Hello people.

I know, I'm becoming an ass about this. But I'm really tired of seeing linear-encoded renders.

None of us has a display device encoded in linear color space. We all have monitors and printers that show images correctly if they are in sRGB color space.

Linear color space is similar to sRGB color space. It is not the same.

Inches are similar to centimeters, too, but you can't just replace one with another.

In sRGB color space, the value .5 is not 50% as bright as 1. It is only 21.7 % as bright. Please stop posting renders for devices nobody owns. Or, when you post such images, apologize to the viewer for making them look at something you could easily correct, but you refuse to.

Thank you.

Dear bagginsbill,
I save my renders as png's and post them as jpeg's, how does that differ form sRGB encoding?  I do, however, after postwork now save my work using Photoshop's 'Save for web' command so as not to exceed Renderosity's 510 kilobyte limit, is that what you're referring to?
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Just upgraded to Poser Pro!  (off-topic: wheee, it's my birthday gift! Happy birthday to me!)

So if I use textures and shaders not already gamma-corrected on their own, I just need to leave the "default gamma correction" to 2.2 and I am OK, right?

Otherwise I just say "do not use gamma correction for this specific texture" if something is already gamma-corrected... kick me if I am wrong.

Giorgio

i am happy bagginsbill make this thread.

i know what the problem is. 70-80% of  Poser users are just opening a document and using almost everytime the default settings. i understand this when you use poser for 1 month. but after 6 months or 12 months you should know enough that you need to gamma correct your renders.
if you have poser pro you have this in the render settings. if you have poser 7 then you should use bagginsbills skin shader that has GC inside. plus he already explained how to make a default GC shader. from there on you can do whatever you want to do.

here is explained ho to do GC shaders
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2738989&page=1

here you have teh GC skin shader
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2737823

so pleeeeeeeeease no mroe orange glow on teh skin. ohhhh and stop buying light sets for christ sake. you have lights in your software already. you choose what color and what shadows you will have. stop using 7 lights or more in a render. this is insane. with GC shaders and a good IBL you are able to fake some GI.

@ DPH, You mention in your "Who do I have to bribe..." thread that you use a set of 4 lights on average. What intensity are those lights set to? 
Have a look at this image:www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

  There is no post work done on this image. I save as .TIF out of Poser and use GIMP to save as sized JPG for uploading. There are 3 lights in this scene, 1 IBL @ 25% w/AO, 1 point @10% and another point @40%. 

  With Gamma Correction fewer lights at lower intensity are needed to produce a well lite scene. And changing the lights does what you expect it to, the scene can be made to look more natural more easily. The less time I spend trying to correct (after the fact) an image the more time I can spend on the layout/creation of the image. By the way that image would not be half as realistic without all the tips and techniques bagginsbill has put out on the forums over the last couple of years. Thanks BB.

Quote - o.k., will do - thx fr the reminder.  does the problem of users having their displays set wrongly enter into this?
(see att. img)

FYI: I got a pantone huey to calibrate my Mac Cinema displays. It appears that Macs are set to 1.8 currently, not 2.2.

Bagginsbill,

I was hoping you could link me to a thread where you may have posted anything in the format of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Gamma Correction"  which might include a screen shot of the node chains.......showing the primary and secondary diffuse parameters, etc.

I thought I saw something...... but I'll be damned I cannot search and find it again......
Thanks

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2738989&page=1

to Holler: I love that image. It is simple (in a good sense), elegant work like this that re-inspires me to go back to the basics with Poser when all my renders are coming out wrong. Thanks, both to you and (indirectly) to bb!

to grichter: there was a news item a little while back to the effect that Apple are in future going to use GC 2.2 for all their displays. Whether / when this is happening I do not know, and I'm not yet sure of the consequences for current Apple display users like you'n'me.

Attached Link: LCD Monitor Tests

FYI - If you have an LCD monitor, you might be interested in this information.

