you know i accept that poser is not maya or 3ds studio max. i didnt even use maye to test it.

but i think there is a line .......and that kind of shadows dont belong in a 3d software in 2009.

Poser's big problem with using Depth Mapped is the fact that Poser uses such a tiny scale. And the most well-known case is the glowing nostrils.
Why does scale have anything to do with it, you ask? Well, since Poser is using 3D objects at an extremely tiny scale (far smaller than almost any other 3D app), the distance between objects is miniscule. It doesn't look that way in Poser - since everything in Poser is tiny together.

The tiny scale and the tiny distances mean that the space between two objects, where one is meant to throw a shadow on the other, may be too small and it become impossible to calculate a shadow.

If a figure stands on the floor, there's no problem casting a shadow on the floor, it's sufficiently far away. But if for instance a sitting character has a hand resting on his/her leg, Poser will not be able to create the shadow of each finger on the leg, just a tiny distance away, using depth mapped. As you gradually lift the hand, at a certain point suddenly Poser can calculate a shadoww.
With Ray Trace this limitation is not present.
So: for realistic shadows at very close quarters - Depth Mapped simply can't do it.
Glowing nostrils - the front end of the nose is too close to the back of the nose. Give the person a HUGE nose and your problem is solved! LOL
:] Fish

FishNose,

I thought nostril glow was because people use 256 pixels shadow maps and don't bother adjusting the shadow min bias to be smaller than the size of a human nostril diameter. (It defaults to 1 inch). And they don't know anything about managing shadow cameras.

But you say here that Depth Mapped simply can't do it. Hmmm. It must be true, then.
 
But I was sure I wrote a thread 3 years ago showing everybody how to get sharp small-scale shadows from DM shadows with a couple simple adjustments to their technique.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2577132

I guess the instructions there don't work since, as you say, Depth Mapped simply can't do it.

Also I heard that the internal scale of Poser was modified since Poser 7, that when Poser sends the data to Firefly everything is scaled up. And that the reason for doing so had nothing to do with depth-mapped shadows. It was because of ray-tracing, numerical problems. But I could be misinformed on that issue as well.

Thanks for all the sarcasm. Just what I need, isn't it. I wrote what I've been told before. assuming it to be correct. A mistake, wasn't it.
I won't waste your time again, now will I.
:] Fish

Sorry FishNose. I should have put smilies. I was attempting good-natured ribbing. ;-)

Your post was perfectly phrased to get my sarcasm circuit fired up. Posting Poser issues you've heard about as unassailable certainties, without testing them or asking for any other opinions on how they can be dealt with is sure to get a little crap from me.

If you concur with a problem, it would be better in the future to phrase it like this:

I've heard that you can't get fingers to cast a DM shadow on a leg unless you raise the fingers. Is there a setting to deal with this?

And I would have said: Sure - decrease your shadow min bias.

Also, if I had said "You are misinformed" instead of "I could be misinformed", I don't think things would have gone any better. But that is what I meant.

its true that in poser everything is smaller .if you load an object or a figure into blender its very very verry small.
for Zbrush they needed to make a script to scale it up. because you coudlnt use it inside.

Quote - its true that in poser everything is smaller .if you load an object or a figure into blender its very very verry small.
for Zbrush they needed to make a script to scale it up. because you coudlnt use it inside.

We've discussed that before, though. The OBJ file format does not specify units and you can't embed them in any way to make it self-describing so it can be transported from one application to another.  Suppose you find a value in the file, for example 7.28. What does that mean? 7.28 feet, meters, millimeters, inches, miles, furlongs? There's no way to know.

Each application has to either just pick a unit, or has to ask you to specify how big you want the imported object to be. Poser did the latter, although the mechanism (percent of standard figure height) was a pretty stupid choice. If you do not enable import scaling, then the assumption is 1 OBJ unit = 1 Poser Native Unit = about 100 inches. Some applications standardized the OBJ unit = 1 meter, about 39 inches. I hardly think that the difference between 100 and 39 (a factor of about 2.5) is particularly scary to deal with.

