Hi, I'm new to this. Been doing it long enough to not be a total noob, but small nuances seem to trip me up. I've been playing Soul Calibur IV and me and my friend wanted to know if it's possible to do there lighting in Poser and if so, how? I believe it has something to do with the lighting nodes attached to the Lights, but my renders don't show the effects. I'm attempting to capture a certain style with the lighting that completely shares the realistic game or Movie graphics. Up top is the desired results.

 Second Desired Results. Any ideas?

^^ use a higher end renderer than Poser, because both of those pics are high quality GI renders, and Poser doesn't do GI (global illumination)

Quote - ^^ use a higher end renderer than Poser, because both of those pics are high quality GI renders, and Poser doesn't do GI (global illumination)

What is meant by higher end renderer?I am having a tough enough time learning the nuances of poser, let alone having to learn other proggies!

actually, i think the second would be pretty easy.  you don't need GI that much.  notice how her chin is not more red despite its closeness to her skin?  and her ear and arm are a bit more red, which isn't from anywhere in the environment.  HDRI and IBL would suffice, or even just plain LDRI and IBL.  i'd say a look at the bagginsbill threads on VSS, his environment sphere, and his IBL tool.  oh, and if you use spotlights (which you wouldn't for an outdoor shot), make sure you find his inverse square falloff script.  that will help immensely with his lights.  you can find it by searching in the forums, and it's been longer than 45 days.

and if you don't have Poser, grab Pendragon's free ahEnvironment Light 1.0 set for Daz|Studio. and his free hair shader.

the first doesnt' look high quality at all to me.  it looks about Preview quality almost.  it's so stylized i'd suggest playing with materials and lights until you just get it.  it looks like a edge blend nodes would help with the background, and possibly with all of the materials.  they look rather "glowy."

thing is, no one can tell you how to duplicate someone else's artwork in one step. especially when someone else is actually a whole team of people.  my suggestion is to just try different things.  in the first case, i'd try a medium ambient light, some colored spotlights, and just some real experimentation when it came to the materials.  in the second, i'd use mainly ambient light in the form of IBL and then an infinite light.  then i'd learn everything i could about realistic  materials.  good luck!

As in, some render that can do Global Illumination, area lights and area shadows, and the like.  Not necessarily software that costs thousands of dollars, but not Poser's rendere either.  Area lights and shadows can be faked to an extent, but GI is very difficult to really fake, especially for a scene with a lot of ambient light as shown above.  Learn about lighting, learn what your renderer can do, observe the real world, etc.  There are no 1-2-3 quick easy steps that will let you duplicate promo art like that shown above.

Quote - ...I'm attempting to capture a certain style with the lighting that completely shares the realistic game or Movie graphics. Up top is the desired results.

The one WRONG word in your sentence above is: REALISTIC...   Both Soul Calibur IV & Final Fantasy VII Advent Children are far, far, faaaaaaar from realistic.  Both have completely different, highly stylized looks (quality of realism from lighting type/style etc.) to them that just cannot be called realistic (what the human eye perceives as realistic) , though Advent Children certainly does have a beautiful look to it. 

Soul Calibur IV with the screenshot of Cervantes above is 100% realtime produced by the games engine and is in no way close to anything realistic (or otherwise)  like Advent Children...  For a 60 fps current gen console fighting game Soul Calibur IV looks pretty darned good!  Not as good as Gears Of War or Assassin's Creed but it's probably the best looking fighting game out so far.  But dang dude...  so not realistic.  I've clocked dozens and dozens of hours on SC4 but I can in no way compare it to Advent Children which I've watched many many times too.

Now if any 3D app could produce the gorgeous quality of realism of Advent Children at 60fps realtime with high poly characters akin to SC4 that would be AWESOMESAUCE!!!   A few years away I'd imagine but not far...  Poser NOW...  IBL or fake GI and fantastically long render times for the Advent Children look and for the Soul Calibur IV look...  easy but why would you want to???  Firefly already will give a better render (not realtime) than Soul Calibur IV...

My two cents are sooooooo spent I think!