Check your gamma ... and other stuff.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

that's it  IsaoShi !!!

oops ...didn't notice they were here in the thread  :-O

molto bene  ......grazie

*I know what the problem is. 70-80% of  Poser users are just opening a document and using almost everytime the default settings. i understand this when you use poser for 1 month. but after 6 months or 12 months you should know enough that you need to gamma correct your renders.
if you have poser pro you have this in the render settings. if you have poser 7 then you should use bagginsbills skin shader that has GC inside. plus he already explained how to make a default GC shader. from there on you can do whatever you want to do.

*I'm using poser for 12 years and I never gamma-corrected my renders, and in every post I made no one told me that I had to gamma-correct it. I have poserpro but I didn't use the gamma correction, because pro messed up the bump, transparancy and displacement maps, which shouldn't be gamma corrected. Until now I had my monitor-settings on 9200K because I found the sRGB settings much too low: not only with my poser renders, but with everytihing: WIndows, internet explorer, autocad, you call it.
But perhaps the fact that I'm getting a little older (51) my eyes are degrading and as a CAD-draftsman I have not much experience with working with photoshop or paintshop. Perhaps I have too work more with that.
I changed my monitor settings to sRGB and I will see if I can get used to it. Perhaps it will improve my renders.

best regards,

Bopper.

Are there any advantages to using gamma correction within Poser versus doing it in postwork?

The problem doing it in Poser is that it requires a render to fully see what the lights are doing and, depending on the complexity of the models in the image, that could take many minutes to hours to see. In postwork, all changes are dynamic and immediately seen. A lot more experimentation can be done in postwork in little time instead of tweaking and rendering in Poser time after time. My basic workflow is to get the lighting as good as I can in Poser and then bring it into Photoshop to punch up the colors as I did in the above image. The top image is what came right out of Poser and the bottom shows just the change from using Photoshop curves to enhance the colors I wanted to bring out.

The one thread where I saw gamma correction used in Poser, in an earlier thread, the nodes were fairly complex. If memory serves me right, those nodes had to be be applied to each texture. It wasn't a one-time solution.

bopperthijs,

Your recent (excellent) renders are using VSS shaders, no? Did you turn off GC in those shaders? Because if you did not turn it off, then it is on, and you have been rendering with GC.

gagnonrich

That looks good to me. Doing GC in photoshop with levels and curves is fine in the right hands. You obviously have the right hands. :)

in PS you have now gone past the point where you were able to isolate separate materials, as in the Poser render setup,  so you will apply levels and curves in PS to the image as a whole .... UNLESS you want to try and lasoo select different parts of the image and repaste them all down as different layers,  then you are asking for trouble because of transition from selected piece to selected piece, UNLESS you soft edge erase each contiguous edge between different  pieces.  It starts to get messy though. For that matter, if you want to post in PS, why not just shine differnt lights all over the image in PS with the PS render options......point is: I bet it's better control in the PS material room, although it takes longer , granted I suck at rendering in Poser up to this point but I bet it is a better result.

Hi Baggingsbill,

I did use GC in those shaders and I was aware of that, but only on the skin shaders, I didn't use it on other materials. Perhaps that is one of the reason why my environment looks dull now and them.

Quote - UNLESS you want to try and lasoo select different parts of the image and repaste them all down as different layers

Or render separate elements that can be selected separately in Photoshop. I did separate renders of the diver and the creature, but not for coloring purposes. For the final image, I did a radial gradient layer and applied a blur, centering on the tunnel entrance, to simulate distance on the cave, but didn't want it to affect the main figures (I manually added a distant blur to the creature's neck).

Color corrections usually only need to be applied globally on a Poser render. It's possible to select and paint individual elements, but that's not usually necessary. I'd rather fix an isolated color issue in Poser so that all the lights and shadows act on that element appropriately. I'm all for letting Poser do the bulk of the work. Poser has its limits or sometimes takes more effort to achieve a result than can be done in other programs. Photoshop, and other image editors, excel on fixing the color on images. Image editors are less useful in lighting an image and general light arrangement for 3D graphics are best addressed in the 3D programs.

