They are reading this. I had an amusing conversation with them about this thread on Friday.

Every word guys - every word.

i was watching a tutorial about 3ds max and i wassuprised how much people still use DM shadows.  they are still very popular.

Quote - They are reading this. I had an amusing conversation with them about this thread on Friday.

Every word guys - every word.

thanks BB.

Quote - They are reading this. I had an amusing conversation with them about this thread on Friday.

Every word guys - every word.

Reading isn't the point, it's acting and listening. We all know by now that Smith Micro takes strange actions and doesn't really listen to their customers. I've completely lost faith in them and expect Poser 8 to be everything I haven't asked for. After all that's what they showed to me in their latest move...... giving us something nobody wants and then telling us it's what we've asked for.

Quote - And I don't agree that nothing Poser adds will change that. For some, yes, but the addition of gamma correction changes things a lot, for very little effort.

There are quite a few users who now have "decent lighting" without changing their lights at all, and it is because of GC. DPHoadley is an example - his renders before GC were 25% realistic, and now they are 55% realistic. There is still more to do, and the effort to get the next 30% improvement will be 10 times as much, but that's a big improvement just from upgrading and learning to flick a switch.

That's great if you're after that, but not all of us want realistic stuff. The more Poser will be geared towards that, the less likely I will upgrade. Let's not forget there's a large portion of users who are very heavy into anime and toons and rather see things like the toon rendering and lighting site improved over realistic light and render achievements.

Besides, I do find all this talk about how much % realistic a render is or not, kind of unrealistic. Who determines the percentage anyway? who determines what's decent lighting anyway?

Quote - i was watching a tutorial about 3ds max and i wassuprised how much people still use DM shadows.  they are still very popular.

Depth mapped shadows are fast and not every app screws them up as much as Poser does :)

Quote - > Quote - i was watching a tutorial about 3ds max and i wassuprised how much people still use DM shadows.  they are still very popular.

Depth mapped shadows are fast and not every app screws them up as much as Poser does :)

yeah now that i know it its true true. 

Quote -
Reading isn't the point, it's acting and listening. We all know by now that Smith Micro takes strange actions and doesn't really listen to their customers.

It seems you didn't read the other stuff I wrote recently. I don't know what makes you think they don't listen to their customers. Are you basing this on your own desires, and assuming the majority of other customers feel the same? Not saying your are, but just asking. It isn't logical to assume what you want is what the majority wants. Or are you basing this on your empirical observation of what other posters here say? Again - there's no validity in assuming the postings in this forum represent the majority opinion Those of use who are active forum posters are a minority and a peculiar group by far. SM get a lot of input via channels you have no visibility into. You cannot ascertain what the majority of SM customers are asking for by reading these forums. You can judge by looking in the gallery. Heheh. I assure you, SM is responding quite accurately to their installed base.

Quote - I've completely lost faith in them and expect Poser 8 to be everything I haven't asked for. After all that's what they showed to me in their latest move...... giving us something nobody wants and then telling us it's what we've asked for.

That's wild speculation and hyperbole as well. Are you seriously making the claim that the features they deliver were asked for by nobody - nobody at all?

Quote - That's great if you're after that, but not all of us want realistic stuff. The more Poser will be geared towards that, the less likely I will upgrade.

Huh? We've been talking about our sadness that SM appears to be not responding to requests for more realism and more power in the renderer and shaders. Why would you complain that you're not interested in an upgrade geared toward realism? All indications are that most people don't even turn shadows on, so why would they want better shadows? SM appears to be paying attention to these shadowless Poserites. (The unwashed. Boy did I get a lot of grief for that comment. Hehehe.)

Quote - Let's not forget there's a large portion of users who are very heavy into anime and toons and rather see things like the toon rendering and lighting site improved over realistic light and render achievements.

How come you don't use their Anime Studio then, instead of Poser? They have a whole product specifically designed to do what you want. Or do you think all SM products should be merged into one?

Quote - Besides, I do find all this talk about how much % realistic a render is or not, kind of unrealistic. Who determines the percentage anyway? who determines what's decent lighting anyway?