Gerard

p.s.  you should have cropped or blurred out the ign logo...  :P

 Thanks, for the explosive responses. I'm currently adept at Blender and Poser 7. I'm using them both conjunctively for different projects. I've been doing clothing and soft body work and sculpting in Blender then I'd import it into Poser and work on completing my characters there. After months of work I'm getting ready for some Killer Renders, but can't seem to even get them to resemble the Poser advertisements, let alone the desired Game results. It figures there isn't just a 3 step process for these type of things, but as in the 3D world is there really a 3 step process for anything nowadays? lol I like the Global Illumination idea. and will look into the bagginsbill threads. Up top is my first attempt at capturing the Soul Calibur lighting. I specifically like the one on that stage so  I'm trying to capture the greenish foreboding evil look. Didn't go so well. It's decent but still not high def quality or remarkable. What I did was subsurface scattered his skin, turned up the intensity of the lightes, changed the colors lengthened the shadows a little and vwala. Tips?

 Ghelmer, good post. I'm going for these different looks for a basis and then build off of it a high def, realistic render/image. The soul calibur works for a basic anime look that I'm going for. but I want realistic anime. That's also why I mentioned Final Fantasy. Neither of the looks are super realistic but imagine if they were...Using that lighting style and artistically adding realism while still paying tribute to the unnatural or anime world's. 

If you're already doing a multi app workflow, then look into some of the free renderers out there like kerkythea, sunflow, lux render etc. I believe they even have blender compatible plugins.

 Really? Sweet I'm on it. Thanks for all the help guys. I'll do some research and tests and let you know how it goes!

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.php?userid=13013

> Quote -  Ghelmer, good post. I'm going for these different looks for a basis and then build off of it a high def, realistic render/image. The soul calibur works for a basic anime look that I'm going for. but I want realistic anime. That's also why I mentioned Final Fantasy. Neither of the looks are super realistic but imagine if they were...Using that lighting style and artistically adding realism while still paying tribute to the unnatural or anime world's. 

Last year while experimenting with lighting for an ongoing (taking forever!) project I did the image in the link (my renderosity member page pic) in what I was hoping for an Advent Children look and feel...  (remember the scene where Cloud was on the hilltop where his old Buster sword was knocked over by Kadaj is the look I was going for) it was rendered in Carrara and turned out pretty cool IMHO...

Have you seen the screenshots and movies of Gears 2 yet??  Now that's coming close to FF VII Advent Children quality realism!!!

Gerard

 Brilliant lighting my man. and might I add not a bad spicy character either. lol You captured a warm glow on her skin. Awesome. That scene was epic on the Hill top! One of my favorite lighting moments (SHOOT JUST FREAKIN FAV MOMENTS IN GENERAL) was the forest battle! I'm still learning how to do illumination effects like that. That movie has forever scared my 3D life, setting the bar SO high! GEARS 2...Yeeeaahhh, that is gonna be sweet. Is it even possible for one guy to do what it takes a team of guys with degrees and stuff to do, ever hope to achieve solo?

the top image you will achieve in carrara, the second you could get in vue, both apps relatively cheap, the ff stuff isn't great realism, but they are great texturers and their anim stuff is supreme.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=565350

Is this the kind of thing you're aiming for?[

](http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=565350)

Wait.....you guys need to make AE and PS your friend!

A lot of what you seem to like can be driven by a basic render in Poser, and then in post processing you jump on the filters.

I have two words for you: Difuse glow!

Every time I want to go for a "look", I just get the fundamentals in Poser, then in Photoshop or After Effects I start combining adjustment layers with filters. Inevitably I end up with at least SOME difuse glow in it. Maybe ghelmer got that look with his curvy girl without post filters, and if he did then salute! But if someone asked me to "go for" the look of that girl, I'd be in PS or AE so quick.

Now....that is not for ultra-photo-realism (although you need post processing for that too) because this stylized realism.

::::: Opera :::::

Poser 7 can deliver some beautiful renders on its own without Photoshop work or rendering in outside packages. But it does take a lot of work in learning the ins and outs of both IBL and HDRI lighting. This image is from a set of HDRI lights that I am working on for possible sale in the marketplace. Marketplace images must be free of post work, which has never intimidated me because I'm sort of a purist, I like to see what I can get purely with Poser as my tool. This is by no means the ultra-realism you can get with the high end apps used to create such masterpeices as Advent Children, yet Poser itself can deliver results of it's own.

