It looks right on to me.

Did you use a low number of pixel samples? It looks more "speckled" than your previous test renders. Or is that just the (goose) bump mapping that comes with the GND4 texture?

Min shading rate was 1 and samples = 3 and no post filtering. This is my normal setup for test renders.

I should have used better settings, particularly samples and shading rate. Also, I probably need to decrease the Bump amount for the GND bump map. It's got a lot more range than most do.

hi bb,
I'll post another render today after I read the stuff on your VSS site. Hopefully I'll have some clue by then.

Quote - I tried increasing the distance, the number of samples, and decreasing the strength. It's slightly better, but still not right. It's like the strength parameter is doing nothing. The pinky is particularly bad. This render also took super long.

In previous versions, AO strength worked on lights, just not on the AO node. That's why my shader uses a Blender to adjust the strength, instead of directly using the AO node strength parameter.

maybe decrase to 0,3 or 0,2 

ice-boy,

Your suggestion helped. The light-based AO Strength does work and putting it that low will make a visible difference.

The real issue I found was my AO bias was too high. This was a real shock to me. In the past, anytime I used a very low ray bias, I got tons of artifacts. But no more!

This image was rendered with IBL and 10 spotlights at 10% intensity each.

The IBL AO settings were:

Max Distance: 40 inches
Bias: .001 inch (!!! wow - that never worked before)
Num Samples: 7
Strength: .7

well, that does make me want Poser Pro.  though i'm more interested in the shadow settings on your lights.  i  get enough grain in P6 that it's my primary postwork concern on close-ups or large enough shadows.  i know part of that is because i'm too far behind in Poser versions, but i'd still like to know more about light settings, especially for different types.  

but i know that should be another thread.

The shadow settings for the IBL were as above. The intensity is irrelevant unless you use the same image I used, but it was the HDRVFX_Office_Foyer that comes with newer versions of Poser, plugged into the Intensity, not the color. (This is a neat trick. Sometimes I don't actually want the colors of an IBL - just the intensity distribution. In other words, I want to "white balance" the IBL. All you gotta do is plug it into the Intensity, which is a number, not a color. Done)

The spotlights settings were:

Angle Start: 0
Angle End: 70
Intensity: 10%
Ray Trace Shadows: Check
Shadow Blur Radius: 3.0
Shadow Min Bias: 0.2

Of course, you really won't get the same results with Poser 6.

Hi BB,
I think I know what I'm doing wrong with sp3. When I load the prop, I then click on my characters face texture and apply sp3, then it goes white.

When you say "sp3" do you mean my Preview Release #3 shader, PR3?

That is a Template shader, and your'e not supposed to load it manually on your figure.

You're supposed to load that into the "Template Skin" material zone on the VSS control prop.

Then you synchronize to copy that to all your figure's material zones that are assigned to that skin. When it does that, it plugs in your skin's textures into that shader.

The material templates have placeholders for images - they don't have any actual images. You're supposed to already have the images on the figure, by using whatever means you would normally use. Then you use VSS synchronize to, well, synchronize your shaders and your images.
 

You also have the further complication that in that template shader, I forgot to connect the color map to the Diffuse_Color on the Poser Surface node.

That has no impact on the render, but it does matter for preview. So your steps should be:

Load the PR2 control prop.
Load the PR3 skin shader into that control prop, in Template Skin.
Find the Color_Map node in that shader and connect it to Diffuse_Color.
Save this new prop for your future use as VSS Generic PR3 or whatever name you want, so you won't ever have to do this again.

If you haven't loaded your VSS main buttons do so.

Load your figure.
Apply whatever mat-pose you want to load up images in your figure's material zones.
Syncrhonize.
Render.

ok I was doing it all wrong! Sorry!
I'll try it now!
Thanks BB
Yeah by sp3 I meant pr3 LOL

Is the pr2 control prop the image with the two men fighting?
Sorry I just want to be super sure!

Sorry for double post

Quote - ice-boy,

Your suggestion helped. The light-based AO Strength does work and putting it that low will make a visible difference.

The real issue I found was my AO bias was too high. This was a real shock to me. In the past, anytime I used a very low ray bias, I got tons of artifacts. But no more!

This image was rendered with IBL and 10 spotlights at 10% intensity each.

The IBL AO settings were:

Max Distance: 40 inches
Bias: .001 inch (!!! wow - that never worked before)
Num Samples: 7
Strength: .7

i now always use light based AO. plus sometimes i render an AO pass for some postwork. 

