You had everything correct until you spoke of the lens.

My GC shaders ALSO perform the final gamma correction. The GC shaders do exactly what Poser Pro does - they correct GC in and out. There is no need to use the lens with GC shaders. If you do, you will double correct the final result. If you wish to use the lens with GC shaders, you must re-design the GC shader to skip the final GC out step.

For the same reason, you must not use GC shaders in Poser Pro when you have render GC turned on.

I offered the GC lens as a way to GC an entire scene, without the need to use GC shaders.

But if you are sophisticated and patient and willing to work, the GC shaders are much better than the GC lens. If for no other reason, you have more control.

The GC lens is a good solution for people who have no patience to manually change all materials, even with VSS.

Also, let's be more clear about the Poser version names. There is no "Poser 7 Pro" as you called it. It is called Poser Pro. There is Poser 7 and there is Poser Pro.

Your English is excellent. You have no need to ask for us to excuse it. :)

@bagginsbill:
Thank you for your fast answer and correcting my mistake.
I am glad that there was only the mistake about the lens :)
Reading so much threads (the big VSS one has 58 pages) about VSS,
shaders and GC i was a bit confused.
But now i am happy with the output i get from VSS and i know how the basic things
concerning VSS GC and the GC Lens belongs together.
Time to get deeper into VSS and Matmatic is also waiting for me :)

happy greetings
xuu4u

ps:  BB  you are programming VSS in python. I found a way how to run IDLE (mini gui and working debugger) Inside Poser7. Mybe this could be helpful for you .
Some days ago i wrote a quick tutorial how to do this.
Part1
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=2222
Part2
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=2223

Mr Billbaggins, is the VSS release which i see in your site free stuff  under random shaders  THE  VSS ???  Want to make sure I am downlaoding the right thing

Thanks

VSS, the software, and the original shaders and lights as well as Preview Release 2 control prop containing new shaders are on the VSS Home Page:

http://poserbagginsbill.googlepages.com/vsshomepage

I have another, larger site here:

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/

The item in random shaders:

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/random-shaders

is the Preview Release 3 skin shader.

Basically the original software, lights, and control prop is PR1.

Just a new control prop is PR2

Just a new skin shader (3rd skin shader) is PR3

So install PR1, then PR2, then make a new improved control prop yourself with the PR3 shader.

Or mix and match. There is no reason you should like and use only one.

Brilliant, thanks  Bagginsbill -
there are so many  shading threads here and there,  and then they get referenced within eachother  and it's possible to lose your bearings  over what is going on  and what is the newest info you are reading !

RENDO should create a forum in the topics section called  "SHADING IN POSER"

by GC shader, you're talking about VSS, right?

Quote - by GC shader, you're talking about VSS, right?

VSS shaders are GC (optional) shaders. But I wasn't talking specifically about them.

I have posted many other GC shaders, that are not part of VSS. Mostly showing people how to do GC.

You can turn the GC off with a single parameter in my VSS shaders. VSS has GC shaders for skin, sclera, iris, gums, and teeth.

But I have made other GC shaders of metals, water, glass, plastic, paint, stone, wood, tile, brick, stucco, cloth, paper, mud, blood, hair, nailpolish, glitter, ... more.

I am holding them back - not released yet - because of ... BZZZT ... [ can't talk about it ].

Quote - Brilliant, thanks  Bagginsbill -
there are so many  shading threads here and there,  and then they get referenced within eachother  and it's possible to lose your bearings  over what is going on  and what is the newest info you are reading !

RENDO should create a forum in the topics section called  "SHADING IN POSER"

There used to be a lot more traffic at RuntimeDNA in the Poser forum. I used to write just as much there as I do here.

A bunch of people made the same observation. Very confusing to try to follow me around from thread to thread. So RDNA made a new forum just for me.

That forum is the Node Cult. It is strictly for shaders. Not discussion of modeling, or how to use certain products. Just shaders.

Hardly anybody goes there (RDNA forums) anymore, so I hang out here at Rendo a lot more. I think it's partly because the search engine sucks over there, so nobody can find anything. 

If you want to learn tons more about shaders, read every single thread at the Node Cult. Then post your questions there so others can learn.

Or here, I don't really care. It's Acadia who has to put all the links to shader threads together.