I determine it, when I'm talking about it. Measuring realism is not objectively quantitative, but I can say with some certainty that I can grade things on a continuum, and that I have no problem saying that on a scale of 100, where 100 is perfection - no deviation from reality, that I put most Poser users around 25, I'm around 70, most people at CGSociety are closer to 90, and Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean was a 98.

Let's put those numbers another way. If we look at the body of work in the entire CG community from noob hobbyist to Disney pro, we can rank everybody left to right. I say DPH moved from the 25th percentile to better than half of the community just by turning on gamma correction and doing some decent shaders.

BB.  Have you seen "The curious case of Benjamin Button" ?

The main character for about the first 50 mins of the film is entirely CG.  Not saying Poser will ever get to that level but I thought you might find it interesting

No I haven't seen it. Wanted to, but my family went without me while I was out of town working. Doh! I'll rent it.

I use three lights in my renders nowadays, as per Bagginsbill's instruction, as I have understood it.

1. One Infinite Diffuse, set to 100% with raytraced shadows and ambient occlusion checked.
2. One IBL Diffuse, set to 20% without raytraced shadows, and with ambient occlusion checked.
3. One Spot light, set at 50% without raytraced shadows, and with ambient occlusion checked.

Gamma Correction in render settings is set at its default setting of 2.4.

As for shaders, I set on all my characters and props, Diffuse, Specular, and Ambient to white.  The intensity of that white I adjust by setting the values.  Diffuse I set to 1, Specular I set to 0.010, and ambient I set to between 0.001-0.0001.  This way, light absorbtion is close to what would be seen in the natural world.
I also texture my figures with three sets of textures, one regular, one desaturated, and one desaturated and inversed.  The regular I plug into the diffuse, specular, and ambient slot.  The desaturated I plug into the diffuse value, specualr value, highlight value, and ambient value slots, and set its intensity at 0.500.
The desaturated inversed I plug into the bump and displace slots, and set their values at 0.010 and 0.001 respectively.

Gamma Correction aside, I consider the ambient occlusion to be the most important aspect for the improvement of my renders.
DPH

DPH - some tips.

#1 light: Unless you disabled specular in your infinite, don't call it an Infinite Diffuse. It's an ordinary Infinite light. Infinite light should not have ambient occlusion on it, at least not for realism reasons. And unless it is the sun, you probably should not have it at 100%. Better would by 85%.
#3 light: should have RT shadows, and NOT AO.

On lights with a clear origin (infinite, spot, point) always use RT shadows and never use AO. On IBL never use RT shadows and always use AO. See how that works? IBL+AO - these were introduced together for a reason - they go together.

Default GC is 2.2, not 2.4.

Your settings for Diffuse_Value should probably be .85 to .9, not 1. And the Specular_Value should be much higher than .01. How high depends on high tight a specular you are making. If the material is matte, .02 to .05. Mostly matte like cloth is around .1. Human skin is .1 to .3. Shiny things are .3 to 1. Extremely shiny smooth things like eyeballs or other glossy things would be 1 to 4. And the Highlight_Size or Roughness would go the other way. A rough rule of thumb would be .3  for cloth, .2 for skin, .1 for an orange rind, .05 for a rough plastic like a computer mouse, and .01 to .0001 for super smooth shiny things.

Ambient should always be 0. That's what your IBL is for - simulating the ambient lighting. But since you have it at .001 or less, it is effectively 0.

The reason I say to use such high specular (sometimes greater than 1) is not because you can reflect more light than arrives. It's because the Poser light intensity is not a physical quantity, but rather sort of an exposure level that affects your camera. A normal exposure would have the sum of all your lights (if all pointing in one spot) somewhere around 100%. That's why I suggest the inifnite at 85%. Except for very small areas, this will be around 70 to 80%, plus your 20% IBL gets you 90% to 100% of a desirable exposure value.

Comparing the luminance of specular reflection versus diffuse reflection, for very shiny things this is like 3 to 1 or 4 to 1. That's why I say to use very high specular settings for shiny things. For duller things, the ratio is the other way around, 1 to 3. That's why you would have typical values for Specular between .2 and .3, assuming your Diffuse_Value is around .8 to .9.