Content used in this render:
My HDRI light set
Tharyn body texture by Rebelmommy found at DAZ
Realism Python driven shader system by face-off
Various tips and tricks for AO on the floor and background rom discussions with bagginsbill
Grace Lion Hair

 Wow, ok first off Nevare, Hi, That's more along the lines of where I'm trying to go. Take that look and submerge it in the various lighting that Each Soul Calibur Stage emmitts and Bingo! Anime realism with different lighting! I halfway considered going into Photo shop and applying a mountain of filters such as, diffuse glow, or Sharpening it to make it appear High Def then adding glaussian blur to the back ground to make the characters in the foreground appear more stunning but I'd have to at least have a good basis to begin with. And I'd be spending more time in PS attempting to do what I believe I can achieve in a 3D space. I just downloaded Kerkythea but am not sure completly how to use it. Laytexluv that image IS striking. I didn't EVEN know you could get THAT far IN Poser. That is very close to natural lighting. Similar to the FF pic. The other image I was going to post was this one above. Showing a natural-ish light found in Soul Calibur. It's not as impressive mainly because it's a screen shot but at home on my high-def tv sitting close to the screen everything just looks so impeccable. 

 Here's also a better view of the "greenish" Cervante's lighting on that stage I was into. I attempted this in poser, changed all the lights green/blue and formed an aqua look but still not good.

Bear in mind that a lot of the effects you're seeing are due to filters/post-effects (e.g. the light bloom, DOF) and also shaders (normal mapping, specular, etc), so regardless of whether you have the most realistic lighting in the world, it'll still fall flat and be unrealistic if the only attention you give the models in the scene is to stick a diffuse map on them.

Onto the lighting.. one of the best things you can do, as cobaltdream suggested, is devour anything bagginsbill says (he honestly is a Poser god!). His VSS thread has a lot of useful lighting info in there, though 30+ pages is a bit much to read through at a time. His advice on gamma correction is invaluable though, and worth the search. Especially if you don't want your results to turn out looking muddy. The gallery I linked to was rendered in Vray, where it is, frankly, very easy to get good light setups. WAY easier than Poser, but ho-hum. HDRI/IBL would be a good means of getting some "overall" lighting, and then you could have spots/infinites for the special effects, like back/rim lighting, colours, etc...

sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/

You can go to his site for his IBL generator and Environment sphere. I haven't used them, but many others have (search for the threads here) and many users have had very good results.

Poser7 has its limits, of course, ask Bagginsbill and he will tell you, any artist will. Still, it is my preferred tool (I do have Cararra 6 and Hexagon but have never rendered in either app). Poser's application of IBL and HDRI are not perfect, and Firefly is not as capable as a render engine as can be found in other apps like 3DStudio Max, Lightwave or Maya (Its my guess that if FF Advent was not made using in-house software, then it was done with Maya). But since I prefer Poser, I have learned to work within it (I've been a Poser user since 1998, using Poser 3). I have learned and am still learning everytime I come here to the forum or go over to Runtime DNA to the Node Cult section. For my HDRI lights, I looked into any link or description on the subject I could find at both places on the Net. What I'm trying to say, is that if you learn from these sources, you can drive Poser to do some pretty amazing stuff without postwork filters. However, it you like that distance blurred background, you'll still get that effect with Photoshop with a few seconds work, whereas, if you use the Depth of field in Poser, you're going to be waiting on a long, long render time. Also, all of this is going to be affected by the hardware that you own. I'm using an off the shelf Toshiba laptop at the moment. Previous to this, I had a custom Dell computer that absolutely could not handle rendering any amount of AO. The Toshiba does not balk at AO. The machines uses to produce things like SoulCalibur and FF Advent are mega machines networked together into what's called render farms. So we have limitation in software and hardware. This doesn't mean that beautiful images can't be obtained within those parameters. I do NOT begrudge artists that use Photoshop/Paintshop for postworking. Postworking is used throughout the industry even on animations like Advent Children. I have no beef against postworking as some Poser purists do. It's just my personal quirk that I like to drive Poser7 it's hardest to see if I can get an image out of it that in my opinion only needs the application of my logo on it.  In effect, what I'm saying is that you can achieve some of appearance of these screenshots if you want to take the time to learn the ins and outs of lighting and shaders in Poser. Search for any discussion of Bagginsbill on lights and shaders here and at Runtime DNA. There's a good tut on HDRI/IBL at Aery Soul's forum (you can save the mages at Aery Soul for offline study).

Included here is a close up of the image I posted. In my opinion, I think my face light needs to be brighter. But that's just me.

Sheesh, the image didn't upload, let's try this again.

 Ok, this is gettin good. This leads me to a good question. Which is the main catalyst in an awesome render? The Lighting effects or the Surface there effecting? Looking at your girl I see she has a quality skin texture. Making the picture remain more realistic and in a one two combo accentuating the lighting. If you have dynamic lighting will it not even matter the surface texture? Or if you have a dynamic surface texture will it be brilliant no matter the lighting?