GC is a simple concept , pretty basic node set up, but extremely Affective and  Effective...

I'm finally doing it as a result of Bagginsbill's guidance in this thread and the difference is staggering. I don't render like a shmuck anymore.

Quote - I am holding them back - not released yet - because of ... BZZZT ... [ can't talk about it ].

Poser 8?

My apologies if I missed the answer to this, but so much of the shader node talk just goes zoom over my poor little head.

I have a favourite skin that I love to work with (RMTH Bianca Combo), but every time I turn on GC in Poser Pro, she renders grey.  The eyes and lips are fine, but her skin is a sickly grey.  Is there something I need to turn off or on in order to fix it?  I've tried running the python script to change everything from 2.2 to 1, but that does nothing to solve it.  And I'm not sure where to even start playing in the materials room.

Is this a common problem with a simple fix?  Or is there a patient explanation somewhere of what to do to fix it?  Thank you!! :)

Quote - > Quote - by GC shader, you're talking about VSS, right?

But I have made other GC shaders of metals, water, glass, plastic, paint, stone, wood, tile, brick, stucco, cloth, paper, mud, blood, hair, nailpolish, glitter, ... more.

I am holding them back - not released yet - because of ... BZZZT ... [ can't talk about it ].

ohhh come on man. give us a teaser :) a teeeeaser 

Oh boy, I'm not surprised there is a problem. That is such a fair skin and it has a shader on it.

So one of the problems with Poser Pro GC is that all the node parameters that are colors are interpreted differently.

When you enable render GC in Pro, it assumes every color that was chosen for a parameter was based on how it looked to the person choosing the color. However, there are situations where color parameters are used as data, not a color.

For example, if there's a place where a 30% gray value is used to control the influence of some other data, Poser Pro thinks you wanted something that LOOKS like 30% gray on your screen and it anti-gamma corrects that to a 7% gray. This will cause all sorts of problems.

I cannot help with the specifics unless I looked at the shader. RM uses some pretty tricky shaders lately.

I'd say show me the shader, but that might be a TOS violation, to publish a shader from a commercial product. There are some people who think that shaders aren't copyrightable. I think that's wrong. If I give you a shader with 400 nodes in it (and I've done such) I'd say that's just as copyrightable as a 400-line Python script.

Anyway, why not contact the vendor(s) and see if they can either help, or give you permission to show me the shader, so I can help.

I'm sure that if I saw the shader, I could fix it.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - by GC shader, you're talking about VSS, right?

But I have made other GC shaders of metals, water, glass, plastic, paint, stone, wood, tile, brick, stucco, cloth, paper, mud, blood, hair, nailpolish, glitter, ... more.

I am holding them back - not released yet - because of ... BZZZT ... [ can't talk about it ].

ohhh come on man. give us a teaser :) a teeeeaser 

That was a teaser. :) What is it you want, renders? Or samples?

renders are fine

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - > Quote - by GC shader, you're talking about VSS, right?

But I have made other GC shaders of metals, water, glass, plastic, paint, stone, wood, tile, brick, stucco, cloth, paper, mud, blood, hair, nailpolish, glitter, ... more.

I am holding them back - not released yet - because of ... BZZZT ... [ can't talk about it ].

ohhh come on man. give us a teaser :) a teeeeaser 

That was a teaser. :) What is it you want, renders? Or samples?

he he he i know that this was teasing. 
you dont need to show renders.

cloth and hair is interesing. have you find a way to make more realistic hair specular? 

Quote - have you find a way to make more realistic hair specular? 

No - I did some work on that, but it doesn't come out right. The Poser Anisotropic specular node is not adequate, but it is close. To do it right, I need a new node kind of shader node. If there was some way to add new kinds of nodes to Poser, that would make it possible. Hmmm, what a concept.

In other hair, I'm working on procedural eyelashes, eyebrows, stuff like that. You may have seen it on the Antonia figure. Procedural hairs can be adjusted using numbers, and applied to any figure. Very handy.

Also, I have many layer effects for skin shaders. One of them is body hair - takes a transmap, but I'm working on procedural for that too.

Both have color parameters to let you create an infinite number of variations. The granite pattern is procedural.

In addition to GC, the granite features Fresnel reflection falloff.