I'd imagine that most people prefer the second image over the first. All I did was add contrast with an "S" curve and similarly beefed up the red and blue channels. I don't know if that can readily be done in Poser. Even if it could, the process would be change settings, render, and repeating till the right result is achieved. In Photoshop, I alter the curve and the result is nearly instantaneous, so I can do a lot more experimentation in a shorter time than I can with Poser.

In the end, methodology doesn't matter as much as results. The quality of any image relies on the image itself and not the tools used to create it.
 
Methodolgy discussions are still useful because there's always something to learn from them. That's why I'll often read something from bagginsbill. He knows a whole lot more about this stuff than I do. If there's a faster way in Poser to achieve the results I got in the second image entirely within Poser, I'm all for learning it. I rather doubt, even applying gamma correction in Poser, that the results would be as good as what could be done in Photoshop. It would probably be less flat than the first image. I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time getting Poser a little better and then essentially doing as much work in Photoshop as before.

OK, can someone translate this thread into "totally clueless"? I know gamma has something to do with display settings and can make things harder to see if you have it set wrong, but that's about all. I'd like to learn more about this.

*Or render separate elements that can be selected separately in Photoshop.

*A good point and a simple procedural concept that I did not consider

Thanks

Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction

There are two common systems for talking about these values. The fractional system, i.e. 0 to 1 in fractions of a whole. As in 1 = as bright as is possible, and 0 = no light emitted whatsoever. Levels in bewteen are numbers such as .125, .38435, .98483.  The bigger the number, the brighter it is. The other common representation is integers from 0 (nothing) to 255 (maximum).

[[
Why 255? If you don't care, skip this. Most computer displays are set up using 8-bit integers for each color component. Using 8-bit binary numbers, the largest value is 2 to 8th power minus 1, which is 255.

Conversions between the two are straightforward. For example, .3  * 255 = 76.5 - rounding up the value is 77. To go the other way, divide by 255. For example, 150/255 = .588 approximately.
]]

These things have nothing to do with gamma correction - I'm just giving you an intro.

Now the question is, what does .5 mean on your computer screen. Is that half of the maximum? The answer is no. There's a lot to why, but basically just accept it. To get half as bright as the maximum, the correct fraction is not .5, but rather .73.

Prior to Poser Pro, Poser did not generate numbers like this properly representing fractions of maximum brightness adjusted for your computer display. Instead, it uses straight linear values.

For example, suppose you render something with a Poser light at 90% intensity, and the value produced in the image is .7. Suppose you then cut your light intensity in half, to 45%. What value will Poser render now? It will render .35, half of .7. That is linear intensity scaling.

But your screen doesn't work that way. The value .7 looks like about 46% of maximum brightness, not 70%. And the value .35 looks not at all like 35% of maximum brightness. It actually looks like 1% of maximum, which is to say basically invisible.

To find out what a given fraction x actually looks like, you take the fractional value and raise it to the power 2.2.

The only values that are the same in linear color space and sRGB (monitor) color space are the values 0% and 100%. (Completely off, and completely on at maximum)

All other in-between values are not the same. They must be converted in order to make sense. It is a little bit like temperature scales. Between Fahrenheit and Celsius, there is only one value that means the same thing in both. That value is -40. The temperature -40 means the same in either system. But all other temperatures are represented by different numbers. A 0 in Celsius is 32 in Fahrenheit.

To deal with this, we need the render to be pre-compensated. Meaning, if the render is trying to produce a brightness of 60%, for example, we need to find out what value to put in the image that, after the monitor darkens it, comes out to 60%. That value is called a gamma corrected value. To produce 60% brightness, you need to use .6 to the 1/2.2 power, which is actually .793.
That is for a gamma of 2.2. But some Mac computers are set up at 1.8 - so to see them right you'd need a gamma correction of only 1.8, not 2.2.

