Just in my opinion, what Poser Pro NEEDS.

1- Full 64 bit support, in all aspects of the program.

2- The ability for an idle CPU core to pick up on parts of the render not yet completed. As it is, when a core finishes its task at hand it sits there idle, doing nothing.

3- Global controls, such as the ability to turn on or off all shadows for all lights at once. That would be great for when you're worrying more about how your textures look than getting a real render. Certainly it would be much better than having to select each light and turn its shadows on or off one at a time.

4- When creating a new light you should be prompted to name it right then and there, and the shadow cam for it should relect that name, not something stupid and nondescriptive like "Shadow Cam Lite 432". They should also spell "Light" correctly. ;-)
Speaking of lights, they should also come in at 0,0,0 with no funky rotation, maybe just pointing straight down the Z axis.

5- The ability to abort a render as it's calculating shadows and/or loading textures. You may realize something is wrong or you forgot to do something the second after you hit CTRL+R, but have to wait until all shadows and textures are calculated before you can abort. That can take a long time in some cases.

6- Why is a camera which is "pointing at" a figure MUCH slower in OpenGL than one which is not, especially if that figure has IK on? That's just... weird. Annoying, too. Why is a face camera, for example slower than the main camera? Because it's "pointing at" the face. You can move the main camera or the auxiliary camera to the face and it is much faster.
The hand cameras are the same deal, much slower because they are "pointing at".

These are just a few things I've been thinking of and that have been bugging me for a good while now, and I'm sure there are more I haven't thought of as I'm writing this. Basically, ideas to speed up the process. Things "Pro" apps tend to offer you control over.

And of course it could stand to have real global illumination, i.e., radiosity, but that kind of scares me to think how long that would take to render...
Maybe they should include Mental Ray with it. Now that would be cool. ;-)

7- All CPU cores should be used for all things going on in the program, not just rendering. Yes, I know currently most 3D apps don't have that going for them, but they will, soon enough.

8- We should be able to assign our own keyboard shortcuts if we want, and save them out as configuration files.

Quote -

3- Global controls, such as the ability to turn on or off all shadows for all lights at once. That would be great for when you're worrying more about how your textures look than getting a real render. Certainly it would be much better than having to select each light and turn its shadows on or off one at a time.

You idiot, you can do that in Poser, right there in the render Settings Panel! You have to click the manual Settings button to get at it and check or uncheck the box labeled Cast Shadows.

OK, so scratch that one off the list. ;-)

Quote - And of course it could stand to have real global illumination, i.e., radiosity, but that kind of scares me to think how long that would take to render...
Maybe they should include Mental Ray with it. Now that would be cool. ;-)

O yes.

IBL isn't that bad. But slow, slow, slow ...

This following image is made with one IBL and one Highlight using a skyglobe. Rendertime (900x900) 4 hours. My Cinema 4D needs 10 Minutes for real GI.

This one is using "real light conditions" (12 lights, different intensity). Rendertime: 6 hours.

I'd rather have, and rather see, the "lesser" version of VRay available for PoserPro (such as is available for trueSpace), since the price would be perhaps $300 instead of $1000. Mental Ray would be more. I think VRay is a better fit for Poser because it is (reportedly, I have little experience with it) simpler to get to great results than Mental Ray.

However, if you want to engage these more advanced render engines, there are ways to get there now. There's an inexpensive plugin that lets you export .mdd/pointcloud, you can get to POVRay thru POSE-Ray for free, how about COLLADA or fbx export to a stand-alone engine, etc.

The problem with exporting to these external engines is the dynamic hair.

If VRay Jr. were integrated right into Poser and had no issues with dynamic hair, wow that would be titanic.

::::: Opera :::::

Those are some pretty good renders there, adp.

As for VRay, I didn't think about it. Yes, I know it's a great render engine, but I have no experience with it. Mental Ray I've used alot, and although it's confusing as hell at first, it's pretty straightforward after a little bit of experimenting. Although you don't just press Render and expect to get great or even decent results.

I know about all the options for getting Poser scenes and figures out of Poser and into more capable renderers, and I do it too, with Lightwave. but I'm thinking that as Poser progresses it would be cool to see it reach the point where it can stand on its own a little better.

 Regarding the list above, would it not be easier to switch to a program that already has those features? 

Poser is a great "gateway" program with some powerful features. What you have described above is pretty common among "the big three".

$0.02

@adp001: very impressive. A little to clean though.

Quote -  Regarding the list above, would it not be easier to switch to a program that already has those features? 

