I forgot to mention a couple details to look for (you have to look close).

I textured the outside of the building, too. I used my new stucco material with peeling pink paint. If you look through the side windows to the outside wall you can see some of it. (Little details like that please me.)

The carpet material is a new one for me - never tried that before. I think it came out pretty well.

I used my matmatic demo wood shader on the table. I should have applied it to the chairs but I got tired of working on this.

Finally, I have a new brass shader on the door handle and hinges. It's a tiny fraction of the render, but another one of those little details that make a difference, IMO.

i think it needs some AO.

wow.  absolutely incredibly realistic for Poser (in other words, something that doesn't have GI, area lights, or other stuff).  i think the double shadow looks a little weird considering the single light source, but then i use your GenIBL iteratively for all environment ambience.  i guess it's sort of like having GI, but it takes a while.  i try to do at least 3 iterations from a base flat color IBL (as suggested to me by Synthetic.), and on my computer that takes a few hours.

are you doing anything special with the glass or the number of bounces?  i know when i tried to use any of your glass advice, i could see the background through it, but no light got through.  it was the weirdest thing.  i gave up and just made the glass transparent (it wasn't really making a difference anyway). 

oh!  and how does the built in fall-off work with point lights, distance end, and inverse square falloff? 

This is a new glass that I made specifically because you brought up the issue of shadows.

I normally use Reflection + Refraction. But Poser doesn't understand that something should let light pass through unless you use Transparency. It doesn't examine the Refraction_Value like it should.

This is fine for flat, thin glass, because such glass does not appreciably bend the light anyway. So I came up with a way to do the Reflection + Transparency.

You still want to use a Fresnel effect (amount of Reflection varies with viewing angle, and Reflection + Transpareny = 1). Turns out if you plug your Reflect node into Reflection_Color, Poser doesn't do the conservation of energy thing for you. But I found if you plug it into Diffuse_Value instead, it does. Hehehe.

The double shadow was a failure - not intentional. I wanted to use a directional light in addition to the IBL because the sky actually does cast a vary diffuse amount of direction light when screened by a window. But the 2 point light trick didn't work. A wall near a window is brighter near the window and that's what I'm trying to do. IBL won't do that.

I'll find a way. Like I said, I think a large array of point lights would work.

Quote - oh!  and how does the built in fall-off work with point lights, distance end, and inverse square falloff? 

It doesn't work. The built in linear fall-off is a waste of time. Light doesn't go to 0, it keeps on approaching zero forever, no matter how far away.

I don't use the distance end at all. I tried, because I was being lazy, but it looked wrong.

The inverse square falloff trick with nodes is what I used. You know about that post, right?

I forgot to mention another detail related to the glass. View the full size image and zoom in to the pane of glass in front of his face. You'll see his reflection.

oh, yeah, i noticed his reflection.  i thought i must have missed something obvious with refraction. it's good to know i wasn't going crazy or doing something absurd.  and really good to know about refraction.  it's annoying to know that a crystal ball won't only not create realistic caustics but will create an unrealistic shadow.  grrr.  yep, i know about the inverse square shader and use it all the time.  i even used it on a point light for an image which turned out pretty well.  there was a lot of ambient light, though, so i didn't get to see how it was working.  and i don't use them often at all (i like to imagine a studio with actual spotlights for a lot of images), so i don't have an instinctive sense of how their light unaltered.  i just remember finding its behavior with distance end fairly weird.  so i thought i'd ask.

will you share your glass and brass shaders with us?  i'm really interested to see how you handle metals now, and i would love to be able to work with windows. 

I will share them, but it will take a couple days. I have to hit the road now and I'm gone all day tomorrow. I'll try to post this weekend.

Attached Link: http://bp1.blogger.com/_8006OEmYz2Y/RiydxpTtdPI/AAAAAAAAAQI/AQodx-QjTv4/s1600-h/diorama.JPG

Attached Link: Lady Mohawk

Latexluv: on your Lady Mohawk image, what version of Poser did you use (6, 7 or Pro)? The skin textures came out the way I would expect them in Poser Pro with a super light set. REALLY well done, and with no postwork! Great job. 

