Hello all,

i tried to get the light theory of poser and gamma for a long time.
I tried to learn it to be able to create lightsettings like those:
forum.daz3d.com/postimages/origimage_3_1740295.jpg
those are done in DAZStudio with uberenvironment and elite surfaceshader (don´t know about daz, would love to know whether such powerful packs are available for poser ;)). if anyone wants to explain to a silly one like me what those packs even are i would be grateful :D

what i like:saturated colours, clean lines, the feeling of a white clean photostudio.

i created something that remembers me of it and is hell of easy to set up, i am just not sure whether it looks acceptable... i have some bias regarding things i did.

First: THANKS BAGGINSBILL FOR YOUR AWESOME VSS! its great!
Second: THANKS EVILINNOCENCE that you gave my v4basic a free dress to experiment easily! (just black shader with gloss in it, i am just proud that the highlights are still shiny and not washed out ;))

Third... please tell me whether thats acceptable or total crap, since i had to learn that each monitor shows something else i am very unsure.

the setup is 1ibl at 200%, one specular infinite at 100% 1diffuse at 100%, gamma 2.2

IMHO, you are blasting your scene very intense lighting.  Is your IBL based on an image or is it plugged directly into your diffuse_value which would explain the 200%.  Your infinity light should carry the shadowing load of your image but if you are rendering with Gc, then there is really no need to light at 100% intensity.  And exactly what is your diffuse lighting?  IIRC there is only diffuse IBL in the properties panel.  Also which Poser are you using again?

Just my two cents, but if you are using an IBL without an IBL image attached, the light should not be brighter than 30%, in my opinion. From the description, it sounds like both lights are way, way too bright. Let's see some screen shots of your light set up, please?

it should be alot more whited-out than that, if all those lites were RGB (1,1,1).
one infinite lite, one diffuse lite with no image and one diffuse IBL?
the skin looks o.k. on my monitor.  maybe all the rgb values were only (0.3, 0.3, 0.3) or thereabouts.

if yo uuse an IBL that is white then you get white light from every angle. i say 30% should be the maximum. infinite light 60-80%.

you are using GC ? 

First thanks for your opinions,
a little less diffuse infinite does look better, did that now.
and i know theoretically it must look ugly after all i have read... but i like it somehow. and i wasn´t sure whether my eyes are totally wrong or i messed up my monitorsetup again ;) i guess its the problem that nvidia doesnt implement a curve for gamma under vista.... dunno

the program was poser pro, gamma corrected in rendersettings @2.2 and in the vss under template skin @1 instead of 2.2....
1diffuse white infinite @100%
1specular white infinite @100%
and 1ibl 200% with hdri "pond"  in the diffuse after running through a math node to make it black white..... and IBL contrast @50 (dont know what that does, only that in the on poser pro its recommended to turn it to one or below... thats why i never touched it.)

interesting.
can i ask why you have one light only diffuse and the other only specular?

good question ;) ääähm...

its because my prior lightsets sometimes overrid the speculars, i just wasn´t able to find them... the ibl with contrast 1 or 0.5 had eaten it! or something else of the thousand things i am able to mess up did ;)
so i seperatet them to put them where i wanted for testing purpose. no deeper artistic sense, sometimes i find it looks nice. but thats the final realism death blow... call it stupid testing ;)

you can control the specular and diffuse in the material room.
if you have one diffuse lightand specular seperate you generate two shadows.

or am i wrong BB? 

Is the 200% pond plugged into the diffuse_image or diffuse_value?  BB's recommendation for plugging image_maps into diffuse_value is 200%.  But I think 2 infinite lights at 100% is a little overkill.  You are saturating the entire scene with lighting everywhere.  Lighting should be controlled and placed where it would be most effective without taking away from scene and increasing your render.  The fewer the better if the scene can be lit appropriately.  My tendency would be to create a spot light w/o shadows to add the specular or highlight at a lower intensity.  I would recommend rendering with one light at a time instead of seeing the overall effect with a set.  For example, create your IBL, render it and check your results.  Vary the IBL's intensity and position and notice how your scene changes after each render.  Select a group of settings pleasing to you.  Next, introduce 1 infinite light, turn off your IBL, and repeat the process over again.  Find something you like.  Keep doing this for each light you are intriducing into your scene.  Finally, start upscaling the light set up by turning on 2 lights and checking the results after rendering.  Eventually you will find a lighting combination which will work for you most of the time but not all of the time.  Remember, moods, time of the day, and time of the year will require other factors, like color-tinted lights, to enhance your light set up.

This is one IBL (with AO) and one infinite specular light with raytrace shadows switched on just to demonstrate the point.

(edit) with separate diffuse and specular lights, you just need to be a bit careful that the specular highlights remain consistent with the directional lighting.

so on the specular light you turn of shadows?

there are shadows. but they are not visible. i can not explain this.

Sorry, I was not clear:

I turned ON raytrace shadows for the specular light in that image, just in order to demonstrate that a specular-only light does not generate shadows at all. It only provides the source light for simulated specular reflection. There are no shadows in the image, apart from the AO.

if you would but a box infront of those props then there would be no specular

There is no visible shadow of the box on the sphere, but the box is shading the specular light shining on the sphere.

Is there a name for this? Specular Shadow, perhaps?