You should not plug your regular texture into Specular. Specular reflections are the color of your light unless your material is made of metal, so you should not be tinting them. If the material is metal, then you should be putting the material color into the Specular_Color.

Nor should you plug your de-saturated texture into Diffuse_Value. This is effectively multiplying the texture with itself. However, since you desat, and reduce intensity, for most textures this amounts to something between .8 and ..9, which is what I wanted you to put into Diffuse_Value in the first place. :)

I really discourage using the color texture in any way (inverted or not) for a bump. I understand this is a cheap and easy way to get some kind of bumpiness, particularly on a skin material. But it makes little sense. If you have any burned-in specular (bright spots) on your skin color maps, these become depressions, which makes no sense. Better is to use pattern-generating nodes, such as Turbulence for tiny wrinkles in skin.

If you make these changes you'll get to the 60th percentile. LOL

Dear Bagginsbill,
I'm not sure if this is a practice that you approve, but lately I also postwork my renders in Photoshop in a three layer process.  After the standard retouching of artifacts, patching the poke-through, and softening the skin folds of the elbows, etc., I then do the following.
I duplicate my render into three layers.

1st layer I do a Gaussian blur filter 0f 6 (or is it 0.6, can't remember offhand), set it to normal and 100% opacity.

2nd layer I do a Sharpen More filter, and set it to normal and 70% opacity.

3rd layer I do nothing, but set it to Soft Light at between 50%-100% opacity.  this process seems to me to bring out an increased richness and detail in the final copy of the render.
DPH

Quote - No I haven't seen it. Wanted to, but my family went without me while I was out of town working. Doh! I'll rent it.

www.youtube.com/watch
www.youtube.com/watch

this is groundbreaking

i am positive that they will fix the DM shadows. they did fix AO for poser 7 SP3 and for Poser Pro.

Quote - I don't know what makes you think they don't listen to their customers.

Where have you been lately? Guess you did miss the whole CP deal, one of the examples of how well they listen to their customers....... Nothing to do with what I want personally.

Quote - You can judge by looking in the gallery. Heheh. I assure you, SM is responding quite accurately to their installed base.

90% of what's shown in the galleries can be achieved with Poser 5 easily, heck even Poser 4 for that matter. I don't think the galleries here are any standard to judge by, but that's another discussion.

Quote - How come you don't use their Anime Studio then, instead of Poser? They have a whole product specifically designed to do what you want. Or do you think all SM products should be merged into one?

Because I want to do 3d anime and toons perhaps? Anime Studio by far doesn't give me what I want. Anime Studio and Poser are worlds apart and cannot accomplish the same thing. I don't want flat 2D stuff, I want a 3D world, which Poser is designed for. If I want 2D I will get my paper, pencils and so on, I don't need Anime Studio for that (unless I want to animate which I don't). I'm creating 3D illustrations and Anima Studio isn't the tool for that, Poser is. My genre happens to be anime/toon, not realistic. Looking at all the anime/toon content sold, it's obvious I'm not the only one. Unfortunally Poser seems to be more and more disregarding this userbase and others (like Olivier and others at RDNA) do their best to fill the gaps that Poser has.

Quote - > Quote - Besides, I do find all this talk about how much % realistic a render is or not, kind of unrealistic. Who determines the percentage anyway? who determines what's decent lighting anyway?

I determine it, when I'm talking about it. Measuring realism is not objectively quantitative, but I can say with some certainty that I can grade things on a continuum, and that I have no problem saying that on a scale of 100, where 100 is perfection - no deviation from reality, that I put most Poser users around 25, I'm around 70, most people at CGSociety are closer to 90, and Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean was a 98.

Not to be offensive, but after looking at your gallery here (using you're own judging standard), I would rate your stuff, when it comes to realism, at 25 like most other poser users. There are many others that show a lot more realistic poser images in their galleries then what's shown in yours. You may have other galleries somewhere else, but I can only judge by the galleries shown here and that sure doesn't justify giving you a 70, not by far. If I had to go by your gallery here I wouldn't even ask your advice on this matter at all, but turn to others for expertise and advice instead.