Click for full size.

since for poser we a lot of times use modeled hair with transmaps it would make sense if they would make a ''fake'' specular for hair.

for example i modeled a hair prop for apollo.its impossible to get now the specular right.
like i said since 80% renders have transmapped hair it would make sense if they would make a special hair node.

for skin i would ask you something. how many layers of specular do you think is good? i am now testing some shaders of you with my changes. i read on a CG forum that skin should have at least 2 specualr layers. one on the whole body and the second for glossy effect on specific parts.

Two layers is one way to do it.

But what I found is that a single Blinn does it all. You just have to modulate 3 parameters simultaneously.

Specular effects are always reflections of the light source at the boundary between air and skin, or liquid on top of the skin (oil or water). Most areas of skin are dry and rough (microscopically) so the reflection smears out and gets dimmer. But some areas, such as the nose, are more wet, and thus are smooth. When I say smooth, I mean microscopically, like 100 times smaller than a single pore. The pore itself is still a factor, and so are the small bumps on the skin. These are effects that can be seen explicitly with the naked eye, and should be included in the bump map. The micro stuff should be handled in the shader.

So I have a single number I call "shine". This number drives all three inputs to Blinn. Then I make a shine map. With a good bump, and the correct variations in shine across the shine map, it looks good.

When shine is high, eccentricity drops and reflectivity goes up, and rolloff drops a bit.

Some version of that is in the VSS PR3 skin shader, although that version is not perfect.

i think the only thing that is off is the specular . but that is nto your fault. wwe dont have HDR specular. this is what we need for reflection.

Are you talking about the reflection of the scene in the table? Or specular reflections of my lights? I only have two very weak spotlights here. Most of the light is IBL. Specular effects are HDR in Poser, but not connected to the IBL. That's a problem. But usually I handle that by setting up my environment sphere to match and using HDR on that. Only problem is for strongly blurred reflections. I don't have a good solution for that. That's why I'm doing polished granite and metals. Easy.

The reflections are of the environment sphere, and that has an LDR panorama on it in this render, so yes it's weak. But if I put an HDR image it would pop. However, I don't have any good HDR from a home interior. So I used LDR here.

Here's another granite.

Here is another newbee question:
how to gauging the gamma value of any poser stuff. e.g. texturemap ?
can i measure it with gimp ?
if the gamma is 2.2  just use VSS
what to do if the gamma is less , or i have a texturemap with alread linear coloar space ???
(normaly not on pc i guess :))

expecting answers

greetings
xuu4u

I suppose it is possible somebody has a JPEG in linear format, but I doubt it. Officially, all JPEG and PNG files are in sRGB color space, with a gamma of 2.2.

So you don't need to judge a texture map to see if it needs GC. It does.

You can't "measure" it because you have to know what it should be in order to tell how it was encoded. If there is a pixel of value .5 in an image, should it be .5 or .5 ^ 2.2? According to the spec, the luminance of a .5 pixel in a JPEG file is .5 ^ 2.2, not .5.

If it is a photo, and it looks normal, then it is surely sRGB. Any photo texture, such as a rock or brick, is in sRGB color space and the numbers do not directly represent luminance, so should be un-gamma corrected on the way into the shader.

If you do have something where the gamma is less, you can change the shader to deal with it. Basically the processing of an image coming into the shader is to simply apply the right exponent to it. In all my VSS shaders, this exponent is in a math node and is 2.2.

If you want the incoming gamma to be different - for example, 1.5, then you must separate that node because it is also used for outgoing final gamma correction. Where that is done is in a divide node where I connect to the same 2.2.

If you disconnect it there, then put the 2.2 in the divide node Value_2, then you have separate gamma in and gamma out. Then you can use 1.5 on the gamma in, and 2.2 on the gamma out.

Quote - Wait - you said specular, then reflection. These are two different effects.

Are you talking about the reflection of the scene in the table? Or specular reflections of my lights? I only have two very weak spotlights here. Most of the light is IBL. Specular effects are HDR in Poser, but not connected to the IBL. That's a problem. But usually I handle that by setting up my environment sphere to match and using HDR on that. Only problem is for strongly blurred reflections. I don't have a good solution for that. That's why I'm doing polished granite and metals. Easy.