For a top quality render, you need both. Personally, I would put lighting ever so slightly higher. A good lighting setup can make a mediocre texture look good, but a bad lighting setup can make a brilliant texture look awful. But similarly, you can have the best, most realistic lighting in the world, but if the textures you're using are low-res, blurry, or have false shadows and highlights baked into them, they'll drag you're result down.

no, you need both together.  and it's more than "dynamic" lighting.  that is, you have the technical aspect of materials and light.   that takes time, but you can use someone else's knowledge (which is what most of us do).    but then there's the artistic side.  that's all you.  if you want artwork that's just like the two different teams that worked on those projects, i'd say study their work and do lots of experimentation.

Nevare and cobaltdream are right, you need both good lighting and good shaders for your Poser scene to 'pop".  But I also would put lighting just a tick above the shaders. I often say that lighting can make or break a Poser picture. Cobaltdream is right in saying that you can use someone else's knowledge, which means lighting and skin textures either in freestuff (there are some excellent ones there), or for sale in the Marketplace. I have found that I have a particular fondness for Rebelmommy's texture sets for V4, I purchased two more of her sets last night from DAZ because they're on sale right now. Her attached shaders are very nice, but I also use the python driven shader system from face_off, found here in the Marketplace. Just look up "Realism Kit" or face_off, and you'll find it. It's a good investment. The VSS system can also give nice render results and it's free. It was created by the math guru bagginsbill and you can find a big discussion thread on it here in the forums. Both systems can be used with any texture you apply to the millineum people by DAZ. VSS will also work with figures inside of Poser such as Judy or Jessy or James (I'm not to sure if the Realism kit will work with those figures). There are a few free IBL lights in the freestuff area, I've used most of them and studied their settings. There was a time way back in the Poser past (1999), when people could freely distribute pz3 files in the freestuff and that's how I learned so much because you could literally pick apart an entire scene. You could look at hw the lights were set up, you could see and write down the camera settings, ect. You can't really load up full pz3 files to free stuff any more, so that avenue for learning is pretty much gone. But there is far more 'how to' discussions in the forums now. When I'm satisfied with my lights, I'm going to offer them in the Marketplace and since shareCG is around I'll put up a freebee (I no longer have a website, but it was built for me and I'm web challeneged anyway). Bagginsbill also has a free system for creating IBL light probes from your own photographs or panoramic photos from the net. I suggest you look into that too. I also highly suggest you go to the Node Cult forum at RuntimeDNA. There are lots of threads on shaders of all kinds where people have put up screenshots of their node setups so that you can manually copy them. I've got a big folder on my hard drive of those screen shots and I refer to all the time for shader effects. The Poser app now had a large learning curve for those starting out with say Poser6 or Poser7. It's not a huge learning curve and there are short cuts like using people's freestuff or purchasing from the Marketplace. I started out with Poser3 which was given to me without a manual and in the beginning I just clicked on things to see what they did and asked a lot of questions. If you want to learn it, you can end up with some very nice renders, but (and this said with a grin), it takes practice and something bordering on obsession.

i'm going to be the oddball and say that shaders are more important.  i generally setup my lights in about 1 or 2 tests.  i tweak my shaders in from 15 to 30 tests.   if you have the right shader, your lights should be simple unless you've got a model that absolutely demands multiple light sources.  otherwise, really, there's only a few technical issues to deal with:

• use IBL to accurately reflect the ambient lighting of your scene
• add an inverse square falloff shader to your spotlight
• decide how to handle shadows.  raytraced shadows get grainy if you have a low spot angle and can use up a lot of processor power.  depth mapped shadows don't blur and fade like real ones, and can use a lot of processor power to get detail.

and that's pretty much it.

i haven't changed my default lighting setup much in ages.  i almost always use an IBL and two spots, but i change location, direction and intensity.   outdoors would be an IBL and one infinite light.  other than beginning to use raytraced lights, i haven't added any knowledge to my use of lights in about a year.  in terms of my materials, i've experimented and grown a lot, imho.  lately i've been working from bagginsbill's materials, and i'm pretty impressed.

just my 2 cents...

Quote - add an inverse square falloff shader to your spotlight

How do you do this? I know it's somewhere on this forum but I can't find it.

www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

Above is the post Bagginsbill made with the setup (and attached light material). Make sure to read the stuff that goes with it!

i use the one bagginsbill posted a while ago.  you should probably contact him to see if he has or wants to update it. 

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2701647&page=1

oops!  x-post..

Thanks!!!