 2 or 3 years old renders dont count IMO

Quite arguing, it's childish!
What Poser needs, more than any-any-any-anything else, is an autoback for crash recovery!  Forget realism, forget lights, forget depth-mapped shadows! -just give us a way to recover our work when Poser goes bottoms up at the least expected and/or practical time!
DPH

Quote -  2 or 3 years old renders dont count IMO

I'm talking about the recent stuff......

Quote - > Quote -  2 or 3 years old renders dont count IMO

I'm talking about the recent stuff......

like the Spitfire he's got spot on with the shader's? - I've actually been around / under a real Mark XVI at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, and he's got it perfectly. just missing any rust / dust.

(lovely place. you can get right upto the planes there. they just ask you don't touch... many times I've been lying under the Spitfire or the Lancaster taking photos of details like the inside of the wheel wells......)

Any heated "pre-flame war" comments aside--

I believe the best thing, other than auto-back-up, that DPH mentioned, would be a faster renderer.

I believe one more thing would be great would be an EXACT error message that actually say what the hell is wrong!  Dammit, I am SO TIRED of the "Texture not found or insuffient memory to load texture"  I could scream!  TELL ME WHAT IS SCREWED UP OR STFU! Random error messages don't cut it in the 21st century!  Give me an error log, even if it doesn't back up, so I can see what caused Poser to blow up THIS time!!:cursing:

Auto backup?
Um, well, I'm afraid I'd have to put that in the same category as bloated runtime organization tools. Just as one can completely control the organization (or lack thereof) of one's libraries and content, one can certainly control one's backups.

In a word, "Ctrl+S". Alright, that's more than one word. Actually, it's not even a word at all. But whatever you call it, it's the same thing.

Some may say, "But, but...but... how am I supposed to remember to save? What if I forget?" Well, that can also be answered simply in a word: "Boo-hoo."
While one may argue "Boo-hoo" isn't exactly a word...
However, there are other answers, most of which are a little less... shall we say, less polite. ;-)

Software is unique in the fact that we can go back in time to a period before we screwed our whole scene up. We can't do that in real life.
So, we travel through our lives and do our best not to fisk it all up. We have to, because generally there is no going back to an uncorrupted version.

And while Poser may not exactly be real life, I think if we can remember not to screw ourselves up too badly, we can also remember to save from time to time. And to complete this unlikely analogy, while there are people who simply don't learn not to screw up their one shot on a purely linear timeline, and who in many cases deserve their ultimate fate as a result of their irresponsibility...
Well, if you can't remember to save, maybe your scene deserves to die, too. ;-)

Aside from that, think about what Poser does when it saves. It rewrites the entire file. A very large scene may take a good little while to write. And even if it's only 15 seconds, do you really want Poser interrupting your progress every few minutes to auto-back? That's the first option I'd turn off.
Then again, I tend to remember to save. ;-)

MikeJ: I totally agree.

And for those who want autobackup - you can write it in PoserPython. It's not a biggie.

I agree also with not having auto backup. I've got a drawing application which I often use that has it. The projects tend to be very large. It's annoying when the auto backup kicks in, it interrupts what I'm doing at that moment and whatever that is, I have to do it again, since it doesn't register does actions.

Faster rendering..... by all means, who wouldn't want that?

auto backup? never heard of this

No, I'd rather not have Poser bloated with auto-backup or other utilities that do things I can do myself.

Autoback for automatic backup of your project is a standard feature of 3ds Max, that allows you ti specify how many times you want you app to backup your work per hour, and how many consecutive versions of that backup you want saved to a backup folder.

so the software saves your work for you?
wouldnt this mean that everything is saved even something you didnt want to?

All software that I write does this. All software should do it. As well, When I do it, I make it a configurable option to turn it on and off, and how many backups to keep, and should it make a backup automatically when you explicitly save.

If I were doing this for Poser, I'd not only do it on a timer, but also have an option to do it prior to rendering instead of just based on a timer, since it is rendering that usually causes Poser to crash.

I've not had Poser Pro crash, ever, BTW.