Poser is a great "gateway" program with some powerful features. What you have described above is pretty common among "the big three".

Well yeah, sure, and that's what pretty much everyone argues when this comes up.
Good thing they at SM don't see it that way though, or else why bother developing it further at all? I mean, they did add the background 64 bit render capability, improved the output, added gamma controls, not to mention Poser has been slowly adding and improving features through its history, so it seems to me there must be a demand for continued development and improvements.

Maybe Poser isn't quite up to studio production levels, but with these improvements one could get a much better render, quicker and not have to leave Poser. Would be good for promos or to show to a client or something, then take it into one of the "big three" for finalizing.

I think the biggest problem with external render engines is the material editor used in Poser. Very good, but incompatible with anything else. So, the only chance SM has, is to adapt one of the free render engines - or to buy one :)

Quote -
@adp001: very impressive. A little to clean though.

Thanks. Yes, this are test renders. Just more or less simple procedural materials without texturemaps.

Quote -
8- We should be able to assign our own keyboard shortcuts if we want, and save them out as configuration files.

edit with note pad
...e frontierPoser 7RuntimeuiPoser.xrc

or use Poserworks - Shortcut editor from RuntimeDNA to edit it
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=3251&TopID=112650

 MikeJ,

I think my point is that Poser develops slower than most other progs. I mean, it's only recently that Poser has gained multiple undos, YEARS behind every other program in existence. Why?

I dunno, it's kinda like saying I wish my Volkswagen Beetle (old school) could go 200mph. Yes, you could modify a beetle to go 200mph (with much expense and development time), but would it not be easier to just buy a Porsche?

@adp: I don't want you to get the wrong idea. Your renders are very impressive. I don't think I've seen Firefly renders look like yours do. Kudos in that regard. The "too clean" comment was meant to express that nothing in the real world is so pristine, ala George Lucas' "used universe" idea. If you could somehow integrate that, your renders would be sublime.

Quote - > Quote -

8- We should be able to assign our own keyboard shortcuts if we want, and save them out as configuration files.

edit with note pad
...e frontierPoser 7RuntimeuiPoser.xrc

or use Poserworks - Shortcut editor from RuntimeDNA to edit it
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=3251&TopID=112650

Wow, really? I didn't know that, thanks.

Quote -
The "too clean" comment was meant to express that nothing in the real world is so pristine, ala George Lucas' "used universe" idea. If you could somehow integrate that, your renders would be sublime.

Thanks for the compliment. But it was just Poser who did the render ;)

"Dirt" often isn't mutch believable if it is done with procedural materials, IMHO. And it is mutch easier and faster with something like Bodypaint. This is why I talked about the missing textures. Especially higlight maps, some color variations and bumpmaps. Another thing is, that most materials can use some kind of SSS effect (something I learned from Maxwell's renderer and material editor).

But Poser isn't the right toy to experiment because of the long render time. So I stopped here with Poser, because at the end I need picture sizes for print. And I don't have a week to spend to render one or two images :)

Here is a picture I rendered with C4D. Very early while I constructed the trike. It's just a HDRI image used with a skydome and one light for some shadows. Rendertime: 5 Minutes (1024x768).

What we need most as a community of POSER users is quality documentation!

  What POSER needs DESPERATELY is CREDIBLE DOCUMENTATION!
The superfluous computer generated circular references that lead to meaningless
entries is unacceptable. As far as I can tell, most of POSER PROS documentation
is identical to that of POSER 5. That’s 4 full versions of POSER and NO improvement
in documentation AT ALL! As to the first entry here, POSER PYTHON would be of
great help in some of the areas mentioned and I’m sure in many other situations as
well. Unfortunately, the POSER PYTHON documentation seems to come from
POSER 3!

   If the people in charge of  POSER are serious about the future of POSER, then,
they need to assemble a small team of qualified individuals, who have the sole
purpose of systematically addressing POSER documentation and making that doc-
umentation available for free download by POSER users. The single goal
of this small team would be to strive to increase to productivity level of the
POSER community as a whole. This in turn would cause an increase of both
quantity and quality of POSER stills and animations, which in turn would raise
the awareness of POSER on the whole, which in turn would cause an increase
in demand for the product.

   Let me ask you this: If you take a U.S. History class, who knows more about
U.S. History, you, or the teacher? We would hope that the correct answer is the
teacher. It would stand to reason then, that the people that work on POSER know
more about it than we do! Therefore, they are the most qualified to provide the
required information that would allow us to make more efficient and effective use
of POSER!