This is why many nice looking MAC images look dark on a PC, and many nice looking PC images look extra bright on a MAC. (This was a little marketing ploy by Apple - people think pictures look nicer on a MAC because they are brighter. Basically the MAC applies some gamma correction (1.4) automatically, causing most photos to look extra bright and sparkly.)

Poser Pro has finally acknowledged this in the rendering process. If you don't have Poser Pro, you have to either correct your numbers in postwork, or set up shaders to do it, or use a device in your render I call a gamma correcting lens.

I don't care what you preference is for technique, I just want to see pictures accurately shown on a computer screen. And you should, as well.

It matters, because there are a boatload of people who think lighting in Poser is difficult. It is not difficult. It is actually pretty easy, if you were to actually convert your final image to the right data representation for viewing on a computer screen. The linear format produced by Poser is mathematically correct, but not actually ready to look at on your screen.

It is unfortunate that linear format and sRGB format look sort of similar. In both, bigger numbers are brighter than smaller numbers. In both, equal amounts of red, green, and blue produce a shade of gray, but the actual brightness of that gray is different between the two systems. Our willingness to dismiss the relative ugliness of Poser renders is entirely a result of the unfortunate similarity between the two systems. Had they been more wildly different, nobody would have ever put up with the incorrect representation of brightness produced by displaying linear images on a computer screen.

PS: I corrected a bunch of spelling errors but there's probably a lot more in my post. Sorry.

Attached Link: http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6861

This is not necessarily because of linear rendering, but sometimes it is. Sometimes even movie special effects guys forget to gamma correct.

Attached Link: http://www.poserpro.net/King_Tut/Gamma/PoserPro_Gamma.html

The opening paragraph says it all.

Quote - Gamma Correction is probably one of the most baffling and misunderstood concepts in existence. You will find more written about it than you can possibly need or want to digest, and each author will make their own unique attempt at explaining the �ins-and-outs-and-what-have-yous� when in reality most of us don�t really care, and don�t even realize that we�re affected by it almost every time we turn on a computer. Unfortunately when it comes to creating stellar 3D graphics, the use of gamma correction becomes very necessary, even though an in depth understanding of it does not. Fortunately Poser Pro contains some straight forward options for using Gamma Correction. This document attempts to explain the necessity as it relates to Poser Pro in a practical manner while giving you a basic understanding of the process by which you can produce excellent Gamma corrected images using Poser Pro. In effect we�ve tried to simply as much as possible and keep it pertinent.

Attached Link: http://www.poserpro.net/King_Tut/vids/Gamma/Poser_Pro_Gamma.htm

Even if you don't have Pro, you should watch so you know what you're not doing right.

And then find a way to do it.

Quote - Hello people.

I know, I'm becoming an ass about this. But I'm really tired of seeing linear-encoded renders.

None of us has a display device encoded in linear color space. We all have monitors and printers that show images correctly if they are in sRGB color space.

Linear color space is similar to sRGB color space. It is not the same.

Inches are similar to centimeters, too, but you can't just replace one with another.

In sRGB color space, the value .5 is not 50% as bright as 1. It is only 21.7 % as bright. Please stop posting renders for devices nobody owns. Or, when you post such images, apologize to the viewer for making them look at something you could easily correct, but you refuse to.

Thank you.

How do you gamma correct a render? 

I know about calibrating monitors, but I've never heard of calibrating/gamma correcting  a poser render before.

Note to people using V4... it comes with some shaders to help images that aren't gamma corrected so you are going to have to deal with those if you plan to gamma correct.  Unfortunately at least some of the character sets that you can buy for her have that problem as well.

For example if you use a lens like bill, a 2.2 value in the divisor will make the whites of her eyes look red.  Use 1.5 and they look gray. 