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php
in this render you dont see much AO. but belive me there is tons of AO on the body. a lot under the left arm. the problem is i dont understand why there is no under the right foot. but thats poser .

it would be 100% practical if AO was never where the difurse ligut is. it should ignore the parts around the shadow.

Quote - ice-boy,

Your suggestion helped. The light-based AO Strength does work and putting it that low will make a visible difference.

The real issue I found was my AO bias was too high. This was a real shock to me. In the past, anytime I used a very low ray bias, I got tons of artifacts. But no more!

This image was rendered with IBL and 10 spotlights at 10% intensity each.

The IBL AO settings were:

Max Distance: 40 inches
Bias: .001 inch (!!! wow - that never worked before)
Num Samples: 7
Strength: .7

What did that do to your render time?

BB -

I have a texture set that has displacement maps and translucency maps.  I figure out that if I add a node to the template_skin to the displacement channel, I can add an image map and call it "Displacement Map" and your script does all the right things when I synchronize.

I found that out because your script renamed the image map to "Displacement Map" but didn't plug it into the shader.

But it didn't do the same to the translucency maps, so I doubt the Synchronize script recognizes translucency maps like it does displacement maps.

If I wanted to plug a translucency map in, just for fun, where would I plug it?

If I am correct, you should plug in your translucency map node into the Translucent_Color and set the background of the node to black.  That is how it is done with the transparency map.  Just make sure to auto rename after creating the appropriate setup.

Hmm... Ok thanks, will try that.  I thought maybe it was somewhere in the PM: nodes.

Thanks!

VSS does not have anything in it to implicitly handle renaming of Translucence maps.

Here's why. The Translucence channel doesn't do anything that makes any sense. Most of the time, it is the same as ambient. (This was my conclusion after working with it for many hours.)

So, as I have no belief in its usefulness, nor have written or even seen any shaders with translucence maps, I did not program VSS to recognize one.

That does not prevent you from using one. Feel free to use a tool to rename those nodes to any agreeable name you want. But VSS as is will not recognize those maps and rename them automagically.

Unless you are willing to surgically alter your VSS script. I was going to tell you how to do that, but I think that having you change the script is a really bad idea.

So for now don't expect VSS to auto-rename such images. It will not. You will need to rename them yourself. In every material zone, and in the template.

 

Quote - ice-boy,

Your suggestion helped. The light-based AO Strength does work and putting it that low will make a visible difference.

The real issue I found was my AO bias was too high. This was a real shock to me. In the past, anytime I used a very low ray bias, I got tons of artifacts. But no more!

This image was rendered with IBL and 10 spotlights at 10% intensity each.

The IBL AO settings were:

Max Distance: 40 inches
Bias: .001 inch (!!! wow - that never worked before)
Num Samples: 7
Strength: .7

That's a neat pic you did there.  So, you only used 10 Spotlights at 10% intensity coupled that with IBL AO?

Did you use GND's shaders or the VSS one.  Either way, it look realistic to me.

Nice work.

JB

BB, do you have any plans to release an eye shader?

You will all be elated to hear that I've moved the Nodes-For-Dummies discussion to its own thread here:
www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

This an effort to provide a venue for those as newbie as me to discuss our minimalist knowledge without adding extraneous noise to this brilliant subject. At this point, I've just submitted an introduction. However, discussions and experiment results will soon follow, so if any of Those-That-Know wish to contribute, your comments and clarifications are always welcome.

Quote - BB, do you have any plans to release an eye shader?

Not sure what you mean - the VSS prop contains an eye shader (3 actually, eyewhite, iris, and cornea)

Of course, there are lots of different possible effects - we could add real reflection, we could add fake (image-based) reflection, we could add lots of color changes and we could do some procedural stuff to add or create patterns from nothing but math.

What did you have in mind?

Quote - That's a neat pic you did there.  So, you only used 10 Spotlights at 10% intensity coupled that with IBL AO?

Did you use GND's shaders or the VSS one.  Either way, it look realistic to me.

Thanks - yay. Some realism. I've only been trying to find it for 3 years.

I used the VSS PR3 shader.

Note - now that I'm at home again, on my good 24 inch monitor, my renders on this page don't look so good.

I should just not make color judgements while on my laptop at all.

Quote - But I adjusted my Tint again. This time it's RGB(235, 55, 240) and Diffuse Reflectivity is .8.

Just a note for any noobies that want to try that tint change I think BB meant RGB(235,255,240) ;p

BB, I have noticed the slowdown in Pro using threads issue as well. I can't recall for sure, but I don't think that happened in the P7?. Maybe they broke something by adding the Que manager? Also thanks for looking at the Loom issue.  Just haven't gotten back to it quite yet.