I rendered in Poser Pro, though I still have issues with Pro. The lights are a set of HDRI lights I'm developing for sale in the RMP. I'm using bagginsbill's VSS shader system for all my demo and test images. I have face_off's Realism, but it is light dependant. In other words, you have to set it up in regards to each light setting you use. VSS on the other hand gives consistantly beautiful results without having re-run the script with every light change. Bagginsbill is also so right about the use of material based AO.  Using it on things such as hair and clothing gives things so much more depth. Adding material AO to hair will increase render time, but I think it's worth the wait.

I love this stuff! What a difference, what potential!
Getting those masks closer to ready: here's what they look like under the skin:

and the result?

The attached picture has the shaders in place: you can see how the eyeliner in the left eye isn't quite where it is in the right eye. And, it looks like she forgot the upper lid of the left eye... but with a little more adjusting, that will all be right, I think. Yep, the lips need a bit more work, too, now that I've rendered it higher-res, but wow, that reflection in her eyes is purely Bagginsbill's! Not a painted-in reflection, but the result of a light! The specular on the lips ties in with it, doesn't it? Oh, this is so COOL!! I'm having way too much fun! Thanks heaps, Bill... what an incredible enhancement you've made to Poser!

Reflections are super important. I've been refining my techniques lately, especially for glass, but also for things like leather and tile and even human skin. Soft reflections.

This image is OT, but I wanted you to see the reflections. These techniques will be going into the VSS shaders eventually.

RobynsVeil, those eyes and lips are AMAZING! They look more real than the skin does, which isn't very normal in the 3D world, I find.

BagginsBill, what can I say? That is just tremendous work. I really hope to see you put everything together in the Pro package... SOON... and I hope I can afford it! :)

Quote - Very nice.

Reflections are super important. I've been refining my techniques lately, especially for glass, but also for things like leather and tile and even human skin. Soft reflections.

This image is OT, but I wanted you to see the reflections. These techniques will be going into the VSS shaders eventually.

in this render you really get a sense of enviroment lighting. 

how long was the render?

It was 8 to 10 minutes - not sure exactly.

I'm on an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+. Not very fast.

There are new processors that are 5 times faster than this one at rendering 3D stuff. I'm shopping for a new desktop now. Also, if I get the 64-bit OS it should go 10 times faster.

how many lights did you use?

5 lights.

1 Infinite for sunlight from outside.

2 point lights (blue) for the big window and the skylight. On these I put a position-dependent shader so that the light intensity fell off with the distance from the window or skylight to the power 1.3.  (For point lights, the intensity falls off with the distance squared, or power 2. An infinite sheet light falls off linearly, or power 1. A bounded sheet [such as a window] falls off somewhere inbetween.)

1 point light (yellow) for the lamp in the corner

1 IBL (no image at all - just a constant ambience) to simulate secondary bounced light within the room.

amazing.

you ure using nodes in the lights? 

oooooooo!  i greatly covet those materials!. 

ah!  now i see what you're saying about the ambient light.   it would be nice if IBL did handle specularity and falloff properly, sort of like what Synthetic mentioned about using it to mimic area lights.  or, it would be nice just to have area lights at least. i'm actually sort of surprised PhilC hasn't come up with a glowing object script to place and control point lights over a geometry.

How does the stone fireplace look? That's a newer style of shader for me, all procedural stones.

The shaggy rug under the table is new too - procedural. The tile I've done before, but I never got the reflections this good before.

Also, another new feature of the table glass is the edges are blue-green and not completely transparent, based on normals, not UV mapping.

Yes I have nodes in the lights. I always use falloff on point or spot lights now.