Also note that the eyes seem to always give me troubles.  I have tried 8 raytrace bounces with just the "base" lens that has just the refract node and they still come out dark like that.

(left side is without the lens, right side is with it)

Realmling is having the same problem - posting about it in the lens thread.

I just made a suggestion - seems there is some wierd faking of SSS based on transparency and the back part of the eye is colored solid red.

Try removing the transparency on the sclera.

The character I'm using (Sabryn's Coryn) doesn't have any sclera transparency.  Viki4 does have a transparent eye surface node though.  Looks like it is covering the eyes.

Turning that off helps, but then you can't see anything underneath it.

Quote - How do you gamma correct a render? 

I know about calibrating monitors, but I've never heard of calibrating/gamma correcting  a poser render before.

Isaoshi linked you above to my thread on how to build a GC shader.

Here is a link to the Artistic Lens thread, wherein I show how to do it with a prop.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2754029

And here is my previous GC reminder thread. Some interesting stuff to read there if you missed it.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2757170

Somebody in that thread asked how to do it with PSP 9. I don't know the answer. I don't know how in postwork - I don't do that. I know that Photoshop "Levels" and move the middle slider to the left is somewhat like GC, but mathematically not identical.

Quote - *

*I'm using poser for 12 years and I never gamma-corrected my renders, and in every post I made no one told me that I had to gamma-correct it. I have poserpro but I didn't use the gamma correction, because pro messed up the bump, transparancy and displacement maps, which shouldn't be gamma corrected. Until now I had my monitor-settings on 9200K because I found the sRGB settings much too low: not only with my poser renders, but with everytihing: WIndows, internet explorer, autocad, you call it.
But perhaps the fact that I'm getting a little older (51) my eyes are degrading and as a CAD-draftsman I have not much experience with working with photoshop or paintshop. Perhaps I have too work more with that.
I changed my monitor settings to sRGB and I will see if I can get used to it. Perhaps it will improve my renders.

best regards,

Bopper.

when you open image map you have an option to change the GC for the image itself. you can writte in what ever number you want. 

I did the head only,  and there is some kind of change.......I set up the nodes for GC the way Bagginsbill said to do it for Simon in this thread:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2738989&page=1

The ONLY difference is in the  "math function 2", "Value 2"  i had to turn down to about .2  or else she had a crazy intese bright glare, as if the light intensity was quadrupled or something....along with lowering this value, I decreased the intensity of the lights - I am only using 2 white spots , distributed evenly on her face and upper body.  about 40-50% intensity

My obvious problem here is that even with white lights, and SOME twisted newbie form of GC......Sydney still looks like she is floating in a glass of cognac

A rough rule of thumb, to color correct most images in postwork, is to make sure that the darkest part of the image is pure black, the lightest part of the image is pure white, and that shades of gray have no other colors mixed in. Photoshop's levels and curves have three eyedroppers that do just that. Clicking in the appropriate parts of the image with those eyedroppers often gets pretty close to the correct colors in the image. Sometimes clicking with the eyedropper will produce an undesired result, but CTRL-z usually reverts it to its previous state and cancelling will get rid of all changes done in curves or levels if things are going too bad.

What this is basically doing is establishing a dynamic range in the image. An image without a pure black or a pure white often looks dull or muddy because it lacks good contrast. If an object, that is supposed to be gray, isn't, then there is a color cast to the image. Making the gray object  gray will often get rid of the color cast.

As with everything, there can be exceptions because not all images are alike. Some images don't have anything that ought to be pure black or white. Others have an intentional colorcast.

With the original image of my underwater cave scene, the darkest black is a dark gray and the lightest white a light gray. By forcing the darkest black and lightest white to pure black and white, the figures pop out of the background. Increasing the blue channel in Photoshop got rid of the yellow colorcast in the original image (yellow being the opposite of blue light).

There's something you're not telling me.

If you put .2 in Value_2 of Math_Functions_2, what you did was multiply the gamma correction factor (2.2) with .2, giving us .44 which is the oppposite of gamma correction. That would be going the other way.

