleshoot this, let me know.

For some reason, it's making the Line of Sight thingie visible.  Not sure why that's happening.

I open Poser and the buttons do work. I can get a number of actions to come up. I load the prop and the actions still work. I load the vssMainButtons.py and the only thing that works is the
poser main buttons but the rest don't seem to work. But when I pushed them there popped up a number of other scripts in the folder in the runtime called wacro and macro. The file count went from 5 to 28. He possibly  loaded the macro1.py directly after it was pulled out after the initial button push. Loading macro1 directly runs the script but I am not sure if I am missing things. Hope that helps some ..

 Hi Bagginsbill - I just loaded the the wacros 1 to 3 into the the python script buttons and they ran - Mungo

bagginsbill,

For AO artifacts I have another solution, -- Photoshop. lol  -^
Sucks about AO. I always wondered why AO didn't work for me when it did for other people.

I am not having trouble with the Mac P6 Python. Everything is working fine (after I did the SR3 update). I can render from the python menu and click on Designer and play around in there.

I have some quick questions:  

1. Do the Beach Lights add sweat/water droplets to a figure?
2. Can eyebrow and eyelashes shaders be left untouched by VSS?

Okay, now here's what the magic of Photoshop can do:
Retouching AO spots, and adjust Skintone. I did a 2 click skintone color correction and was able to match the target skintone really well. Yea. ^^

The other trouble spots you can see are the eyebrow and eyelashes. The transmaps are behaving oddly. Also, I did retouch the eyewhite to take out some of the pink. The lacrimals are lacking a texture, that's Mybad. SR3 broke the locations of my texture maps and I missed the lacrimal one. Oopsie.

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j252/BastBlack/Art/Work%20In%20Progress/photoshopadjust2.jpg

The script does make the "Bodyhandle" material, that Apollo's Line of Sight tool uses, visible.  Just save Apollo's Bodyhandle material, from a fresh Apollo, as a special collection of that one material and you can add it back into his materials once you run the script.

Quote - The script does make the "Bodyhandle" material, that Apollo's Line of Sight tool uses, visible.  Just save Apollo's Bodyhandle material, from a fresh Apollo, as a special collection of that one material and you can add it back into his materials once you run the script.

Ah now I know what's going on.

The script is doing it but not causing it. The cause is the rules in the VSS prop. Remember wildcard matching?

body <- Copy Template Skin

The name "Bodyhandle" matches the body rule, so it is putting skin on what looks like "Body".

Just add an explicit rule node for bodyhandle - connect it to nothing. It will be left alone because it connects to nothing, and will override body because it is an exact match.

I'll add that to the standard rules so you'll have that in the update.

kewl

i remember with the complicated shader of apollo that it looked a little to red. it was IMO the biggest shader and realistic of all. now you corrected everything IMO. the specular or how do you say it is more blue or desaturated. and its more like in the real world.

I am just watching the "alien" trilogy. I like cool tones too.  But even in darker/cool enviornments and lighting, white people are still peach.

My experience is that outdoor lighting is cool in sahdow and warm in light.  In this pic, the skin tones get warmer as they get more light; blue/cool as it get shadowed. I do find outdoor shadows are almost green. Green desaturates red.

http://image55.webshots.com/55/5/68/10/469956810BHmBhv_fs.jpg

Quote - Check it out. Helgard's upcoming low-poly character, Vincent Parker, with VSS treatment.

There is a small map glitch on the nostrils. We're working on it.

was this rendered in poser pro? 

p.s.i agree with you. it looks like gamma correction is the key. it looks better and gets rid of the ''poser'' feel. no matter what you do with the lights in poser 7 or what you do with the shaders. its still looks off. the light doesnt go around the object enough IMO.

bravo for the shader.

ok i have been playing around with VVS. i think i havent readed the whole thread so i dont know if this was already posted. VVS works the best with a bright IBL. without an IBL or for example with just one light it looks very fake. but with an IBL it looks groundbreaking.
can we change some of the settings in the shader? for example i noticed that you dotn even use specular value heheheh :) you are really a PRO

where do you get VVS to try it? I want to try it with HDRI .exr files.

:::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: http://poserbagginsbill.googlepages.com/vsshomepage

Mazak

the VVS shader renders 2 times faster then the complicated apollo shader. i guess because there are not so many nodes.

am i missing something? i am reading for some buttons. i only have synchronize,render,designer and poser main buttons

Quote - the VVS shader renders 2 times faster then the complicated apollo shader. i guess because there are not so many nodes.

am i missing something? i am reading for some buttons. i only have synchronize,render,designer and poser main buttons

Hi all !