@JWFokker, for me the render times on the skin/clothing/prop portion of a render seem to be about the same, the killer is AO on hair. The more complex the hair (eg, Wild Hair or Fable Hair) the longer you sit and wait.

Speaking of hair, BB since you seem to have spent some time on a shader, care to share a few tips.....wink,wink, nudge, nudge...say no more.

Well off to feed the critters, temperature stick reads -38C, I trust most of you all are warmer;)

hi bb, here's another image of my figure. The eyes are too shiny though!LOL I think it's the lights I used. What would you suggest BB? Thanks for all your help, by the way.

here's another! I really like the skin here!

I seem to have run into a problem with the lighting on the figure not really matching the lighting of the environment. Here's a test render with one infinite light shining through the windows (behind the camera), four point lights just out of view (above the mirrors) and an IBL with AO enabled. The room and props are relatively dark compared to the V4 figure standing in the room. The highlights on the right side of the figure are stronger/brighter than I want them to be. The left side of the figure looks okay however. I figured this would be a simple thing to fix by adjusting the VSS prop attributes, but I've yet to get any of the settings to actually do anything. I've reduced PM:Shine, PM:Shine Spread, PM:Shine Level and PM:Diffuse Reflectivity, at first individually and then again all together and the render output is exactly the same each time. I used the Synchronize function after each change, so that shouldn't be an issue. Is this overly illuminated figure a result of the Firefly engine or am I overlooking something in VSS?

This is the last render I did with all of the parameters reduced. The slight disparity in the background apperance is a result of changing the AO distance parameter from 36 to 18 around the forth or fifth render (of nine).

VSS prop settings:

PM:Shine - 0.20000
PM:Shine Spread - 0.70000
PM:Shine Level  - 0.750000
PM:Diffuse Reflectivity - 0.50000

Oddly enough, lowering Diffuse Reflectivity had an immediately visible effect of darkening the figure in the Preview window, just as I thought it would (though that's not what I'm actually trying to achieve), but the final render looked exactly the same as the others.

Also, if anyone has any ideas why the mirrors are so dark, please let me know. I think it has to do with the light based ambient occlusion, but I'm not certain and I haven't gotten around to figuring it out yet.

Interestingly, the overly bright highlights are not as prominent from other angles, but the various VSS prop material room parameters still don't seem to have any effect. I rendered this angle twice, once with stock VSS PR3 mat file settings and once with reduced Shine, Spread, Level and Diffuse Reflectivity settings but the renders produced were identical.

Interestingly, the overly bright highlights are not as prominent from other angles, but the various VSS prop material room parameters still don't seem to have any effect. I rendered this angle twice, once with stock VSS PR3 mat file settings and once with reduced Shine, Spread, Level and Diffuse Reflectivity settings but the renders produced were identical.

 Do you use gamma correction on all materials? Otherwhise they will look dark.

@ JWFokker: Are you using Gamma Correction on the VSS Prop PR3 and GC in your render settings as well?  You can't use both simultaneously.  Turn down your value in the template skin to 1 and synchronize.  Keep your CG in render settings @ 2.2. 

Now, do you have reflections activated for your mirrors on your Poser Surface node in the material room?  That may explain the lack of reflection.

If you look at the image you can tell that that I'm not using both forms of gamma correction and that there are reflections in the mirrors. The figure would be completely washed out if both methods were used, and the reflections are there on the mirror, they're just much too dark.

Do you have Reflect_Lite_Mult enabled. You should not.

Do you have Reflect_Kd_Mult enabled. You should not.

These two switches are on by default in a shader and they should not be. They produce anti-realism.

It is 99% of the time why a mirror is too dark in Poser.

You do not need to shine a light on a mirror to see a reflection of something in the mirror. But that is what Poser sets up by default.

Also, your mirror Reflection_Value should be 1.0, i.e. 100%.

Reflect_Lite_Mult was enabled. Evidently DAZ3D neglected to test that the mirrors functioned correctly before they released it. Thanks for the info.

Any ideas on how to reduce the highlight intensity on the figure so that it matches the surrounding environment better?

No clue. Always works for me. I can only conclude there's something happening you're not aware of, such as VSS is throwing an error and not synchronizing and you're not noticing it.

If I change PM:Shine, then synchronize, I always see a change.

Have you verified that the shader got copied to your figure?

Set PM:Shine in the control prop to a very strange value, like .12321.

Then synchronize.