   I would suggest that they begin with POSER PYTHON, as the documentation
is all but nonexistent. Then, proceed on to the FireFly Render Engine and the
Material Room. Use your imagination. Everything you wanted to know about the
FireFly Rendering Engine and some things you didn’t, but were afraid to ask.
Such As: Where exactly did the FireFly render engine come from? What is it’s
History? How does it handle ray tracing? How exactly does it use/allocate memory?
I’m sure as a community of POSER users, we could fill pages with relevant
questions on the inner and outer workings of FireFly alone. And so on…

What we need most as a community of POSER users is quality documentation!
Quality documentation that comes straight from the horses mouth.
Only then will we be able to proceed.
 

   Just one more thing. While I understand that porting POSER to LINUX is
impractical, render nodes running on LINUS does seem doable. While the cost
of WINDOWS is high, the worst part is trying to manage, maintain, update
and upgrade said render nodes. Under Microsofts increasingly draconian laws
regarding Windows, such things may well become all but impossible!

I like that last render, adp. note how it's got the ambient occlusion under the wheels that's
missing from the poser renders. however, I'm thinking that maybe c4d could do the AO
a bit more under the outside edge of the left front wheel, where it's touching the surface,
to give more of a feeling of sitting solidly on said surface.

p.s.  they can't add all those features to FFRender, as somebody already noted, because it
would slow to a crawl, taking days to render.  like back in the old days with bryce, where some
mac user would brag about how he spent the last two weeks rendering one of those wacky
640X480 grand-canyon-style things.

Quote - I think the biggest problem with external render engines is the material editor used in Poser. Very good, but incompatible with anything else. So, the only chance SM has, is to adapt one of the free render engines - or to buy one :)

Yes, agreed completely!  It is not only particular to Poser though.  Most proprietary material systems don't translate at all to other applications.   To put it nicely, the best solution would be an external renderer based on some proven render technology such as MentalRay or VRay that is made 'Poser-centric' and faithfully reproduces the Poser 'Pixels3D' material shader node system.

Any time soon, I doubt.

"...the best solution would be an external renderer based on some proven render technology such as MentalRay or VRay that is made 'Poser-centric' and faithfully reproduces the Poser 'Pixels3D' material shader node system."

VRay subset such as avail. to trueSpace for $300.

:: og ::

Quote - To put it nicely, the best solution would be an external renderer based on some proven render technology such as MentalRay or VRay that is made 'Poser-centric' and faithfully reproduces the Poser 'Pixels3D' material shader node system.

Yeah - but they have to implement all those bugs Poser has with materials, too :)

The first renderengine with a one-click materialset to prepare the usual Poser figures will win. If an average Poser user spends two or three handfull of $, a render (after starting and just clicking the GO-button) has to come out with a perfect naked V4. With SSS, correct translucense and all this features they spend hours to implement (mostly wrong) with Poser and Python. Including wet eyes, perfect hair, glossy lips, tan-lines, make-up variations and no nose :)

adp, feeling rather peevish this morning?

Your opinion of the Poser world seems rather sour. Yes, there will be some people who'd like a "make art render" button on it. But the silent majority of those buying the Poser-tweaked power render engine would be excited to get into it much deeper.

::::: Opera :::::

all I want is multiple render engines.... (my trueSpace 7.6 now has Lightworks, Virtualight, DirectX and Dribble/3Delight (and boy has 3Delight been cutdown in daz studio....))

Quote - adp, feeling rather peevish this morning?

No, surly not. Just a bit sarcasm, not more. I know about the various and different thinking people using Poser for all sort of work, including myself :)

I like Poser - I wish all this "professional 3D applications" would have a bit from Posers intuitive user interface.

On the other side: A professional render engine may become cheaper if more people from the big "just-a-hobby-lobby" would buy it (I think of something round about $100). So, this "one-click-material" feature for Poser is probably not bad. And not impossible. An external, interactive converter is one way ("What kind of material is this? Organic, Metal, Plastic ..., Skin dark, Skin light ..., Shiny plastic, ..., Real Reflections, ..."; "Would you like to use this ..., or this ... as a replacement for Poser-Material xyz?").

Yes, the 'bridge" could be built. After all, VRay has a "flavor" for Maya, Max, XSI, trueSpace, etc. and they all have different approaches to procedural materials.