The reflections are of the environment sphere, and that has an LDR panorama on it in this render, so yes it's weak. But if I put an HDR image it would pop. However, I don't have any good HDR from a home interior. So I used LDR here.

Here's another granite.

i mean HDRI reflections. you know when you have plastic or car paint. the brightest parts are brighter in the reflection. for example windows,....... 

OK. So in case somebody else is reading this, they might be confused.

We do have HDRI reflection capability in Poser. I just didn't use an HDR on my e-sphere here because I didn't have one.

poser pro supports this???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

bagginsbill poser pro supports NOW specular reflection?

Poser 7 supports it. And you just changed back to saying "specular" reflection. Say scene reflection.

Specular effects (Blinn, Anisotropic, etc.) are simplified models of reflection (in Poser) and only consult your directional lights.

Poser's ray-traced reflection (Reflect node) does not consult your lights, but rather what is in your scene. That is what you just demonstrated and what I was demonstrating.

In other CG apps, the "specular" effects include BOTH the influence of your light sources and your scene. And they also include the influence of your Image Based Lighting. Poser does not include this in anything except the Diffuse effect.

But by using my environment sphere, you can include the IBL image data as reflection data, for use in specular reflection. That is the point of my environment sphere. And I said all along that you can put an HDRI on the e-sphere. That's why the e-sphere shaders have a gamma-in parameter. If you've attached an LDRI, you use 2.2 for gamma-in. If you've attached an HDRI, you use 1.0 for gamma-in.

You can do this in either Pro or 7. All you need is e-sphere.

aha

you also said that you have some new GC cloth shaders. what kind of specular do you use? i never know what settings to use there.
can you show a render?

thanks.

at last, some good news on poser 8.  from one of the msgs on page 2 of this thread, we may deduce that:

• they are proceeding apace with poser 8 alpha
• SM didn't sell poser to another software company
• poser 8 beta is just around the corner

People throw these "alpha" and "beta" terms around pretty freely. Let me make sure you know what they mean, because nobody said anything that would let you conclude they are in alpha. 

Alpha is when all software features are frozen - no new features under development, just testing.What gave you the idea that's where they are?

Some companies make alpha internal testing only. Others let customers have it for alpha.

In any case, beta is when you think it's really done and now you're working out the problems in rolling out and supporting the product. Customers should generally not be finding major things wrong in Beta, except with manuals and installation procedures, etc.

bill, thx fr the clarification on the alpha and beta. what do they call the version prior to the alpha -
e.g. the phase in which they were still entertaining suggestions in regard to replacing or
improving FFRender with various GUIs and new features?

anyway, it appears congratulations are in order in regard to the inclusion of your GC shader items
in a soon-to-be-released product, possibly even poser 8 itself.

What? I never said any such thing.

All I said was BZZZT.

And by that I meant that I am in some planning/discussion to finally produce something commercially, and I did not want to disturb that process by saying anything I should not say.

But then why did I say anything? Because I'm constantly bombarded with questions like "Why don't you sell your stuff?" "Where can I buy your stuff"

Please don't spread any rumor like that. It will cause trouble, whether it is true or false.

And please don't congratulate me - my track record is I never finish ANYTHING related to Poser. Ever. What have I ever finished?

Quote - bill, thx fr the clarification on the alpha and beta. what do they call the version prior to the alpha -
e.g. the phase in which they were still entertaining suggestions in regard to replacing or
improving FFRender with various GUIs and new features?

That doesn't have such a standardized name, but it is most commonly called "requirements gathering" or "needs assessment" and it happens all the time, even if there is a current project going out the door.

Usually at the official beginning of a "next release" project, lots of people get in a room and argue for days about what features and functions are going to be in or out of this release. Depending on which PDP you follow (Product Development Process) you may call this Define, Definition, Project Definition, etc.

The Product Development team usually follows something like this (cleverly alliterative) sequence:

Define -> Design -> Develop -> Deploy

Where is Test in all that? There's no synonym for Test that begins with D. This is why most product development teams do very littlte testing. :)

But seriously, because Software "Developers" do the Develop step, they believe that testing is part of Deploy and has nothing to do with them. That's why a lot of software sucks ass.