 Wow, Latexluv, I wish I had that set up where you just loaded people's pz3 files and checked it out. I'm basically clicking stuff, seeing what it does, researching unfamiliar phrases and trying to have fun. I think I've gone way past the obsession phase. I'm waking up doing formulas in my brain about how to better my projects and create complex models from simple shapes. Good tips Navarre and Colbaltdream. It would seem that in these instances a marriage of techniques always tends to be the answer. I enjoyed the good objectivity as well. Bagginsbill is a sick individual. anyone ever met him?

    Quote: "Bagginsbill is a sick individual. anyone ever met him?"

I can only hope you are using reverse meanings to express "really great!" in today's young-speak.

In my estimate ( and apparently that of most others'),  Bagginsbill is very very clever,  generous to a fault, tolerant with even the most inexperienced questions despite his own claims of being blunt and impatient, honest without being brutal and owner of a healthy and well-deserved ego which still allows for admission of being wrong at times.

No, I haven't met him, nor even talked to him but am I thrilled to benefit from his prescence here!

Using your young-speak, if that's what it was (as I can think of no other explanation), he is really really BAD and I wouldn't mind having his children. :)

blush

Dude, word!

He he Latexluv :)

I'm trying to interpret  what I assume to be linguistic acrobatics here.  Now you just tied me up into a pretzel.

Care to elaborate?  "Dude, word."   I admire minimalism, but what does it mean?

I'm still having problems rationalizing why chemist should be pronounced as a 'k' and charmed as a 'ch' in English (being a second language) etc etc now this. :)

I'll have a go though. Does it mean "Man, don't sweat it, it's just a word."  ?

Truly intrigued :)

Bagginsbill, you're safe, I'm like on the other side of the world. ;)

You got the first one right. "Dude" is California surfer slang for "Man".

"Word to your mother" means "I'm telling you the truth, my friend" or "that's the truth". Popularized by Vanilla Ice. Word is the truth, and this means even more so (i.e., I wouldn't lie to your mother, man).

Since then, it has been reduced to the single "Word".

So, "Dude, Word" means, "Man, that's the truth!"

Oh, got it thanks :)  Latexluv agreed with me and I didn't even know it. :)   Communicating strictly via text is an adventure at best and holds many boobytraps.  Now that sounds wrong too.

Booby trap, now by what sinister means did that expression evolve?

Nah, I've derailed this thread enough, it's been an interesting discussion.

There is a bird called a Booby, which is very ungainly and awkward on land, consequently a person called a Booby means someone who is awkward and clumsy. These birds were trapped for food very easily by early sailors.  So a Booby trap is something something easily stepped into and triggered.

Bagginsbill, perfect explanation of what I'd said. Waywardsamurai had said that you were 'sick', and I'd hoped that you and others would recognize this 'youngism' as meaning that you were cool and not ill, or in the slang of my time (the 80's), perverted. But your explanation of the phrase I used was better than the one that I saw recently on Discover in a program called "Do you Speak American" which had a section on west coast slang (Valley Speak and Surfer Dude Speak).

Oh, and a friend and I were playing through Champions of Norath for the PS2 and were fighting Roman soldiers and joking around we updated the phrase (or backdated it?) to:

"Dudus maximus, wordium."

Sighs with relief.  Over here in Oz boobs is a cutesy term used for breasts and boobies is even more cutesy.  Hence the posibly bizarre connotations.

Guess it's my mind absurdum. :)

oi, I thought that a "booby trap" was a bra.

Silly me   :biggrin:

Either way you'd have to be into birds it seems. :)

Over here some cars I've seen bear the legend "No birds!"   I fancied it means  no picking up hitchhikers of the female variety.  Actually I still don't know what it really means. 

i am doing some new tests for really soft lighting . i used an ILB and IBL shadow, i used bagginsbill tutorial for shadow cams.

and here i changed the shadow cam. looks like really soft lighting

what do you think? 

if you take this into Photoshop (etc.) and apply just a touch of diffuse glow you can increase the effect, with control. If you don't have PS, i think other 2d editors have Difuse Glow.

If I were going for this look I would take the top version in; its shadows are darker, but that can be adjusted. Meanwhile the contrast between light and dark on the top render means that manipulating in post you will have more options.

The bottom render is "softer", yes, but flatter, too. I guess I am saying you want the depth that comes from contrast but also with the ability to apply softening overall.

Are you in PoserPro? If so, you may wish to try rendering out to openEXR format and attack it in PS with gamma, exposure, lightness settings in 32-bit mode.

::::: Opera :::::