I actually think the VRay add-on for trueSpace is a large part of their decision to make the application itself "free." They know that the free distribution of the app will soon tempt users to go for the $300 render engine. It is even possible that "volume" sales of that $300 engine, even with only a portion going to the publisher of trueSpace, generates more actual profit than the limited sale of the application itself as $700 or whatever it was.

I just think a Poser-flavored VRay subset at or near that pricepoint would be stupendous.

::::: Opera :::::

it's simpler than that Opera..

Google has Google Earth and Sketchup

Microsoft has Microsoft Earth... but no modeler. so they bought Caligari and made trueSpace the modeler for ME.. (they also wanted the truePlace technology...) and like Sketchup (basic) is free... they made trueSpace free.

heres to hoping that this shot across the bows will make Google put out Sketchup Pro for free or a much lower cost....

yes, that too. The entry of Microsoft into the room can make a $700 application suddenly become $0.00 yet be worth more!

I'd say the sales of that $300 VRay -- to complete a 'free' application -- ain't nothing to sneeze at, however.

::::: Opera :::::

I just thought of another thing to add to my list.
The IBL lights in Poser are cool, but all the others suck. I mean,  just archaic and unreliable. Plus, I swear, sometimes they don't load properly from a saved scene.

Oh and while I'm at it, the way the lights look in the OpenGL preview is usually nowhere near what you're going to see when you hit Render. THAT would be a huge thing if they could fix that - give us better light previews and better lights.

I don't know what constitutes a "better" light from a programming standpoint, but all the other 3D apps I've used have "better" lights, so I know it can be done. ;-)

Quote - But the silent majority of those buying the Poser-tweaked power render engine would be excited to get into it much deeper.

::::: Opera :::::

Yeah, that's what I was saying, and have said several times since I first heard of Poser Pro. People always want to argue though that it's not worth doing because you can always export and so on, but I see no good reason why we shouldn't expect Poser to continue to progress like all the other 3D apps tend to do.

animation needs for PoserPro:

1)  more than one channel in graph editor. Even just give me xyz for an actor

1. tangents with handles on the splines. Carrara's implementation is teriffic. That's you model
2. better direct manipulation gizmos in the viewport
3. "Pin my damn foot in place" and don't let it flop around lilke IK does. Same for hand.

Other animation-related items:
-- soft body collision/deformation
-- better styling tools on hair (again see Carrara! but only for styling)
-- collision in the hair simulation. It works really great to prevent hair guides going thru the mesh, but then it jitters against the polys; it wont settle down with collision on.
-- more than one hair guide per poly, which then controls density

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - animation needs for PoserPro:

1)  more than one channel in graph editor. Even just give me xyz for an actor

1. tangents with handles on the splines. Carrara's implementation is teriffic. That's you model
2. better direct manipulation gizmos in the viewport
3. "Pin my damn foot in place" and don't let it flop around lilke IK does. Same for hand.

Other animation-related items:
-- soft body collision/deformation
-- better styling tools on hair (again see Carrara! but only for styling)
-- collision in the hair simulation. It works really great to prevent hair guides going thru the mesh, but then it jitters against the polys; it wont settle down with collision on.
-- more than one hair guide per poly, which then controls density

::::: Opera :::::

Those too are also great, valid points.
I think this is what's been bugging me most about Poser Pro. They release a "Pro" version of it, when all that's really "pro" about it is a 64 bit render capability for the same old archaic and developmentally-stunted lights and render engine, and offer up some plugins to get your stuff away from all that and into more capable and modern "pro" apps. ;-)
And the exporters are only 32 bit, and weren't written for the current versions of their target apps.

And the LightWave .LWO import/export STILL doesn't utilize UV maps, even though they call it "LWO2", which most definitely carries UV data. I can't tell you how much that bugs me.

Really, they could have just written the plugins and sold them as-is for use with regular Poser 7.

I don't find Poser lights/shadows stunted, unless you mean radiosity/GI. I am getting wonderful results and control using raytrace shadows, both hard-edged and completely soft with beautiful gradations. Sometimes I use the provided lights, others high-quality HDRI probes.

I'm rendering out openEXR and editing in PS.

But sure, would love true radiosity. But why bother even implementing GI unelss FireFly can either 'get way faster all of a sudden" or the aforementioned VRay comes on board.

::::: Opera :::::

Well, I tend to just use the IBL's and the regular old lights, and I like real heavy lighting contrasts, kind of chiaroscuro-like. That, for me, is very difficult and aggravating in Poser, because I have to use alot of different lights, some with shadows, some without, and some set to negative values. And then, getting a good color balance is difficult, because the intensity of the light tends to affect the color.