Moreover, these unit choices don't affect anything in the render.

please dont tell me to go to 2048 because thats crazy he he :). there should be a shadow around the neck.

shouldnt there be a shadow with a map size 256 only blured ?

2048 is crazy? It depends. What is your shadow map trying to include?

When people build a whole city and try to render a few feet around a figure in the middle of the city, even 2048 is not enough. At that resolution, the entire figure is recorded in only a few pixels of the shadow map.

To determine what a 256 pixel wide shadow map can see, you have to render through the shadow cam at 256 pixels. I don't have time to try it, but you could. Select your shadow camera as the render camera and set your render dimension to 256 by 256. What do you get. Zoom in and see how some pixels have to share info both from the head and from the neck. In such cases, where is the occlusion point for that shadow map pixel - the head or the neck? It can't be both. You only get one depth value per pixel.

bagginsbill did i writte that i have something around my figure ? 

i have only a figure. i even turned down my ground . so only the figure. so yes 2048 would be crazy to make a shadow around the neck. i even used a spot light.

i am doing tests now with calibrating the shadow cam but i get the same results.

but you see around the neck? how the shadow is missing? i get this with james and apollo .

i dont understand why this is happening since the shadow cam is not seeing that part of the neck.

could it be because the polygon count is to high for the shadows?

Fascinating. Thanks for the renders, Dan. Your Apollo has the same "necklace" that ice-boy showed us. Looks like P7 and PPro are very similar, so it's probably not a unique problem to Poser Pro.

ice-boy - This looks like a bug. The necklace is impossible to be from shadow map resolution - it is well within the area that is in deep shadow - it's not marginal at all.

I do think that GC reveals the problem much more strongly, but I suspect it has been there all along.

My "Riddick" render has lighting similar to this, although there was IBL involved as well, and no GC. Have a look:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1470441

Back then (June 2007) I think I was only using DM shadows at the time. My Riddick shows some "necklace" lighting effect. He has bulging neck muscles, though, so we'd expect some variation in diffuse reflection there. But perhaps not that much? I'm willing to believe that was showing the problem - it may be that if I'd only used the spotlight in that render, I would have noticed a big issue.

Quote - but you see around the neck? how the shadow is missing? i get this with james and apollo .

i dont understand why this is happening since the shadow cam is not seeing that part of the neck.

could it be because the polygon count is to high for the shadows?

Poly count seems unlikely as other more detailed areas don't display this issue.
The angle you position the light at appears to make a difference.
I thought at first there might be some relation to body-part groups and while on the Apollo renders it seems the issue occurs directly at the neck/chest seam, when I imported a welded Apollo model it rendered identically (when using DM shadows).

I have no idea really. I mostly use RT shadows which are working fine in P7 (SR3) from what I can see.

 carodan i also use a lot of RT shadows. some people like to use DB shadows for animation. they are fast. and they are practical for fill and bounce lighting.i am not very smart when it comes to software but i am now searching on google some papers if there is something. i dont know maybe.

DM shadows  in poser are generated like in maya,blender and,..... it has a shadow cam.

very interesting.

Yeah, DM shadows are good to have in the arsenal. I suspect bb is right on the bug call - I've tinkered all afternoon on this and just can't shift that "necklace" effect.

bb - curious about the fact that you had the same issue with RT shadows in Poser Pro. Is that for real?

Quote - Yeah, DM shadows are good to have in the arsenal. I suspect bb is right on the bug call - I've tinkered all afternoon on this and just can't shift that "necklace" effect.

bb - curious about the fact that you had the same issue with RT shadows in Poser Pro. Is that for real?

I don't get a necklace - light leaking into deep shadow - in that RT render I posted. However, we see some strangeness on the hip/thigh area. I'm not sure that effect is fully qualified as a "bug". I think that case has more to do with numerical accuracy with regard to the angle of incidence.

