Here is the snow on "auto".

We had rain this morning, now the clouds are breaking up and the sun is coming out. The clouds cover about 90% of the sky, so there are small areas that are clearly blue, but mostly the sky looks white to me, using my actual eyeballs, not a camera.

Taking this photo, I have the sun partially obscured by clouds at the very top. So the direct lighting is diffused a bit through the clouds. Shadows are not real sharp today. In this photo, the luminance of sun and sky is so much brighter than the things around me that the camera cannot capture all this dynamic range in one photo. (This is why you want to use HDR in rendering. But I digress).

So to my eye, the sky is full of detail, blue, white, and the incredible glare of the sun. To the camera its all shades of gray. Or is it?

I have placed two pieces of paper on the sidewalk. One is fully in shade from the garden box. The other is fully in sunlight.

One is clearly blue. What is the dominant color of the other? Answer - blue. They are both blue. One is more blue than the other, but they are both blue. So if you render with white sun and blue IBL, you match this photo.

Does it look fake? Not to me. So which is real, blue or red? They're both real. Do what you want. use a blue IBL and an orange sun to get a warmer render. Use white for both for a neutral render. Or use blue IBL and a white sun to give what is commonly produced by cameras that are set to "auto".

yeah but the paper is white.
what happens with a grey material? i guess you are right-

so i could made the change in photoshop? does anyone have any tutorial link for photoshop? i have photoshop.

Quote - never neeeeeeeeeeeeeever pay money for light sets.

Truer words were NEVER written! Lighting is different for EVERY scene and stock set's just won't do justice to your work.

founds this
http://www.eyefetch.com/tutorial-white-balance-ps.aspx

Is it a better idea if I render my scene with various light sets to see what settings give me the metalic and shiney surfaces that I think look realistic and then take note of the settings in the material room for the metalics and shiney surfaces and make the same settings in the material room for the metalics ,shiney surfaces  for  the light set that I feel gives a realistic skin texture? Because at the moment I'm happy wiith the lighting set I made to the skin texture ,but not happy with the look of the shiney surfaces and metalics .Both of these look very dull and nothing like what they are supposed to .

Sounds to me that your lights might be just fine for your scene, it would be the metal shaders themselves. Do you want the metals to just be shiny or to have true, raytraced reflection?

Latexluv: I would like the metals in the scene to have true raytraced reflection and also the paint on cars ,bikes and shiny materials to display their true characteristics.

Okay, here is a start.  Shader packs from Ajax and Mapps.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=44709

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=43772&page=3

Copy those links into your browser, find the shader packs, download, read the readme docs carefully and install into your Poser runtime. At the top of this forum there is a permanent thread by Acadia with links to shader discussions here in the forum. When RNDNA comes back online, cruise over there and check out the forum called the Node Cult. And check anything bagginsbill has commented on.

Ok , Thanks ,I'll check it out .It's starting to make a little more sense now  but still  very daunting .

It is a bit daunting, yes. I started out with Poser 3 and no manual. I just clicked on things to see what would happen and asked a lot of questions here on the forums. What version of Poser are you using? Oh, and go and check out the thread on "Trying to Achieve Good Water". Bagginsbill has posted some good screen shots of some water shaders.

I'm using Poser 6 .I have been using Poser for approximately 5 years and everything I know ,up until now I have had to teach my self .So it has been a very slow process this learning curve of mine.I know lots of people are using other render engines other than the standard Poser render engine, and getting great results.But I was told that I don't need the vrays or Metal rays of this world to get similar or even better final renders.Poser has everything you need .You just need to know how to set up the lighting and the material room .And so here I am trying to do what seems the impossible( well for me  anyhow) and prove that Poser renders are as good if not better than the forementioned render engines.Its not an, us versus them showdown of the render engines , no .Its more a point of learning and using the skills which truely make us a great artist rather than an average one .

I understand. I'm not against post work at all (it's just my laptop hates to work in layers in Paintshop), so I try to push Poser to do as much as possible. I am very happy when I can get Poser to produce an image that I feel only needs my logo on it. If I've produced an image with Poser only, I will post that information when I upload an image. I do want people to know that you can produce beautiful images with Poser. No it's not one of the high end packages, but it is a good tool in it's own right.

any tips how to make fast and good blury depth map shadows? i would only need them for fill lights. not for main lighting.
but i can not make them to work.

There isn't much to adjust.

Use a larger map size (1024 to 2048). The default of 256 is terrible.

Adjust the blur as you want. I'm sure you're aware the blur will not vary with distance as it should and does with ray-traced shadows.

You may have to adjust the shadow camera if your shadow casting elements are large compared to what you're rendering. For example, if there is a full size building and a figure standing in front, but you're only showing a portrait of the figure. In such a case, the shadow map will be automatically scaled to include shadows of the entire building even if you never see those. (Think about the possiblity of reflections of those shadows. Poser cannot cull these shadows automatically just because you will not see them directly.)

So Bill if you have two Infinite lights in a scene, both using depth-mapped shadows, you'd use 1024 (minimum) for BOTH those lights?