Then open a shader on your figure. Is the value in the figure set to .12321 also? If not, the synchronize didn't actually happen.

If it did, I have no clue what's going on.

Perhaps you should simplify your testing. Get the figure out of the scene. Use one light. Change settings, synchronize, and render. See differences? Save the figure. Load it in your actual scene. Render.

It is not necessary to syncrhonize and test render in-scene. Once VSS copies shaders to the figure, you can save the entire figure, or its shaders as you've always been able to do, and throw VSS away.

I've posted in my gallery the results of one of my experiments with VSS 3.

I used  the Desert Diamond Scene with one of the included light sets (#3) but modifying one of the Infinite lights to an IBL with AO. I had to cut the intensity to ~10%. While I did not achieve "realism" I was happy with the results.

I used two figures and a creature (Monster Rat does not get most of VSS). The figures have a light and a dark "skin" (I'll leave it to others to correct me with the proper term since "surface" sounds funny)

Since I'm using PoserPro I used its gamma and shut off the one in the VSS 3 prop.

Someone had mentioned having problems with a mirror but I had no difficulties....

In some ways I wish there was a script to "calculate" the amount of reduction of light intensity between a "default light set" and the actual amount of light VSS needs to give a realistic render and then apply that reduction (call it a "Light meter" script) ... yah, I know this is one case where art and eye have to step in and take the place of (or at least craftfully assist) science.

So far I'm finding VSS to be "way cool" (even if I can see anything before I render)...

Thanks for the coool tool. I'll buy it when you finally release the Pro version.

@gishzida: The lighting concerning VSSProp is totally independent of your light set up.  My typical light set up for testing purposes consists of 3 sources: 1 IBL w/ AO set to 10 - 20% intensity, 1 infinite light w/ shadows set between 30 - 50% and 1 Spot set to 10 - 20%, no shadows for fill.  This has given me a fairly reasonable illumination to bring out the realism I like to see.  Again, the VSS Prop does not incorporate any lighting system.  You have to create your lighting environment to accent your details.

Quote - @gishzida: The lighting concerning VSSProp is totally independent of your light set up.  My typical light set up for testing purposes consists of 3 sources: 1 IBL w/ AO set to 10 - 20% intensity, 1 infinite light w/ shadows set between 30 - 50% and 1 Spot set to 10 - 20%, no shadows for fill.  This has given me a fairly reasonable illumination to bring out the realism I like to see.  Again, the VSS Prop does not incorporate any lighting system.  You have to create your lighting environment to accent your details.

Okay.  I seem to be missing something.

Your three lights are what feeds VSS light-- they can't be "independent of the light set-up".  the lights in the posted render are four infinites, one IBL /AO and one spot. My experience with VSS  so far ( couple of days of messing about and reading the forums) is that If I load a light set that comes with a scene or a 3rd party light set,  I have to adjust the light levels on all  of the lights in the scene (not just IBL /AO) because VSS uses all the light in the scene to shade the resulting render.  Otherwise the resulting render looks like a picture of a polar bear in a snow storm. (If it makes a difference, I am using PoserPro)....

Which is why I suggested a "light meter" script... It would make it easier for a dummy like me to fix the intensity levels (or at least "ball park" them) on "pre-rolled" light sets.

So what am I missing?

gishzida, it sounds like you may be doubling up on the Gamma Correction.  If your Poser Pro Gamma is on, then in VSS you need to turn the gamma in the Template Skin to 1.0. If you're using the Version 3 of the skin shader (If you're not you should get it) PM:Gamma is near the top of the settings that open up when you open VSS Template skin in the material room.

@gishzida - Can you post an example of the problem? Also, are you using Poser Pro or Poser 7?

@ gishzida: I re-read your post and took another look at your image.  Let me reiterate what you posted: you are using PoserPro, running GC in render settings, GC off in VSSPro (this is for the benefit of others that didn't read your post closely).  I am assuming you synchronized your settings for your models through the prop.  To your image.
I think 4 infinity lights is overkill but your are the artist and if it works for you, so be it.  I notice that there is very little shadowing on your characters.  Please correct me if I assume that the shadowing is turned off for those lights.  Generally, infinity lights should provide shadows as your main light source, raytracing shadows should be turned on.  IBL only provides ambient light, it is everywhere and it also permeates shadow areas.  That is why you would like infinity lights with shadows unless you are simulating a cloudy day.  IBL is fairly intense when introduced into a scene and can be overpowering when left at 100% intensity.  And if you are using a HDR image as your light source, Smith-Micro recommends decreasing the IBL contrast to .5.  It appears that your image is a little washed out.

