2007 iMac. 24" Aluminum version. I just do as the PDF explains, Load figure, load mat, load prop, sync, render.

I'm really not clear on whether GC is built in.

I used several lights from the VSS pack. Give me a while and I can put a render up (holyrendertimes batman)

Sounds like a combination of Gamma Correction being doubled up, as well as lights being too bright (AFAIK, the original VSS lights have not been updated, and they were intended to complement the first version of the shader, which on its own had considerably darker results).

Ok I will try to render without the gamma on at all. I've never had to GC anything before as it all seemed pretty well lit and balanced, so perhaps I do have the guilt in GC stuff. 

lower the lights and turn off GC in the render settings

vexiphne, you're on Poser 7, not Poser Pro... correct?

It's not a Mac problem, I can tell you that. My renders with the PR3 shader are fine.

It's most likely just your lights, as B3D said. When you post the render, it would help if you also posted what light setup you are using... type and intensity.

But vex said "something different between PC rendering and Mac rendering" implying this was a direct comparison, everything the same, between a PC and a Mac.

Is that not the case? These questions about render settings and stuff - are they moot or not?

 I am trying to render without the GC now. but damn work popping up every time I get a minute to breathe!

Let's determine the Poser version first.  When I originally read the post , the first thing that popped into my mind was monitor issues.

 Poser 7 SR3 on both.

iMac 24" built in monitor
Dell 24" Ultrasharp on the PC.

Trying to edit GC on the Template skin now instead of the dial. 

Neither look like the nice thumbnail in the Discussion PDF linked on the VSS homepage though.

This is a Poser 7 render.  Gc should be set to the default setting of 2.2 rather than 1 because Poser 7 does not correct for gamma after render.  The second render looks 'right', but there is just a tad too much lighting for the scene.  I find it much more pleasing and realistic than the first render.

I know it doesn't quite work this way due to the different types of lights (Infinite, Point, etc), but I've found that with corrected gamma, if the total light intensities add up to over 100%, the resulting render will be washed out. The exception to this rule is IBL lighting, in which case the image used will affect the actual brightness of the light.

However, it was covered in bagginsbill's gamma correction thread that the style of lighting most artists use in Poser is way too bright, and they're only using such bright lights because the gamma in Poser is way too low by default. So instead of using proper lighting and correcting the gamma (because Poser 1-7 doesn't provide that option in the Render settings), they simply increase the light intensity, which doesn't produce realistic results. Try using more realistic lighting in combination with corrected gamma. You will be very impressed by the result. Though the second image you posted is a bit too bright, the shading is much more realistic than in the first image.

BTW, if you are using an older model MAC monitor, the Gc is not 2.2.  It is actually set to 1.8.  Under such conditions, your Gc setting for Poser 7 VSSProp should be 1.8 to match the monitor settings.

A 25% plain white IBL is a problem.

Decrease that to 10% and render again.

I take it that your original issue "PC versus Mac" was not the issue. Meaning, you get the same render results on both? It sounded like you were saying you were getting different results, which is not at all the same thing as saying they look different on the two systems.

If you view your PC render on your Mac, does it look the same as it looks on the PC, and/or does it look the same as the image rendered on the Mac?

Quote - BTW, if you are using an older model MAC monitor, the Gc is not 2.2.  It is actually set to 1.8.  Under such conditions, your Gc setting for Poser 7 VSSProp should be 1.8 to match the monitor settings.

Worse than that. The incoming anti-GC should still be 2.2, while outgoing GC should be 1.8. I didn't allow for this situation in the VSS skin shader. I was really setting it up for on or off, to let you handle the GC in the Poser Pro render GC.

Plus, a render like that would only look right on the Mac. No use publishing that to the world of PC viewers.

Well I'm lost lol.

this is the lightset i'm using now, and supposedly the promos used VSS.

Here's what I'm getting with default settings:

I'm not getting good results at all :/

Does changing the dial settings actuall adjust the settings inside the Template SKin? I'm not sure if it is for me. bout mac/pc: yes I think it was just monitor difference between mac and PC showing the tone differences.

Are you re-synchronizing after you change the gamma correction value in the VSS prop - Template Skin material?

Also, it looks to me like your lights just need to be turned down a bit. Everything looks fine otherwise.

Dial settings? Uhoh. Bantha assembled the control prop with the PR3 template skin because I was too lazy to do it. I didn't look at it - just uploaded.