Some will tell you that test is part of Deploy, but that's really Beta Testing. Alpha Test (and sometimes there is an official pre-Alpha testing phase) go before that. So the true sequence is:

Gather Requirements -> Define -> Design -> Develop -> Test -> Deploy

In my organization, Developers have to constantly develop tests along with there code, or I kick their asses. Unit tests, regressions tests, performance tests, smoke tests. All these, along wiht the program itself, go to QA as deliverables, i.e. the tangible outcome of the Develop phase.

interesting read.

you are a beta user for poser right? 

BB was beta tester for Poser Pro. But that does not mean he knows something about Poser 8. 

These are not the droids you're looking for. You can go about your business... Move along.

well they should listen to him. after all he is one of the main reason people here like poser so much. without him poser renders would be more fake.

I'm a convert to gamma correction. Totally. Did the material CG thing on a scene - took me upward of three hours, but it's done. I went from this (rendered using 4 lights, all except IBL at 100% or above):

to this... two lights, Infinite at 60% and IBL at 12%:

Now, I'm going over all my favourite scenes (pz3s) and applying GC to the materials. Good job I have Matmatic and VSS - this would be a nightmare to continue doing it all manually.

I only found out about GC not long ago, but boy-howdy, I'm a devout convert. Got a blog that discusses it:
tightbytes.com/wordpress/
Not going to pretend I got it all right - feel free to leave comments and corrections - but so far it's been such a dramatic improvement... it's like someone got me a new version of Poser.

Thanks SO much, BagginsBill!

That second image, I would say, is about mid day.  The Infinity lighting is a bit harsh and the shadows intense.  It is actually perfect for the lighting application you are using along with the GC.  Good Job!

BTW, I just very quickly checked out your blog and I am impressed.  Unfortunately, I will carefully digest it at another opportunity when I have more time.  However, I noticed that your background objects are lacking any displacement to elevate the fine detail.  At least, that is what I discerned from your shader node images.  It may bring a little more life into the scene.  Also, which version of Poser are you using?  As you are aware, PoserPro has introduced GC within it's application.  And I am wondering if material based GC may cause additional problems with corrected renders on sRGB monitors.

I noticed the flat look as well, Hborre. I tried plugging into the displacement channel with the same values, but it didn't improve matters any - need to create an actual displacement map: the creators of this scene were using the colourMap (ImageMap jpg) instead of a dedicated greyscale displacement map. BTW, I did plug the colourMap directly into the bump (and tried displacement) channel as it had been before GC:

Render settings included min displacement (.008) and raytracing on.
Lights: two...

Main Infinite Light… map size (1024) rgb (1,1,1) intensity (60%) ray-traced, shadow blur radius (6.0) min bias (0.2) …nil AO

IB Light……………  map size (256) rgb (1,1,1) intensity (12%) nil shadows, nil AO
 

I can understand that frustration.  Recently, I loaded an old model into Poser and discovered that the image_maps were not Gamma Corrected also with no displacement.  A dungeon scene with stone walls.  I Gc'ed the maps in Photoshop, and once I brought them into Pose, created grayscale displacement maps by plugging the Image_maps into a hsv node.  The saturation value was turned down to 0.  This node was plugged into the displacement channel.  Upon rendering, I had to remind myself to turn on displacement in the render settings.

Thank you for that, hborre. I'm curious as to what technique you used to gamma-correct in Photoshop. I use the GIMP - can't afford Photoshop, since I'm poorer than dirt buying all this content off here! - so I'll try to follow your instructions to achieve a displacement map. I'm assuming the d-maps were greyscale, right? Or does that matter? My understanding is that the bump and displacement channels don't use the colour information of the image, so greyscale saves memory overhead and gives those channels only what they need...

Here is an article I stumbled across several weeks ago concerning tone and gamma correction.  It details how to set Gc in Photoshop and GIMP.  This is food for thought but very well written and very thorough.

http://www.ypoart.com/tutorials/tone/index.php

WOW, excellent article, hborre! Thanks heaps... printing this one out to read in bed. It's exactly what I was looking for... thanks again!

Robyn, have you tried to add the color map image to a math function node and setting that node to substract  before plugging the math node into the root node's displacement and/or bump node?
It makes a gray scale copy of the image map.