For diffuse reflection the AOI is the only driver, and reflected luminance is entirely based on the cosine of the AOI. The slope of the cosine function near 90 degrees AOI is at its maximum there. The result is the luminance changes most rapidly exactly at  the terminator.

Now it just so happens that there is a disagreement about luminance between GC(2.2) and sRGB. The slope of luminance changes are different at the very low end. Thusly, you would get a more pronounced rapid rise in near-terminator luminance from GC than is realistic. There has been some discussion of this phenomenon, and frankly I'm convinced that GC(2.2) is naive and should not actually be used if you're dealing with these marginal luminance situations. Coupled with the rapid increase of diffuse reflection near the terminator, we get a rather obvious departure from realism.

To fix it, we'd have to switch to using sRGB conversion instead of GC(2.2). GC is strictly a power function, whereas sRGB is part linear, part power, and has to be fitted together with quite a few more nodes. It's worth it when you get into these large, barely lit areas. Poser PRO should have implemented sRGB as an option, instead of just GC. With shader-based conversion, sRGB is possible, but way to esoteric for most people. Heck, there are still thousands of users who insist I'm full of crap on this topic and they don't need to use GC.

It's very similar to a long-running debate at dpreview.com about the impact on image quality associated with the use of filters. The Pros insist that even a $300 filter is off limits as it compromises image quality. The hobbyists claim they can't tell the difference. The debate is endless.

i dont think this is happening because of GC

On the subject of gamma correction, one thing I've noticed (particularly in these bright but single light renders that arn't using IBL) is that the material based GC creates sharp lines where the lit areas of body-parts end and unlit areas begin - in other words, the transition of light into shadow is rather harsh. Is this also related to the GC method, or something else?

but even without GC it looks the same.

First of two comparisons - VSS PR3 with gamma 2.2. In the top image I've circled an area which typically looks overly harsh to my eyes. The lower of the two images is a version of the same render in which I've softened the transitional areas and overlayed them over the original.

It's a minor thing in many respects, and one which really only bugs me in these more contrasted lighting setups. In lighter conditions with full IBL the skin works beautifully.

I have no idea how this could be fixed in the shaders (or even if it warrants the change).

I don't know. Maybe it's just a personal preference.
To me it seems that the material based GC is creating a harsher transition between light and shadow across the model surface.

i think lighting like this never happens in real life. to light an object 100% without any global illumination. thats why it looks strange.

have you tryed with the inverse square shaders?

Dan - the transition at the terminator is what I was talking about. It doesn't fade realistically because the GC function is not actually what your monitor is doing. The monitor is following a more complex response curve, called sRGB. .Anything near black is very different between GC and sRGB.

I had a very interesting discussion about this with cobaltdream, who is driven nuts by this phenomenon.

It happened in the artistic lens thread. You want to jump into it here on page 5:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2754029&page=5#message_3404764

Read through to page 6 where Stefan says I'm a maniac and then I ask him if sRGB will be in Poser 8.

I'm at work right now but when I get home I'll try an experiment.

I have a Nikon D90 SLR and an SB-600 speed flash. The flash unit can be detached from the camera and set up on a stand anywhere I want. I can program the camera's built-in flash in commander mode to fire the detached flash only. I'll try some photographs in a pitch dark room (have to wait for the sun to go down completely) with that setup. I could try in a bathroom but the bounce light from nearby surfaces would spoil the exxperiment. I should be able to get a pretty good approximation to a point light in a larger room where there are no surfaces near the flash or the subject.

As to the subject, I wish I had a simple white ball but I don't. I'll try to find something similar. Maybe I have a can of something that I can use as a cylinder prop and wrap a piece of white paper around it. Then we can compare the light response to a Poser cylinder and see what the terminator looks like.

Quote - Dan - the transition at the terminator is what I was talking about. It doesn't fade realistically because the GC function is not actually what your monitor is doing. The monitor is following a more complex response curve, called sRGB. .Anything near black is very different between GC and sRGB.