Strange, for me Apollo_UCFS + eyes shader for V3 is faster than the VSS ... Lol, it's me who have missing something !

"Genitalia - not sure how to handle those."

Haha!

Thanks for your hard work, bagginsbill. The renders appearing in this thread are some of the best I've ever seen from Poser. Poser always had a distinctive look to it's renders, but now all that has changed. We now have "Poser Classic", "Poser Pro" and "Poser VSS" to choose from take care jdc

Attached Link: Jordan by Santel

Santel has quietly posted a portrait using VSS that blew me away. Santel always has done awesome work. But I think VSS made a difference in this render.

I hope Santel doesn't mind me doing this, but I just can't keep it quiet.

Please follow the link.

"Holy crap" INDEED!  That was EYE-BUGGING! I'll use VVS on the next render! Whoa!:thumbupboth:

Quote - ok i have been playing around with VVS. i think i havent readed the whole thread so i dont know if this was already posted. VVS works the best with a bright IBL. without an IBL or for example with just one light it looks very fake. but with an IBL it looks groundbreaking.
can we change some of the settings in the shader? for example i noticed that you dotn even use specular value heheheh :) you are really a PRO

Thanks.

Yes please go ahead and mess with the shader nodes. You edit them on the VSS prop. Then you click Synchronize to copy the new settings to all the materials on your figure.

I posted a screenshot a couple pages back with arrows showing the key parameters.

I made a mistake and made my demo lights too bright. Thus the shader needs very hot lights at the moment. I'm fixing that.

Quote - > Quote - Check it out. Helgard's upcoming low-poly character, Vincent Parker, with VSS treatment.

There is a small map glitch on the nostrils. We're working on it.

was this rendered in poser pro? 

p.s.i agree with you. it looks like gamma correction is the key. it looks better and gets rid of the ''poser'' feel. no matter what you do with the lights in poser 7 or what you do with the shaders. its still looks off. the light doesnt go around the object enough IMO.

bravo for the shader.

Not rendered in Pro - that was a Poser 7 render.

Quote - the VVS shader renders 2 times faster then the complicated apollo shader. i guess because there are not so many nodes.

am i missing something? i am reading for some buttons. i only have synchronize,render,designer and poser main buttons

Yes it is faster because I did not include so many special effects in the VSS basic shader set.

AMUCFS has over 120 nodes in the face!

This shader is much smaller, but it does not do so many effects. There are no moles, no pores, no capillaries, no freckles, and it has much a simpler setup for adjusting skin tone.

As for the main buttons, that's all there is - Synchronize, Render, and Designer.

The Designer button takes you to another menu that lets you make new materials and special VSS nodes. I have not explained how to design yet, except for a few quick tips.

For some people, the buttons do not work. I'm trying to figure that one out.

I'll be adding more things (buttons) once we get this first set of functionality working for everybody.

Quote -
Strange, for me Apollo_UCFS + eyes shader for V3 is faster than the VSS ... Lol, it's me who have missing something !

Hi !

Yes this shader is slow for some people because it really uses Ambient_Occlusion a lot. Also, if you're using my lights, they are raytraced shadows.

There was supposed to be AO on AMUCFS too, but I accidentally turned it off and never fixed it.

If you are rendering in Poser 6, I'm sorry - it is very slow at this stuff. Poser 7 and Poser Pro are very good at raytracing shadows.

Quote - Folks,

Santel has quietly posted a portrait using VSS that blew me away. Santel always has done awesome work. But I think VSS made a difference in this render.

I hope Santel doesn't mind me doing this, but I just can't keep it quiet.

Please follow the link.

Cool. That face is postworked though. You can see the facial compositing/retouching especially around the  mouth, nose, and eyes. Beautiful image regardless.

Quote - > Quote - ok i have been playing around with VVS. i think i havent readed the whole thread so i dont know if this was already posted. VVS works the best with a bright IBL. without an IBL or for example with just one light it looks very fake. but with an IBL it looks groundbreaking.

can we change some of the settings in the shader? for example i noticed that you dotn even use specular value heheheh :) you are really a PRO

Thanks.

Yes please go ahead and mess with the shader nodes. You edit them on the VSS prop. Then you click Synchronize to copy the new settings to all the materials on your figure.

I posted a screenshot a couple pages back with arrows showing the key parameters.