I probably ought to learn how to use the HDR light probes in Poser though, before I complain about it. I know how to do it with LightWave, but haven't even really tried in Poser yet. Having said that, I should probably not complain about it until I've learned it. ;-)

But still, I was complaining about the regular lights anyway.

Mike do you have photoshop, at least CS2?

IMHO, Poser's render engine has always been the program's greatest weakness.  Sure, Poser has various & sundry other issues, too -- but the render engine is the A #1 "needs improvement" area.

Of course, the potential downside of a major upgrade to Poser's rendering engine could be the cost factor.  But they might be able to get away with additional expense when it comes to Pro.

With effort (and time to kill), you can get some fairly impressive results out of Firefly now.  But it could be done better -- possibly much better..........so I'm inclined to agree with the OP on this point.

I have Photoshop 6 and Painter X, but not CS2.
Although I'm in with a group of people here near where I live, where we've been getting together and working on some mods for Half Life 2. The guy who's in charge of that project has CS3 and I've been using it when I go over there. Although I have to say I've never really learned any of the finer points of all Photoshop can do, which is why I haven't upgraded.

I'l make a suggestion, take it or leave it......

Render out a scene in your best chiaroscuro style with "HDRI Output" selected in render options. Then, save out the result as format "openEXR."

Take that file to your buddy with PS CS2/3 and open it. Photoshop will recognize the format and limit your editing choices to those possible in 32-bit mode. The two most important are:

Channel Mixer
Exposure.

You have six or seven total sliders under those two functions. I think you've be very interested to see the power you can bring to bear. It takes some practice to determine what factors are being driven, but you'll catch on.

When you get the look you want, you "tone balance" the image and export it in an  8-bit format that is optimized for todays 'lame' monitors. Some day you'l leave it in 32-bit when our monitors have jumped up a generation or two.

This is not "magic" since you are editing and viewing on a current-gen monitor, but what you get is roughly a "brightness/contrast" editor on steroids.

One of the reasons I like this workflow is that it specifically reduces the endless tweaking of lights and shadows in Poser. I get the render "in the general vicinity" of light/dark/contrast I want, then take it into post as openEXR to bring it home.

NOTE: I'd suggest not selecting gamma correction in the Poser Render. Gamma correction is included in the above 32-bit editing workflow above and you have more control and instant feedback in PS.

::::: Opera :::::

Well thank you, really. I'll give that a try.

those suggestions about stuff poser really needs were kinda pointless, because they cant really change stuff they havent coded themselfs, or things which have natively no 64 bit support at all.

the poser we all know now, including the "pro" version is just the old curious labs core application (maybe even older...maybe even that thing is 3rd party XD) with tons of 3rd party "plugins" ductaped onto it with quite some spagetticode.    stuff like the faceroom, material editor, dynamic cloth/hair , firefly are things which got licensed by the creators of poser from 3rd party producers. the poser programmers dont really have any access to 64 bit applications of those "plugins" because the original programming companies of those elements havent updated their programs to 64 bit support, or it is just not possible, or the companys originaly created some of posers "features" just went out of business. the poser guys just use the stuff as it is provided, fiddling some code hook to connect it to the rest of the poser chassis code and call it a feature. yeah, the only thing which got 64bit support by now is the firefly render engine which is quite a joke.   what poser REALLY needs is a team of programmers coding that whole mess new, from scratch, with own, implemented render engine, material room and so on, which would actually work as one piece instead of just "working together", and supports todays 64 bit consumer marked hardware.   the reason it still runs rather crappy even on a behemoth of a pc is the fact that poser doesnt really use the recources todays pc´s have...  it just hogs cpu time and about 2 gigs of ram... with 8 gigs it would not use more than 3 gigs of ram, no gpu, or direct 3d support.... no support for todays technology, poser kinda roams around in the 1990´s tech wise

but then again... we all should stop whining, because a poser with such features, totally inhouse built , would cost at least 3-4 times the money and programmer know how than it does now

Welll....YOU should stop whining! YOUR post was pointless.

''but then again... we all should stop whining, because a poser with such features, totally inhouse built , would cost at least 3-4 times the money and programmer know how than it does now''

i couldn't agree with you more that all the poser versions we have seen thus far are  all built on the same code , and that is probably the core problem right there ,
but i ,and iam sure many other users here would  definitely be willing to fork out the  3-4 times the money for a quality program with a render engine on par with vray or mental ray .. hell i'll even take
maxwell as slow as it is . those apps may have a steep learning curve  , but the final result speaks for it self.

just my 2cents worth .. nobody shoot me please

thing is... we've seen how long it will take to do a re-write.