Thanks bb - phew! I'm just not up on all the terminology. Yes, the transition at the terminator is what I'm having difficulty with.
I was remembering some flash-lit photos of friends in the countryside at night I took years ago - no moon or light pollution of any kind. The forms were crisp but the transitions in places were wonderfully soft. Wish I could find them. I'll read up on this.

Quote - i think lighting like this never happens in real life. to light an object 100% without any global illumination. thats why it looks strange.

have you tryed with the inverse square shaders?

I wouldn't say lighting like this never happens in real life - rarely, yes. And some bounce light is usually involved I agree.

Thanks for the suggestion about the inverse-square falloff lights btw - I was scoffed at a couple of years ago at another forum site for asking about whether this was possible with Poser lights - "not necessary" they said. Guess I was just ahead of the game.

To the right I set up my flash. Took a shot. Cropped it. Here it is.

I loaded a Poser cylinder. I set up a point light at the same orientation as best as I can guess. This matters - moving the light even two inches changes the terminator a little, but drastically changes where the specular reflections are.

Since paper is not perfectly matte, there are specular reflections here.

I set up a material for my virtual paper cylinder as best as I can do.

I lined up the photo and the Poser cylinder and rendered in Poser Pro with GC on.

Here's what I get.

Not exactly the same - the terminator is just a tad softer in the photo. However, it is so subtle, I can't decide if it is because the paper is a little bit translucent or this is the low-light GC issue we're talking about. If the issue is translucence, then I can't really do anything about that in Poser. Not today's Poser. I need SSS.

What do you think?

I wonder if some of the difference is because I didn't use an inverse-square falloff light. I didn't feel like spending the time to set one up.

Notice how the point closest to the light is a litte brighter in the photo than my rendered cylinder. I estimate the light was about 50 inches from the cylinder. Given the radius of the can is about 2.5 inches, that would put the terminator at 52.5 inches versus 50 inches for the right edge. The inverse square rule applied would result in about 10% more light at the closest point versus the terminator. That would certainly be noticed.

I got a better match overall. But now my simulated terminator ends early. This is not the result of GC versus sRGB. If that was the problem it would be brighter than real life. Instead it is slightly darker, while everything else matches. Looks like subsurface scattering is at work here.

The other thing we have to consider here is that my wrapping paper around a can of tomato sauce does not give me a perfect cylinder. :)

Also, the paper doesn't wrap all the way around the can. So the back edges stick out a bit. Which means I had to guess how big to size my cylinder to match the photo, since I can't precisely see the back edge of the can in the photo. I could be off by half an inch, which would move the terminator a little bit.

I'm assuming since our skin is presumably even more translucent than your paper that the transition might be even softer?
Interesting experiment.
I found a temporary workaround to the skin terminator issue that I can live with for now (you don't want to know what I did). I posted the pics in the VSS thread.
www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

Need sleep now.

i am 100% sure that this was translucent. 

the shadow map was 1024 and bias was 0,1.  and it was a spotlight.

Poser light seems to originate from a point no matter what your light or shadowcam settings are. RayTraced or Shadowmapped. This causes big problems if you are trying to match say a cameraflash or even a lightbulb whose point of origins are much wider.

What I mean is, your object will always be struck from a narrow angle like a cone and will always cast a shadow where there should'nt be one.

Maybe a 2 or more light tandem is really needed to straighten the line.

Quote - new mistakes i think i found. there should be no shadows on around the cube right? 

look at real life. those shadows do occur.. it's one of the visual cues we use to discern objects.

Quote - Poser light seems to originate from a point no matter what your light or shadowcam settings are. RayTraced or Shadowmapped. This causes big problems if you are trying to match say a cameraflash or even a lightbulb whose point of origins are much wider.

What I mean is, your object will always be struck from a narrow angle like a cone and will always cast a shadow where there should'nt be one.

Maybe a 2 or more light tandem is really needed to straighten the line.

i think this is not corret.

even if it is from a point there still should not be any shadow in my example.plus i think in other 3d software its also from a point. only area lights are not from a point.

Shadowcam Zeroed -90Xrot