Yes. I've never seen a good shadow map at less than 1024. Quite often, a bad shadow is worse than no shadow.

if you want sharp shadows use raytraced shadows.
if you want soft shadows use raytraced shadows.

if you want sharp shadows dont IMO use DM shadows. you need a very big shadow map. and it still will not look good.
if you want soft blurry shadows dont IMO use DM shadows because they are not realistic.

i am using DM shadows only for fill lights where teh light is so dark that we dont notice the bad shadows. and maybe sometimes for RIM lights.

i think shadow map 512 and blur 10 will be good enough for fill lights that are 10-30 % bright.
i would use raytraced with 20 blur but 3 fill lights with those settings and the rendertime will be to long.

You're probably right, ice-boy - 512/10 looks good.

Thanks for the picture, raven, that's just an awesome reference chart.

what i find amazig and in a way dumb is that when i used DM shadow maps i always used sharp shadows. now that i am using raytraced shadows i am more using soft blurry shadows.its like i want to make it harder in poser.

p.s. when using DM shadow blur it also takes longer to render right? 

Quote -
p.s. when using DM shadow blur it also takes longer to render right? 

No, not at all. The blurring is a very quick operation at the end of creating the shadow map. How fast can you blur a 1K by 1K picture in Photoshop? That's how fast a blurred shadow map is. Plus, if you cache the shadow maps, they take 0 time to render after the first time.

well i was reading that it doesnt take longer. i did some test renders and it looked like it was longer.
i guess there was something wrong with my computer.or i need to stop doing rendering when i am on the internet +listening music. he he

Quote - Here is a picture showing the use of a shadowmap at a size of 256, 512, 1024, and 2048. Then with differing blur values, starting with 1, then 5 and finally 10.
Click the pic to see it bigger.

Excellent. Thanks!

Glad it's of use to people. Just a quick note to say that although it says blur 0, really it's 1, as that's the minimum value.

Also, in order to get a shadowmap of 2048, you will have to change the limits of the Map Size parameter dial. This is because the map's default max size is 1024. Just double click the dial and change the Max Limit value to 2048 and click OK.

it helped me very much.
thank you.

ok Bagginsbill you are a poser expert.

if we use two lights then everything poser will render with two lights. would it be hard to insert in poser  an option to choose what lights to use on objects,figures and hairs? 

for example. lets say i make 3 lights. IBL , light-DM , light RT.
IBL : a simple IBL
light-DM: light with DM shadows
light-RT: light with raytraced shadows

now if we could poser tell to use IBL on everything,light-DM on the hair,light-RT on the figure. would it be hard to have this in poser 8? would this be to complicated for poser?
DM shadows are easier to render when you have transparency. we could use a light that has DMshadows for hair,trees,grass. but for objects and figures without transparency we would use raytraced shadows. that way we would save time. and for grass and hair you dont need very accurate shadows.

here is a paper from pixar. for hair they use DEEP shadows. they are fast. using raytraced shadows on fur and hair would take forever. very interesting to read.
graphics.pixar.com/library/DeepShadows/paper.pdf

you think we could writte a python script to tell the figure to use only a specific light. and to tell the hair to use only a specific light?

No script could do that for exisitng Poser versions because they don't provide anything to set that behavior up in the renderer. 

However, it is theoretically possible with some changes to Poser. Quite a few effects could be added on with a few additions and hooks in the Python interface into the renderer. We're discussing it.

now lets hope it is in poser 8  he he

what are the chances? 60% :-) 

weeks ago i asked about how to make blue shadows and whitte sun. i have been reading a lot about lighting and digital lighting.
bagginsbill was obvious right with the  ''white balance'' .

so in a documentation about digital lighting they say that you make the global lighting blue . for the sun they say that you need to take away the blue. so i am trying this with the node User_Defined.

the question is what setting to use? i tryed  1.0,0.9,0.77. then render. then if the colors dont look good i can go in photoshop and make small changes with the white balance tools.

Why do you need User_Defined node? You have the RGB values for each light right on the properties window.

to take away the the blue color.

am i doing it wrong?

any tips on how to make lighting like this? 
www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/makingof_young_girl/young_girl_02.asp

i am more interested on the light coming form the left .

You're already working on whatever tips I could give. That guy used 5 area lights!

My suggestion would be to set up glowing rectangles for lights. Capture them using GenIBL. Convert to lat/long using HDRSHOP and do a specular convolution to make a reflection map for the skin. Use that in the skin shader.

There is extensive use of SSS in the image as well, which we're missing. I"d almost argue it was overdone - the girl looks a little bit waxy in some places.

i agree the SSS looks a little off.

i am noticed a lot of times that those artist think that they need to show us SSS. SSS is a lot of times very subtle on skin.

shouldnt it looks like a real shadow? i thought that this is how DM shadows work. they create a shadow image with the shadow cam.

Quote - i thought that this is how DM shadows work. they create a shadow image with the shadow cam.

That's not how DM shadows work. DM shadows work by storing the depth channel of an object as seen from a light, and then use this to figure out what parts are in shadow and what aren't. See:

Shadow mapping

aha ok my mistake.

but shouldnt the image be projected on the figure?

It is being projected, that's why the whole figure is black. You're using the texture you captured from the shadow cam to control the light intensity right ? If you look at the render, your figure happens to lie entirely within an area of the texture where the intensity is black (somewhere near the knees)

If you move the light around, you will get different projections.

i was thinking making a texture image to fake the shadows. to use an image for the shadows.

You can fake a shadow from the figure on the ground. Also from some other object on the figure like from a nearby building or a tree. But you can't do fake self shadows (shadows from the figure on itself) For that you need RT or DM shadows.