Daz Studio.

Development time for that started around '02. it's now '08 and it's still not quite upto poser 7 in functionality.

so. do they carry on with what they have or spend a few years re-writing from scratch....?

well, poserpro is what, $430 at Amazon? four times that is $1720

I am about to buy Max for $3200 and within a year or so MODO will have just about everything Poser has, but way better, probably for under $1500. You can get Lightwave for less than 1720, right?

I don't know if there would be a market for a $1720 Poser.

I actually think an incremental upgrade to the current "thing" (yes I know it is a conglomeration) would make a lot of people happy and be a better path.

::::: Opera :::::

of course there would be no market for a poser like this...  it is just a consumer market application with a "pro" stamp on it

a real pro poser would be just the core library system, the posing room, and nothing more than that, then it would need code hooks to all major modelling/rendering applications you can license. that thing would work like... lets say...like a better interposer pro (which is in all respect to the work put into it , is just a backengineered piece of buggy doo doo), just with posers native user interface ...camera controls, morph dials, and a library system on..dunno...  like floating docks similar to the gimp you can drag around the desktop ..or secondary monitor..  the material room, posing room, rendering settings would be managed by the modelling programs native modules, and the viewport would be the one from the modelling application, it would be only limited by the core applications features and performance.  a very small footprint application....or plugin... if you want to say so
i think if smith micro takes that approach the pro label would be justified, but this would also mean that youhave tocreate a unified material system, or translation so you can port those prefab settings of the products you bought to different platforms, otherwise the wholematerial thing, as flexible it would get turns into a DIY one man show, with a simple base material setting, with textures, bump maps, reflection, and trans maps which shouldnt be to hard to port to different software packages, and the rest has to be adjusted/fancyfied by yourself by adding more advanced material features this base application can handle..  a complex workflow like this would not have a place in regular poser mainstream aswell, where you can get almost everything render ready out of the box, but those products would be usable.  

so mister/miss freeman, do you have anything good to say?

I'll throw my own completely unrealistic suggestion out there...

Poser 8 needs real-time GPU accelerated physics simulations. For example PhysX or Havok. Poser still treats supposed human characters like mannequins, and the physics simulation that is available in Poser 7 is terribly slow and kind of awkward to use.

Quote -
NOTE: I'd suggest not selecting gamma correction in the Poser Render. Gamma correction is included in the above 32-bit editing workflow above and you have more control and instant feedback in PS.

I suggest the exact opposite.
Poser Pro always saves linear data to linear file formats - it never gamma corrects what it writes to OpenEXR and HDR, just as those file formats are specified. However, in order to get correct linear data, the input textures need to be converted to a linear color space too. That conversion is what you get when you enable "gamma correction" in the render settings.

Imagine the checkbox wouldn't read "gamma" but "linear rendering", since that's in essence what you get then.

ic. so to repeat back to you so i am sure i got it.....

it's okay to check "gammma correction" when rendering out to openEXR or HDR, becuase the spec for those files will not export gamma correction. Is that correct?

Now.....could you say this :

"in order to get correct linear data, the input textures need to be converted to a linear color space too. That conversion is what you get when you enable "gamma correction" in the render settings."

another way? I don't know what linear color space is. In other words, tell me why I should have gamma correction checked if it does not impact my openEXR export. Thanks

::::: Opera :::::

Simply put, there are two common ways of expressing color in computers:
linear, where the number in the file is directly proportional to the brightness
nonlinear aka gamma corrected where numbers are optimized for display purposes on monitors

The dilemma is that all math in render engines implies linear data, where most common file formats are non-linear. So Poser does it in several steps:

1. It has a first step where it converts non-linear textures to linear data.
2. Then it renders in an all linear color space.
3. Then it applies gamma correction as necessary to the linear data it gets from rendering to save it to image files and to show it in the output window.

"1. It has a first step where it converts non-linear textures to linear data."

I think you are saying here that the typical 'texturemap.jpg' is stored in gamma corrected mode.

.......

so, if I have gamma correction checked AND output to openEXR checked, does Poser import the texture files, convert them to linear, compute the render in linear, and then does NOT convert the results to gamma corrected when outputting?

[That would explain why an openEXR output looks 'way off' when you first open it in Photoshop, but looks so good after you apply exposure/channel-mix to it.]

Thanks for your patience, I am just learning.

::::: Opera :::::