I'm taxing it pretty heavily. I just tested a 744 node shader that generates clouds out to 30 miles.

For those of you who may be looking for my work and want to judge how realistic it is, don't look in my gallery. I don't post there except for amusement. My best stuff is posted in forum threads. I'm not interested in "displaying" my "art". I'm interested in discussing technique and teaching others how to do it.

No doubt auto backup is a feature of many programs, both high and low end. And although it does have its uses, it would hardly seem worth the effort. That's like one of those icing-on-the-cake things, something you add after all the really important stuff is there.
All I'm saying is I would consider an auto backup to be a fairly low priority feature, as long as my synapses are functioning well enough that I can remember to deal with saving and/or backing up on my own.
How about instead of fixing nonexistent problems or adding inconsequential features they do something about some of the seriously annoying things.
Like, why does it take Poser 5 minutes to load all the textures in a big scene before a render? How is it other programs have the textures loaded, noted, categorized, filed in triplicate and ready to go, but Poser needs some extra prep work? What's it doing anyway? Approving them individually by committee or something?
And what's it doing after the render where it takes 20 seconds to think about its next step? You know, after you get out of render mode and want to start doing stuff again. Meanwhile, Poser is...what? Trying to remember what it was being asked to do? Or are both of those things symptoms of the memory problem that's been with Poser forever?

Quote - Quite arguing, it's childish!
What Poser needs, more than any-any-any-anything else, is an autoback for crash recovery!  Forget realism, forget lights, forget depth-mapped shadows! -just give us a way to recover our work when Poser goes bottoms up at the least expected and/or practical time!
DPH

That's a good point.  An easy way to do it would be if it made a log of the undo points; if it crashes, then have a provision to reload your inital scene file and play the log file back to get back to where you were. 

Quote - They are reading this. I had an amusing conversation with them about this thread on Friday.

Every word guys - every word.

I just want to say, to whom it may concern......Boo Hiss for not having bagginsbill work on Poser materials and rendering!!

The mention of auto-backup is an example of the problems facing any software dev team.

Someone says 'How about auto-backup?' and out of 10 people, 3 or 4 think it's a great idea and the others all think it's bloat.

So how do the developers choose which functions they'll implement? Because it's 100% guaranteed that no matter what they put in P8, some people will approve of some features and some people will hate those same ones. As in 'You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time'

Well, there is an answer, at least a partial one - options. Every feature (wherever possible) should have the option to turn it on/off, and if possible, be user-definable. As DpHoadley said, 3d max has an auto-backup, but it also has the option to use it or not, and to set the number of minutes between each back-up. That's the only sensible way to do it. If you want it, it's there. If you don't, switch it off.

I've contributed numerous feature requests to Daz Studio's development and I've always urged the dev team to provide user options for everything, (which they usually do). Because no matter how cool or essential I think a feature is, I can be pretty sure that the next person in line won't agree. I remember mentioning to someone in close contact with Poser that one of the worst things about it (for me) was that it can't save or delete multiple props without a lot of faffing about. This person expressed surprise and told me it had never even been considered an issue!

The bottom line is that we all work in different ways with different types of figures and scenes, so there is no one-size-fits-all software that will make us all happy. All the Poser people can do is add what they think is right, based on their own common sense and the various polls they've run.

Although, (IMO) they really need to add a log file and error/crash reporter. LOL.

mac

"I just want to say, to whom it may concern......Boo Hiss for not having bagginsbill work on Poser materials and rendering!! "

How do you know he's NOT working on Poser materials and rendering?

LOL.

mac

Quote - "

So, too, there are other, specialized, more expensive renderers that can do soft speculars with environment maps. Poser doesn't have this but it's actually easy to do. If they would let me work on the source code for the renderer, I'm sure I could fix it. That's not what I'm working on. :)"

Quotes like this in the VSS skin opinions thread suggest this. bb has also hinted elsewhere that his involvement with P8 lies elsewhere (see earlier in this thread also).

I may be reading the hints incorrectly.