Specular only lights are quite handy if you want to pick up a nice sparkle from something but you don't want inconvenient shadows getting in the way

Quote - Is the 200% pond plugged into the diffuse_image or diffuse_value?  BB's recommendation for plugging image_maps into diffuse_value is 200%. 

I didn't recommend that. The only time I recommended a 200% or 300% IBL intensity was when I explained how to generate an IBL probe image that has dynamic range similar to an HDRI, but was actually generated in P7 and saved as an LDRI.

I never recommend any specific intensity unless I am talking about a specific IBL probe image, or I know how it was made. If you make a normal LDR probe using GenIBL, you want to use it at 100% intensity, plugged into Diffuse_Color.

Specular lights throw specular shadows, because a shadow is the absence of a light, so the only kind of absence a specular light makes is a specular shadow.

A diffuse only light can only throw diffuse shadows.

I do not believe much in specular-only lights anymore. I prefer to model the ambient light (sans primary light source, such as the sun) in my IBL. So I only use (or make) IBL probes that have the general ambient or secondary lighting in them.

No HDRI light probe I've seen captures the intensity of the sun anyway. You still need to add an infinite light for outdoors to represent the sun, and it won't look right unless you include the full specular and diffuse component of that.

Also, since using GC, I find the original point of a specular only light is gone. The point of that light was to avoid over-lighting - doubling up on the diffuse stuff. But now we don't overlight anyway, because we have GC, so now there is plenty of room to combine strong lights because they aren't actually that strong. What used to be weak lights are now strong lights.

Here's a demo. I will render my figure with IBl, then with spot light, then with both.

Remember, GC is in use here. So the sum of the two will not be twice as bright (as sRGB data, anyway) as the individual renders!

Notice the intensity is .2, or 20%. That's because this is a VERY bright IBL - notice the big patch of white? This sort of IBL is very handy for expository lighting. However, it still provides some shaping of the figure - it's not totally flat. If I used this at 100% it would be WAY too much.

My main light was a single spotlight at 95%, color white.

For hand-made designer IBL, particularly for expository lighting, I find these IBL masks that Olivier made very handy. He wrote a nice tutorial showing all sorts of neat effects you can build with designer IBL.

Attached Link: IBL Ins and outs by Olivier on 01/07/06
 

I also changed this one to 30%. I moved my spotlight to front and center and reduced it to 70%.

Quote - Specular lights throw specular shadows, because a shadow is the absence of a light, so the only kind of absence a specular light makes is a specular shadow.

A diffuse only light can only throw diffuse shadows.

I do not believe much in specular-only lights anymore. I prefer to model the ambient light (sans primary light source, such as the sun) in my IBL. So I only use (or make) IBL probes that have the general ambient or secondary lighting in them.

No HDRI light probe I've seen captures the intensity of the sun anyway. You still need to add an infinite light for outdoors to represent the sun, and it won't look right unless you include the full specular and diffuse component of that.

if you are on a street standing. you have the sun and the bounced light from the street and everything around you.

so you need an IBl and an infinite light for the sun. but i think that when the light is bouncing that there is also a little specular.

so i htink even for a outdoor render it is nice to have some little specular in the shadow area.

With only a few exceptions everything produces specular reflections. But the shadow from the sun has no specular effect from the sun. So if you're suggesting that you should let some of the sun light leak through that's wrong. If you're going for that last bit of realism, then all surfaces should include some Fresnel effect ray-traced reflection, with the right amount of blur. This will fill the shadow with some specular reflections of the scene, not just the light sources. However, that's difficult to do with Poser.

i will show a render

those are all cheats. they are not mathematical correct. but i think it helps the render to look better.

Thank you Bagginsbill for that great tutorial :)
in comparison it was quite easy for me to see that my first crap was way overlit :D

Its so cooool jumpinghappily around ;)

the BG pic was very bad quality so i made the render more blury

now that i am looking i see that i dont have enough shadow on the ground.

I think that pic looks fine, shawow-wise. It appears to be dusk, at least it's very dark on this computer (granted I'm at work and their monitors are probably not well calibrated) but in a subdued light like that there shouldn't be much shadows, if any at all.

I think it looks great btw. You've incorporated him in the scene very very well!

I concur with TrekkieGrrrl, the shadows look fine.  An excellent render given the situation.

I am wondering what might make it better,

bevans that looks great to my dumb eyes.
sigh
i give it up.
thanks bill for the light advice. it worked extremely well... on everythig.
only on all human figures except those that used your vss it failed.
why comes that all human figures i try it on if not treated with vss BREAK?
i thought poser would apply an antigamma automatically when gamma is chosen. why do the figures loose either details, turn green or get washed out or loose highlights?
tried now for over 200 hours to get a good render without vss applied but BOOM.
 I am a little pissed over my uncapability ;)
but since vss (at least for me) seems to pick not only the active figure but ANYTHING to improve its not the real deal for me :( i hate to fix the props vss screwed after applying. i don´t get it.
so i am doing my mediocre stuff and i think i wont get any better. sigh was worth the try. seems i am too stupid.
will take the lens and will spend more hours hopefully not in vain.

If you want to just apply the VSS to your target model, bring it in alone and synchronize.  Save it as a CR2 or PZ2, then bring it into your scene.  Problem averted.  No other corrective action.