Also, because of how the nodes are set up, I can make the area of the room directly opposite the window more strongly lit by the point light than areas off to the side.

can you please show the material for point lights and falloff? sounds interesting.

this? http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/media/folder_9/file_413738.jpg

Now that the UserDefined node is fixed, you can do it more simply in Poser Pro SR1.1 and Poser 7 SR3 (I think it's fixed there. I always use Poser Pro now.)

If you want to see the setup for other exponents, here it is. This one is set up for the power 1.3, suitable for a fairly large window.

Remember, you have to put the coordinates of where you want the lamp to be brightest in the UserDefined node. For windows, I put the light right in the middle of the window, but I set up the brightest spot to be somewhere in front of the window.

I really like what you did with the reflections of the glass table: first a strong one with the to top-surface and then a softer one with the bottom surface. It makes it look so realistic, I first thought you were kidding and made a photo of your living room, untill I enlarged the picture: the highlights/reflections on the leather are a bit to rough to my opinion.

Great use of all kinds of procedural materials, I hope to see more of this!

Best regards,

Bopper.

Definitely agree with the sense of reality throughout, although I'm most floored by the tile. That's just amazing....

Once you set up the falloff on the lights, as well as proper use of soft shadows, AO and gamma correction, it looks pretty good.

actually, everyone says Vue has problems with indoor scenes.   there's some discussion that 7 might be better, but it seems to be speculation.  i think it would make more sense to look at architectural visualization sites/galleries for reference. 

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1769905

I'm amused by some of the comments. "Wonderful room and lighting" "Beautiful light" I know I shouldn't be mean, but wow.

Yeah, yeah, I know... it's hard to speak knowledgeably when you don't know anything. :)

But I'm not afraid to admit that. I've been using Poser for about 2 months, after a few weeks in DAZ Studio, and I never really played with 3D apps at all before that.

Edit: oops. Heh, I thought you were referring to my dimwitted comments in this thread....

we are used to see a little glow from everywhere. and i think this is missing in the render. this is the only thing that i think makes it a little fake.

Actually, I hold the corner on the market for dimwitted remarks, timag... nice try, tho... LOL All these most recent renders of Bagginsbill have served to really make me wonder whether Poser 7 Pro is more of an essential upgrade than I first thought, given what Bill's been able to achieve with it. But then, it's the shaders, isn't it? So, if I had a good enough grasp on the shaders, I could pretty much duplicate (or at least emulate) these sorts of results in Poser 7 (not Pro)? Or even 6? Or, given that the principles of the shaders are what really make the scene happen, another renderer altogether... say: Kerkythea?

I have been having a play with Kerkythea - had a long thread going about transmapped hair on their forums that we kinda got sorted out - you probably remember the discussion, Bill. Given that you've played with more renderers than any of us, how would you rate Kerkythea against Poser 7 Pro? or is that comparing apples and pomegranates?

And, setting up your shaders in Kerkythea... any pitfalls (besides transmapped hair) that you can think of?

Sorry - didn't mean to hijack the thread... you can all just ignore this if you feel so inclined...

I guess what prompted that train of thought is: Kerkythea's strong suit (if I understand the software and the philosophy behind it correctly) is a highly sophisticated approach to lights and materials. Even the way the render is accomplished is dramatically different from other programs of that ilk.

I am quite impressed with the software... and the renders have been quite decent, even with my extremely limited knowledge of how to apply what I learned from a very careful read of the manual.

Which prompts me to say: thank you, Bill, for hand-holding me through the blender node section of the face template... it was a great starting point to better understand nodes in general. Ya gotta start somewhere. Whilst I'll be the first to admit I basically don't touch the other nodes, since I only have a very rudimentary understanding of some of them, and no clue about a lot of them, I want to understand what they do and how. The formulas on bias and gain I've been trying to plug in just to see what I get, but the nodes were the eyeliner ones and it was really hard to assess the differences... need to try on a larger mask, maybe.

What I failed to add was: those brilliant last renders of your, Bill, remind me a fair bit of what they do in Kerkythea... which brings it all together.