Remember he IS under a NDA!  Who knows what devious thingees he's slaving away at making or testing!  HE does and can't say.:blink:  Mysterious.:laugh:

What I hope is that, yes, bb is cleverly diverting our attention away from what he is actually being asked to develop for P8 - we're going to have to just wait and see. But I'm not going to get my hopes up, reading between the lines that is, for the advances I'd really like to see in materials and rendering.
I'm sure whatever he is doing will be quite brilliant. I'm just not sure, again if you believe the hints, that certain developments will be enough to encourage me personally to invest in P8. I guess you can't please all of the people (etc, etc).

Quote - ... SM is responding to the demands of its market. I know, because I'm actually involved in (CENSORED) and I'm building the new (CENSORED) for SM instead of working on the (CENSORED) or the (CENSORED), which is what I should be doing. I have had many interesting conversations with SM about rendering, lighting, and shading techniques and they don't have enough time to address all the ideas we've discussed because the market has spoken and they want (CENSORED), so that's what they're working on and responding to.

Just to save searching the thread.
Not that this isn't, I suppose, just a clever distraction.
I personally find it potentially quite pessimistic for Poser as an app. But market research is market research (I guess). I say this both as a professional artist and Poser hobbyist.

this would be the biggest twist since Fight Club and The Sixth Sense. he he

p.s. i thought about BB doing this. but i was afraid to ask him because i rather hope quiet, then BB saying ''NO'' and crush my dreams he he he

and if peopel dont know how good BB is then go in the new ''cloud thread''. you dont make this just because you know how to connect the diffuse node into the blender. you have to be groundbreaking.

Realism in renders isn't the be-all and end-all, by any means - especially with Poser and its user base. But what you do often find is that advances to certain elements (say for example the material room from P5 onwards) that increase realism actually offer great new options for non-realistic rendering as well.
Someone mentioned 3d Anime earlier in this thread. Think of Olivier's(RDNA) Toon Art shaders and their clever use of material room nodes - not possible to do toon renders quite as good as this prior to P5's introduction of the material room and P6's AO, which also enabled artists to achieve much greater realism.
It's a funny game this software development.

i agree.

 at CGsociety there are not only realistic renders. there are a lot ''artistic'' renders. renders that are fantasy but they still look  alive.

i have been reading the book by Jeremy Birn. shadows are important. shadows make a big difference. in paintings,renders,.....
back in he 90's it was almost impossible to do soft shadows. now they have the tools to make them. soft shadows make everyhtihng better IMO.

Caroda your renders are not alwys photorealistic. but dear god are they good. you really know how to play with shadows,lighting,shaders to make your idea to work. but how long does it take for you to make good soft shadows? long right?
imagine samples in the RT settings. imagine an area light. we still wouldnt make realistic humans. but it would be easier,faster to set up. and it would look better. even for cartoony,anime characters.

having bad shadows is bad.( i am also having sometimes bad ahsows) but not having shadows is just wrong. without shadows your figure looks like its floating. how can anyone think that without shadows it looks good is something i will never understand. even f.... default shadows are better.

Jeremy Birn
''The most basic use of shadows is to show spatial relationships between objects,''

Re- Oliver's Toon Art Shaders. I did a little beta testing a couple of years ago of a clever app by Semidieu (called ShaderWorks? I think) that made applying these and other shaders very easy and accessible. If SM had their heads screwed on they could do much worse than take a good look at some of the third party work that has been done for Poser over the years and impliment some of this stuff into the core app.
I know it's not as easy at that sounds, but stuff like this could vastly improve Poser for a great many users (whatever their experience or intent with the app may be). Problem at the moment is that you have to trawl endlessly sometimes to find useful and up-to-date add-ons and scripts to improve the core functionality.

I remember when I first got into 3d and taught myself using 3dsMax5 (30 days trial on a book - that was an intense month!). Area lights were basically (this is my understanding based on explanations in the manual and tutorials) equivalent to arrays of lights controllable as a single entity. They took an age to render with but did look great. I don't see why you couldn't build your own array and see if anyone could write a script to control these as one (might already be something out there like this).
It would be nice if Poser had area lights. RT samples and controls for lighting specific objects via the lights parameters would also be cool. But if there just two things right now that would blow me away it would be specular from HDRI lights and a proper translucency node.