Apparently, he was using my Parmatic tool with it. Parmatic is a utility that adds parameter dials to a prop or figure, based on key nodes found in the shaders. It is used to allow you to spin a single dial and alter all the copies of that node in all the material zones of a figure or multi-zone prop.

There isn't much point to using these parameter dials on the VSS prop itself, since all the parameters are already centralized for all skin zones. But in any case, it would work, IF YOU INSTALLED AND USED PARMATIC!

You don't need to, though and I suggest you don't until and if you know why you want to do that.

So don't use the dials - they're doing nothing. To make parametric changes to the skin shader, open the Template Skin in the mat room and change the values in the PM: nodes on the left side.

Based on what you described (with a few guesses on my part) I set up

25% white IBL
55% white main light (front, slightly above and right)
25% white fill light (front, level, from right)
25% white fill light (front, level, from left)
25% white back light (level, from left and behind)

Overall light intensity with such a setup will run from about 50% in shadows, to 125%. That's a lot of light, and very even. It will produce an over-exposed look with little contrast.

Here's my render with that setup.

I turned off the remaining fill light, and increased my main light to 85%.

So now I have:

10% white ibl
85% white main light
25% pink back light

Also, just because somebody uses VSS doesn't mean they kept everything at the default values. For any given skin color map, with all the variations in burned-in speculars and sss, it is almost always necessary to make adjustments. There are lots of values in the skin shader parameter nodes (left side) to make it tuned for a particular color map, specular map, etc.

In particular, pay attention to the Tint color. The default white is not always what you want. The Tint value is there to help you neutralize, and perhaps darken, the color map.

Many color maps have been overly brightened, again to compensate for lack of GC in the renderer. You'll get much better results if you tune the shader a bit to deal with the color map you have there.

Also, the textures in the promo image for that light set look like Blackhearted's Girl Next Door 4, and you look to be using something else. GND4 is actually rather dark skinned compared to many less realistic texture sets. Different texture sets can appear drastically different under the same lights. I imagine this has something to do with different artists using different lighting configurations for their test renders and promo images.

And I don't know if you've read this, but I can almost guarantee that any "light set" you buy was loaded with extra fill lights and extra intensity just to compensate for the unnatural way that light seems to fall off with incidence angle when rendered without GC.

Any light set you you buy or pick up from the old way of doing things is going to have this characteristic. You have to look over the setup and find those lights that are effectively helping with gamma correcting - lights that boost the shadows, lights that fill from the side, especially lights that have shadows turned off. These should usually be reduced or deleted.

 oh well shit. 

NO WONDER NOTHING WORKS LOL

I didn't know there was stuff in the marketplace that mentions me or VSS. Interesting. Using the marketplace search engine produces no matches on either my name or VSS.

So you bought those lights, did you? Heheh. I only published light setups like that a hundred times.

I should just put my stuff in the stores instead of publishing them in threads.

Or collect them all in one place for easy access. Either would be fine by me.

You should collect royalties whenever your name is mentioned in a post.

Uh... hborre
(To quote a line at the end of my all-time favorite Ray Charles song "Hit the Road, Jack")

"Whatchu trying to do to me?"

(See below :) )

Quote - You should collect royalties whenever your name is mentioned in a post.

easily by-passed just say God of Nodes. :)

A GC M4 kicks a non-GC M4 in the head. Poetic.

Notice how you'd never use this light setup, because the non-GC looks absolutely terrible.

Similarly, if you used a better (brighter and more) light setup for non-GC M4 here, then GC M4 would look terrible.

The difference is, one of these can look real, the other can never look real no matter the lights you use.

Using an IBL with a Fractal_Sum on it at 25%. Slight tweaks to the FS node. Two white spotlights at 35% each, slightly spaced apart, with ray-traced shadows, blur=20.

 lol I'm still wondering why you haven't started a store BB. Your stuff's supremely awesome, even if I am too noob at times to get whats happening!

 trying another render with some setting adjsutments now.. I think my shadows are extremely dark despite using your settings posted * 3 lights total, 1 10% IBL white / 1 main light, 1 side pink light.

this was with depth maps ( trying now with Raytrace but still same darkness.. )

not sure whats up with it.. Shadow is just 1.0 as usual on the 80% light...

 and 1 more thing, how can I set it to have shiny/glossy lips?

Using my Veira skin from the MP... Still some shadow issues =x

And this was my Lip settings, but its not really "glossy".

Using an IBL with a Fractal_Sum on it at 25%. Slight tweaks to the FS node.