What did I say about dimwitted remarks? Do you agree, now, timag?

Quote - we are used to see a little glow from everywhere. and i think this is missing in the render. this is the only thing that i think makes it a little fake.

That, and the dog... that dog looked diabolical.

I think the view is distorted some how. Like either a fisheye view or wide angle view... But it definitely looks distorted somewhat.

doesnt look to good because i have to much light coming from  behind him.

Bagginsbill, I've been away for a while with mono.  Has there been an update to handle M4's genitals?

Hi guys. I'm just dropping in to say I won't be dropping in for a few days. I'm off to the airport again.

PBM: An update to what? VSS? I haven't done any VSS updates since PR1, but I've posted instructions on how to make your own shader rules. Have a look at the "manual" or ask here. Lots of folks know how now.

Quote - Um, when I wired the diffuse_color into color_pow (as your illustration suggests) my previews were quite scary - looked like bump-map and specular map were struggling for dominance over the skin, and neither was winning. However, when I wired diffuse_color into color_map (as bagginsbill suggests in the post following this one) it worked fine. I wasn't all that worried about a preview, but I was getting a bit over seeing a plastic mannequin staring back at me... besides, it's harder to pose a character when the skin texture colour isn't there to help reinforce the look.

Hi Robynsveil - sorry, I don't seem to be getting updates on this thread. You're quite right... I chose that node to plug into diffuse simply because it was the one that was already plugged into alternate diffuse. The funny thing is, it worked okay for the material I was using at the time, so I just assumed that was the right thing to do. Wrong! It didn't work on the next material I used, or any other material since then... but plugging in the colour_map works fine every time.

Izi

by the way, I love the renders you are posting in this thread...

Another VSS script issueette (new word...  a little issue)... maybe someone else has seen this?

When you synchronise, VSS writes to and reads from a temp.mc6 material file in the VSS folder.

To start with, I had file compression switched off, but at some point I switched it on to start saving some space.

When I next did a VSS sync, it wrote a temp.mcz (compressed) temp file to the VSS folder, but then read the materials back in from the old temp.mc6 file. So I ended up with the skin textures that I had used previously, instead of those I was using now. This baffled and befuddled me for a while, 'til I realised what was going on.

To fix it, I had to go to the VSS folder and delete the temp.mc6 file. Then everything seemed to work okay - even though the script (vss.py) specifies the filename "temp.mc6". I don't quite get that, but it seems to be doing what it should.

Quote - To fix it, I had to go to the VSS folder and delete the temp.mc6 file. Then everything seemed to work okay - even though the script (vss.py) specifies the filename "temp.mc6". I don't quite get that, but it seems to be doing what it should.

No real mystery, Poser knows to search for the compressed file if it can't find the uncompressed one.
Until you deleted the MC6 file it didn't need to look for the (correct) MCZ because it found the previous file.

Thanks, nruddock...  yes, that makes sense. It would be better for the script to check whether file compression is turned off or on in Preferences, and so read the appropriate file ( .mc6 or .mcz ). But I don't know if that can be checked in Python.

Quote - Hi Robynsveil - sorry, I don't seem to be getting updates on this thread. You're quite right...

Wow, this is a new experience for me... being right about something?? Thank YOU so much, Izi... you have no idea how good that makes me feel.

Quote - ...by the way, I love the renders you are posting in this thread...[/quote
...and I LOVE your avatar! You've taken Poser art to the level I'm striving for: evoking an emotional "happy-sigh" just from seeing an image. Got a lot to learn, though, Izi... especially about lighting... because when I want to show something, I use light first to show it rather than to make the light fit the circumstances.

The attached image in this post is the non-vss render.

The next post below is the VSS render.  I thought I should see some dramatic or obvious improvement, but I don't.

Any comments?

regardless of improvements, you should definitely see a change.  i'm suspicious that her lips didn't change at all.  you might double check the materials to see that you applied VSS properly.

Looks to me like you thought this was an automated solution. Did you use the prop?