I made a mistake and made my demo lights too bright. Thus the shader needs very hot lights at the moment. I'm fixing that.

i am such an idiot. 3 times i went over this thread quickly reading your posts. and i didnt see it. i am such an idiot. ok now i understand what to change. 
can iask you for a simple way to explai to me how you make the cpecular without the specular value? is it a trick or what?

p.s. i think you make perfect shaders. they are perfection. do you think we can make a perfect poser skin shader for outdoor and indoor lighting? this year i have been reading your posts and other forums and i think it just can NOT be done. this VVS is great because we can make quick changes. i think with VVS  we can make a sun outdoor shader and then an indoor skin shader. and it works this way better. i think its better to change some settings and make them more realistc, then to make a more fake shader for both indoor and outdoor.

Quote - > Quote - Folks,

Santel has quietly posted a portrait using VSS that blew me away. Santel always has done awesome work. But I think VSS made a difference in this render.

I hope Santel doesn't mind me doing this, but I just can't keep it quiet.

Please follow the link.

Cool. That face is postworked though. You can see the facial compositing/retouching especially around the  mouth, nose, and eyes. Beautiful image regardless.

i also think that there was some photoshop work done. if not then this is IMO the best poser render in the history of poser renders :).

Some Judy with VSS renders for your amusement. :)

*Anton: Cool. That face is postworked though. You can see the facial compositing/retouching especially around the  mouth, nose, and eyes. Beautiful image regardless.

ice-boy: i also think that there was some photoshop work done. if not then this is IMO the best poser render in the history of poser renders :).

Since I never do postwork (too lazy) I'm not sensitive to the shenanigans that go on, so I didn't notice what you guys did until you told me. I had to zoom the render to see the edits. I see some mismatch around the eye crinkles, the nostril/cheek join, and the mouth corners.

These are notorious places for AO artifacts, so it may be that it was necessary to fix Poser's problems rendering those spots.

But - Anton - now you have me wondering. You used the word "compositing" which I consider to be significantly more than just touch-up. Do you think those eyes were not rendered?

As for the rest of the face, I am very sensitive to the effects produced by my shaders. I can say with almost no doubt that I see my "spots" node at work on the tiny skin imperfections, particularly on the forehead. I also clearly see my specular effects and SSS effects at work.

The eyes are rendered with almost no doubt because the iris pattern and the reflection is symetrical on both eyes.

Yeah that's a good clue.

If there is no "pasting" of imagery going on here, then I have to agree. I believe that is the best Poser render I have ever seen.

I showed it to a non-CG buddy of mine, whose reaction was, I quote, "I almost can't tell it's computer generated!"

almost

Sigh. Well we're closer than we were, right?

This pic has also my vote.
I try to tend to realism with Poser, and though i may have some success sometimes, this one really glued me on my seat! Oo

I really have to try your new shading system ^^

I'm exchanging PMs with Santel now. I have a couple questions outstanding for him to confirm, but I think I know what happened.

Santel got displacement from VSS that was not intended. (That P6 problem where the displacement gets used when it should not.) So the nose, lips, eyelids, and ears are all fatter than they are supposed to be. Santel did not realize I had no intention of forcing displacement on his figure. He only had color maps on it - nothing else.

As a result, the nose is no longer "chiseled" looking and the lips are fatter than they are supposed to be. And he hasn't confirmed, but I suspect that the areas we saw touch-up were the result of "crossover". When you apply displacement to surfaces that are very close together, they "cross over" each other and you get a render artifact. He probably fixed them in post work, instead of simply removing the displacement altogether.

Quote - can iask you for a simple way to explai to me how you make the cpecular without the specular value? is it a trick or what?

Yes its a trick. :)

Last year I moved away from skin shaders because I was failing miserably and I got frustrated.

I worked on simpler things, like car paint, glass, water.

Working with simple shiny materials, I learned a lot. I found that there are two very important rules - really important - when working with these.

1. Conservation of Energy
2. Fresnel effect

The conservation of energy is simple to understand, but sometimes hard to implement in a complex shader, such as skin. Working with simple stuff like glass or paint or milk, I learned how to do it well.

Basically, the reflection of a photon from a simple surface follows a simple statistical rule. There is a chance the photon immediately reflects off the surface (Reflection). If it does not, there is a chance it gets absorbed and re-emitted in a random new direction with a new color (Diffusion). If it does not, there is a chance it gets absorbed and becomes heat, no longer visible (Absorption - don't render it). If it does not, there is a chance that it travels through the material and comes out the other side (Refraction). That is a simplistic model, but it works for clear fluids and paint and metal.