Now, to answer your question, no it is not necessary to decrease the intensity of all lights in your scene.  I have rendered scenes using the VSS Prop with Infinity lights set to 100% intensity and still had realistic effects.  But I do suggest decreasing IBL settings because they do blow out your lighting effects.  Remember, IBL is ambient lighting only.  It will introduce lighting and tinting everywhere, including your shadows and it should be used as a compliment to your existing lighting system.

I don't know the details of what you actually used for your scene but if want to provide more information, we will happily help you sort out some solutions.

@hborre:

Thanks for your reply!

What you recited in terms of set-up is correct. This is PoserPro SP1 running on a Q6600 Quad core, 8 Gb RAM, Vista Home Premium. (Tho' I do have P7-- ). The light set up came as one of the "default" light sets that came with the Desert Diamond Scene (I believe it was light set 3 from that scene - it is not an IBL set)  The light set contains 5 infinite lights. I "re-used" one of the INF lights by changing it to an IBL and turned on AO for that light only. The spot was added to point at the Angel Fish since at the distance it is located from the POV of the camera (via the ray trace reflection) you cannot see it is a fish in the mirror ( I have had that fish for ages and decided it was time to use it for something and it seemed like  a good idea to see how VSS did with a reflective bounce :-) ) ... Ray trace bounces is set to 4 in render settings.

I will have to check to see if I have shadows turned on for the other INFs but I'm pretty sure I did not make any changes to them so it is whatever the default is for the light set (I just checked the scene file and sure enough all of the lights have shadows turned on). But probably the reason that there are few shadows is that I had decreased the intensity on all of the INF lights to about 10% and lowered the IBL to about 20%... The problem appears to be that I should have lowered the IBL to a very low value and left the infinites alone.  I'll re-render with a low IBL and reset the INF lights to see if that changes the results.

Lighting is one of my weak points (as may be seen in the other pictures in my gallery). If there appears to be "nice pictures" in my gallery in terms of lighting, you can be assured it was all by accident -- a fool's luck. Any lighting pointers appreciated.

Thanks Again...

Ah. You "re-used" one of the INF lights by changing it to IBL. That's all you did? You did not attach an IBL light probe image to control it?

If that's what you did, that was a huge mistake. The I in IBL stands for Image, and the point of it is to use an Image which encodes information about the ambient lighting surrounding your subject. Each point in the image corresponds with a different direction in the universe of light reaching your subject.

Such images are never 100% white, but when you switched your light from INF to IBL, that's what you got. IBL image probes are usually based on photographs, carefully assembled to cover 360 degrees by 180 degrees, then converted to a format called "angular map" format. They look like mirror balls.

Poser Pro comes with some of these. A nice one for outdoors is the Pond one. It's in Textures in the HDRVFX folder. (I think)

 

Try this one. I made it. It has a lot of sky light and very little light from the ground. It will produce a lot more definition.

You should put this in your IBL. Turn off all your other lights. Don't bother with AO, shadows, or raytracing at this point. You need to do fast renders and experiment with the lighting to understand how each one you have influences the whole.

Render with just that IBL. Start at 100%. Then decrease it until your image seems slightly too dark. That is the contribution from the environment.

Turn on AO for this light. Render again, with shadows and ray-tracing enabled. (AO is considered a shadow, and it is a ray-traced effect). You want to adjust AO so you get nice shadows in crevices and nooks and crannies, and you don't see any black splotches. If you see black splotches, increase the ray bias.

Now add a single INF light, probably between 60 and 80 % intensity. Make it come down from above.

Experiment with the setting.

Then, turn on ray-trace shadows for the INF light.

Then see what you get.

Experiment with other IBL probes. Watch out for the intensity.

Oh and on your IBL, I suggest that Contrast = 1. For any IBL that I make, it should be 1. The default is 3 I think. Not a good idea if the IBL was made properly.

If your'e using Pro and you have GC enabled, when you load that IBL light probe, make sure Pro knows to use a GC of 1.0 on that light, not the render GC value of 2.2

This is what I get with that IBL probe at 100%. It produces a very blue cast because of the dominance of the sky in the image.

I reduced the IBL to 50%, then added an INF light at 70% very high.

Reading off my light Transform I have

xRotate = -57
yRotate = 14
zRotate = -8

Now I turn on my shadows and ray-tracing.

This is what I get if I "accidentally" turn on gamma correction in my shader *and* in Poser Pro render settings.

This doesn't look too bad, but it surely isn't what I want.