This is what that looks like.

Are you using Poser Pro? Did you accidentally turn on GC in Pro, thus doubling the amount of GC?

The IBL light intensity you should use depends on what is in the image so I can't tell you what to use.

But here is a render with IBL only, no infinite light. You should see something like this with your IBL only render as well. If you see brighter than this, you have too much IBL. Most people do.

Remember, all the extra light you used to use was a hack in response to the darkness you saw without GC. Use less light.

If your non-GC render looks brighter than this, you're starting with too much light.

Here is the same 200% infinite, but the skin does NOT have the GC turned on. Looks crazy, eh? That doesn't look at all like a human standing in front of a serious light. It just looks wierd.

If you put a proper skin shader on, like this, the realism will go up.

This is the skin shader I'm building for the Antonia character. It is designed to be used without any texture (color) map at all. But here plugged in Sydney's texture.

*"There's something you're not telling me...... "

*LOL !  love the way you put that ......yeah I am kinda not sure If I had the shader exactly perfect

ANYWAY:  I will get this right tonight when I get home, can't check my nodes right now I'm at work. Try to install MSN messenger here and the police show up, let alone something like Poser

Thanks this is awesome information

@BagginsBill:
In the last days i read a lot about VSS and GC . Thank you for providing so much information
and your VSS free version.

I did a test render scene with VSS  : 2 figures (Behemoth, PuzzleCube) and a prop (a column)
So VSS created the shader nodes for the human figure - an improved Shader generated by the VSS System with Material AO and GC.
The Column prop and the PuzzleCube Figure dont have Shaders with Material AO and GC

Shouldn't  the other Figure and the prop have Material AO and GC too ?

(Didnt work to get a small version of the pic in here, so the link is:)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1827173

My question is :
? How i can integrate a generic material AO and GC shader into VSS
to apply it to for example to the PuzzleCube fiugre and the Colum (Prop), or  any others ...
(RTFM: yes i read the VSS Docu, but i am just starting with it)

Greetings
xuu4u

Initially, the construct of the VSSProp only target human figures and other creatures with some modification.  That is all covered in the 'manual' to some extent.  You have not mentioned which version of Poser you are using, so it would be difficult to instruct you on how to proceed.  And there are other threads in the forum which also address similar situations.  In Poser 7, you would need to create the appropriate nodes for AO and GC in the material room.  However, PoserPro has GC built into it's render engine, eliminating the need to create GC nodes.  It is also suggested for PoserPro to use light-based AO rather than introducing it into the material.  There is a better affinity towards accuracy not seen in Poser 7.

I just always lower the gamma to 1.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2737823&page=27#message_3268316

The link above will take you to the page in the VSS thread where I show how to customize a control prop for a horse. The same technique is used for any prop or figure.

First you must decide what are the various materials you want VSS to distribute. Suppose you are working with a chair that has leather upholstery, a cloth throw pillow, and some wooden legs. So you'd need 3 new real-world materials - Leather, Cloth, Wood. It doesn't matter how many material zones those have to be spread out on, there are only 3 distinct shaders you'll be using. You then use the VSS Designer buttons to create a Template for each of those shaders. You'd then load shaders into the templates.

Next you need to add some rules that associate the material zones on your prop or figure to the templates you created. These are in the Shader Rules material of the control prop. Suppose the chair has multiple material zones for the leather, such as Front, Back, and Sides. You'd need to create a rule for each of those that copies the Leather material onto them. Another rule would copy the Wood shader to the Legs material zone. And if you had two pillows, PillowLeft and PillowRight, you could right one or two rules to copy the Cloth shader. For example Rule pillow* Copy Cloth would work for both.

Finally you need to customize the control prop to know what scene elements to work on. These are in the Apply Rules material zone on the control prop. Suppose you have two charis, named Chair_1 and Chair_2. You could add a Rule chair* to match all chairs, or you could put specific chair names in. If you use the chair*, then when you add two more chairs, Chair_3 and Chair_4, VSS would automatically apply this control prop to those new chairs.