For the purposes of reflections we have two types of nodes. The Reflect and Gather nodes (reflects other items in your scene) and Specular, Blinn, Phong, and Glossy nodes (reflects light from your light sources - simpler to calculate and often all that is necessary.) For the purposes of Diffusion, we have Diffuse and Clay. And for Refraction we can use transparency or we can use a Refract node.

(Velvet and Skin nodes combine Diffusion and Specularity - and do it badly. I never use those. You should not either.)

Now the sum of these probabilities is 1, since a photon has to do one of those four things. When we model a material in a shader, if we disobey this law, we get crap.

Basically, in most shaders, the Reflection_Value represents the probability of reflecting. The Diffuse_Value represents the probability of diffusion. The Refraction_Value represents the probability of refraction. The sum of these must be no more than 1. The probability of absorption is what is left after adding those three together.

So - am I getting to a point yet? Yes I am, soon.

Now it turns out that for many things (nearly everything in fact), the probability of reflection varies with the angle of incidence. If the photon is travelling straight into the surface, it is less likely to reflect than if it is travelling at a shallow angle, approaching the surface slowly. Imagine a bullet shot at a brick wall. It may go in, or it may ricochet. At a shallow angle, it will almost certainly ricochet. Light does the same. This phenomenon is called the Fresnel effect.

The various specular nodes have various models for this phenomenon. But none of them communicate their decision to the Diffuse node. As a result, we often have situations where the Specular node has decided that reflection is happening, while the Diffuse node also decides that Diffusion is happening. They do not cooperate and agree to split the incoming light between them, letting the specular node decide how much it should get based on Fresnel effect, and let the rest go to the Diffuse node.

This is why we get the yellow bloom on bad skin shaders. Both are firing and they should not.

What I have done is to use a mathematical trick to make the specular effect actually come from the Diffuse node!

I use a Blinn node (the best node for skin Fresnel effect) to find out how much light got reflected. Based on that, I blend the skin color with some WHITE. This blended color (peach to white) is sent to the Diffuse node, and I let it do its normal thing. But since I lie to it about the color, it sometimes gives us white highlights - precisely where the Blinn node was firing the most. Since I did not add the two together, I avoid the violation of the conservation of energy.

This is still not perfect and I am cheating like hell. But it is a much more realistic effect than naively adding together a Blinn and a Diffuse.

You might think that if we set Diffuse_Value + Specular_Value <= 1, it would work ok. But we cannot. There are situations where the probabily of Diffusion is near 0, because the probability of reflection is nearly certain. What then should we set Diffuse_Value equal to? There is no single good value. It must be a function, or we must trick it.

So that is how I do it, and that is why my shader behaves well under many different conditions.

I think there was cleanup. Artists want their images to be the best. And there is nothing wrong with that. Even alot of Rendo and Daz promo images are retouched. I actually have some photoshop techniques I use that will reveal otherwise undetectable postwork.

I want to do a tutorial on detecting postwork, not so much to hunt for edited product renders, but rather as a way to improve artwork by finding hidden flaws, etc

I used to have a pretty good tutorial on photo/render compositing. Here is a before/after from it. This is an extreme example where entire sections of photos are graphed onto the render. I notice this alot in many images to some extent; mostly in small corners of the face.

I have no issues with postwork on artwork, but it can make it hard to know what you are really looking at.

Anton - wow.

GIve me that hair layer! Wow - I'd rather just put that on top of my test renders. My test renders look stupid and hard to evaluate with bald women. I know I can't turn her head, but who cares.

Hair added in post.  yep

One thing I was dismayed by was the elimination of half the shaders on the figure's clothes by VVS.  It was a little shocking to watch them disappear after I clicked the Syncronize button.  The clothes were two clothing articles. One with one material zone with a shader. <No effects on it.

The other had ten material zones with two different  shaders used on it.  All material nodes with named parts like 'Thighstrap' or 'chestplate' were replaced with a white looking shader.  All the material zones with strange names like 'Backplate' or 'codpiece' were left alone.

I skimmed through the thread and I guess just missed something.  Do all the figures have to be naked before you use VVS?  Sorry to be a pain, but what did I do wrong? (And no, the outfit used material from the material room, no maps or textures.  Textures next time.)

Quote - I skimmed through the thread and I guess just missed something.  Do all the figures have to be naked before you use VVS?

I had mentioned this possibility in a previous post: having clothing figures with material names that contain the VSS trigger words. It would be nice to be able to select one or several figures to be synchronized so that clothing, hair etc. aren't included (or so that you can selectively change and synchronize one figure while leaving another alone).

What about hiding everything, and only the visible objects get VSS?
Some of Poser Tool Box effects work that way. Maybe coding like that could work with VSS?