Got a screenshot for that? Not really following.

Do you perhaps have AO enabled both on the VSS prop and on your IBL? VSS implements it by default, so you'll want to make sure it's not enabled on your light. Also, this might not be relevant, but how many raytracing bounces in your render settings?

Quote - Do you perhaps have AO enabled both on the VSS prop and on your IBL? VSS implements it by default, so you'll want to make sure it's not enabled on your light. Also, this might not be relevant, but how many raytracing bounces in your render settings?

1 bounce, no AO on lights.

Quote - A little amusement I just threw together.

A GC M4 kicks a non-GC M4 in the head. Poetic.

Notice how you'd never use this light setup, because the non-GC looks absolutely terrible.

Similarly, if you used a better (brighter and more) light setup for non-GC M4 here, then GC M4 would look terrible.

The difference is, one of these can look real, the other can never look real no matter the lights you use.

Using an IBL with a Fractal_Sum on it at 25%. Slight tweaks to the FS node. Two white spotlights at 35% each, slightly spaced apart, with ray-traced shadows, blur=20.

this is for the gallery. i am serious. the title should be ''GC or not GC''.  it would viausl show hat happen to the renders that are not GC. a kick in the face. 

p.s. i noticed that the M4 skin texture works very good with the VSS shader. colors look good and specular looks good.

Quote - I agree, I think you just have too much light.

Based on what you described (with a few guesses on my part) I set up

25% white IBL
55% white main light (front, slightly above and right)
25% white fill light (front, level, from right)
25% white fill light (front, level, from left)
25% white back light (level, from left and behind)

Overall light intensity with such a setup will run from about 50% in shadows, to 125%. That's a lot of light, and very even. It will produce an over-exposed look with little contrast.

Here's my render with that setup.

so you used 1 main light, 2 fill lights and one back light with shadows. were all shadows raytraced? and what was the blur.i like the soft shadows. with some tweaking those settings could be used for light coming from the window. 

Vexiphne,

I think I know why your shadows are different.

In the IBL light material, there is an IBL Contrast parameter. The default value is 3, which increases the contrast of the IBL lighting information. (Basically, it's a built-in Gain node.) You do not want this. Set it to 1. I always set it to 1.

The purpose of this parameter is to make bright areas on an IBL brighter and dark areas darker. But when you use a plain white IBL at 10%, the entire lighting pattern is dark. The IBL Contrast = 3 basically turns the entire pattern to black - effectively turning it off!

I've been waiting to get you squared away before I point out that I don't ever use a flat IBL pattern. It isn't realistic - it causes a signficant decrease in contouring of the shapes by light.

Once you get this problem squared away, we should talk about effective lighting using IBL. I want to start a new thread on that.

80% white infinite main light, blur=20
60% pink rim light, blur=20
10% white IBL, contrast = 3

It looks like yours, shadow wise.

I can't see anything at all. It's about the same as turning the light off completely.

Now we see everything.

But is this how a human looks when lit only by ambient light in a dark room? Not at all. This is completely flat, like cartoon shading. I don't use this type of ambient setup because it is wrong. You might as well just set the ambient in the shader and not use IBL at all.

Compare this to the last full size image that was using the flat IBL.

This automatically white-balances the lighting. I wrote a post on this topic a while back. It's a very useful technique.

To compensate, I adjusted the Tint. However, using a color alone, you would have to drop the red level by about 15% and the blue level about 10%. This makes the skin darker than I wanted.

So, I added another node - a User Defined node. This node lets me enter multiplication factors for each color component. Thus you are able to work with hyper-colors. In this case, the color I multiplied with is .95, 1.1, 1, thus I decreased red by 5%, increased green by 10%, and left the blue alone.

Note that the parameter values of the User Defined node used to have a bug in them. If you're using Poser 6, or Poser 7 before SR3, then the factors you want must be squared. In other words, to get 1.1, you need to enter 1.21 (1.1 * 1.1).  To get .95, you need to enter .9. ONLY do this if you are on an older version of Poser. For P7 SR3, or PPro, the User Defined node uses what you type exactly.

By boosting green instead of attenuating red and blue, I'm able to keep or perhaps even increase the overall brightness of the diffuse color. Otherwise, the color picker would limit my options to only darkening.

Another change I made from the VSS default was I made the Shine higher, to .35.

I increased Shine to 1.7 and then I boosted the heck out of Shine Level, to 4.