It is up to you whether you want to make a brand-new control prop for each type of item you work with, or just have a single prop handle everything in your scene. Any prop will do as a control prop, as long as it has material zones called Apply Rules and Shader Rules. The VSS designer buttons will help with this task.

The only reason I'm using nodes to express all these rules is because Poser doesn't have a solution to my need for a nice, easy-to-use GUI. I've shoe-horned all this functionality into this strange scheme so that I could give you a way to do all this using only simple dialogs that ask one question at a time. It's not the fastest way to do it, but it does get the job done. I'm working on a better way to provide a nice GUI. In particular, the Shader Rules as nodes lets you look over your rules in a pretty easy way. It's not so easy to make new rules, but it's very easy to understand what the rules actually are.

As for the actual shaders, that's another topic. I and others (ice-boy) have linked to threads discussing how to build new shaders that have GC in them.

It is my intention to someday provide a library of nice GC materials, ready to use. But I have a few issues to work out before I do that.

Thank  you very much for that detailed answer Bagginsbill.
I will read it carefully again und see what i can achieve.
BTW i use Poser7SR3.
English is not my mother language so forgive me my mistakes:)

Today i was looking the video at the poser7 pro tutorial site about
GC in Poser7 Pro.
(The sitelink was mentioned by BB, dont remember the thread)
I tell you,  its worth looking it !!!. (runs only 6 min.y)

Presenting my understanding of GC here (some guesses, pls correct me if i am wrong)

GC in Poser7 Pro
The most stuff created on the pc like texturemaps has a burntin gamma  of 2.2
what means is non-linear color space.
The renderegine of Poser7 Pro like other apps (maya, XSI etc.) works in
linear color space.
Therefore Poser7 Pro offers you GC (manually or global) for that stuff, before it goes
to the renderengine. (nonlinear to linear colorspace)
And after the render is finished, poser7 pro GC's the result again
(linear to nonlinear colorspace) with a gamma value of 2.2
(Provided that you switched GC on)

The reason is because on the pc the displaying devices (monitors, graphic-cards)
are built for a Gamma Value 2.2 (like digital cameras too)

I guess, no i am sure, the renderengine of Poser7 renders even so in linear color space,
and that is the reason bcause the renders looks so 'wrong' or to dark, and we
try to correct this with increased light settings.

GC in Poser7 with VSS and the GC Lens.

There was no GC inside Poser7 (P4,P5,P6), untill BB created VSS.

The GC included in the skin shaders generated by VSS takes care of the 'in part'
to the renderengine, means nonlinear to linear color space GC by a value of 2.2
The template skin shaders included in VSS (free version) supports human figures (SKIN)
(Remember that you can do lot more with VSS )

The results of using VSS generated skin shader on human figures are drastically improved renders, they are not so dark and need less lighting values.

To be as constant as Poser7 Pro we have to use also the GC Lens prop
to simulate the 'out Part' (GC for the Resulting Pic, linear to nonlinear with a gamma of 2.2)
The CG lens has to be used meanwhile the renderengine of Poser7 is running !!!
(Ohterwise you want put GC Nodes to Surfacenode by hand)
.........

Following BB's instructions i had my first success with GC today:
Connecting the GC Nodes to Kozaburos Long Hair Evolution.
Together with VSS  for the skin i got great results.  (Me happy :)
For this hair to work correctly you have to check the normals_forward in the
rootnode for every materialzone and don't use the rendersetting remove backface polys.
(thats what i learned in a BB forum thread :))
I am still working on this Pic und will post in some days in my gallery.

BTW did you know that using the GC Lense corrects the forward_normals problem
of the hair also :)

I tried the GC Lens with different settings, but honestly i like mor the results
without the Lens.

Greetings
xuu4u