Quote - I remember when I first got into 3d and taught myself using 3dsMax5 (30 days trial on a book - that was an intense month!). Area lights were basically (this is my understanding based on explanations in the manual and tutorials) equivalent to arrays of lights controllable as a single entity. They took an age to render with but did look great. I don't see why you couldn't build your own array and see if anyone could write a script to control these as one (might already be something out there like this).
It would be nice if Poser had area lights. RT samples and controls for lighting specific objects via the lights parameters would also be cool. But if there just two things right now that would blow me away it would be specular from HDRI lights and a proper translucency node.

but how does this work? 
would this be on the IBL. would the shadows come from AO? how is this in other 3d softwares?

Quote -
but how does this work? 
would this be on the IBL. would the shadows come from AO? how is this in other 3d softwares?

Not IBL, just ordinary lights, and shadows could cause problems (that's where the shadow blur and RT samples would be useful).
I think you could create an array of point or spot lights (the more the better but watch out for the extra render time) by parenting them to an object so they could be rotated together. I haven't done anything like this so it's just an idea. I can't help thinking I've read about others here who have done this - try doing a forum search(?).

i dont udnerstand. i thought for HDR specular you would need a 360 panorama image and then on an ENV_sphere that emitts light

Sorry, I thought you were asking about area lights (missed your bold text in the quote).

I honestly have no idea how it should work. All I know it that at present our IBL's in Poser only influence the diffuse aspect of any material when using HDRI's, and it'd be nice to have access the specular as well. Maybe this just won't be possible in Poser (or maybe I don't understand HDRIs.

maybe we should have an diffuse IBL. and then an IBL with specular . but i think it needs to have shadows inside. so it reads shadows from the infinite,spot lights.

with the Gen_IBL we can now make a reflection map from poser. we could then place inside poser what is specular and then make a reflection map and connect it.

Quote - Area lights were basically (this is my understanding based on explanations in the manual and tutorials) equivalent to arrays of lights controllable as a single entity. They took an age to render with but did look great. I don't see why you couldn't build your own array and see if anyone could write a script to control these as one.

Because to properly fake an area light with an array of lights, you would need an array made up of dozens of lights. If you use a small number, each light in the array will cast its own distinct shadow while an area light casts a unified shadow. Its a lot cheaper (and nicer looking) to have an actual area light.

Simulating area lights by using an array of spot lights or point lights has been done. Parenting a series of lights to a simple prop that is invisible at render time is straightforward. Adding ERC so that light intensity, color, map size etc. can be adjusted from the prop is also straightforward. I'm not sure whether it's possible to toggle between RT shadows and DM shadows via ERC, if not, it's not too hard to implement that using PoserPython.

ShaderSpider is a great tool. Again, thanks to PoserPython. Again, a very useful addon to Poser that SM didn't have to implement themselves - third-party developers already can do an awful lot of useful things.
Leveraging third party tools by exposing more Poser functionality via Python and improving the UI integration of Python scripts would make Poser extendable, and thus far more valuable. The introduction of the Scripts menu in Poser 7 was a step in the right direction, but more is needed:  customizable menu and toolbars/palettes, making it easy to integrate scripts into the user interface.
The best would be a complete decoupling of user interface and functionality, in fact, implementing menus, toolbars and palettes as Python scripts that call into the Poser functionality would be a nice clean 21st century way to do it. Alas, that would require a complete rewrite of the application core, something that isn't going to happen anytime soon AFAIK.

I'm wondering about the Setup room. How many users actually USE the Setup room? I guess it's a small minority. It's useful for content developers, although it misses quite a bit of functionality to be called a full fledged content development tool.
Same goes for the Hair room, and to a somewhat lesser degree the Cloth room. There's a mix of content developer functionality and end user functionality.
Separating content developer functionality from end user functionality might be a good idea. An affordable "Poser Base" next to a more expensive "Poser Pro" (geared towards integration into a professional 3D production pipeline) and a "Poser Content Developer" (with an improved Setup  room, Hair room and Cloth room, possibly with an integrated Python editor) would give the customer a clear choice - never a bad idea.

Quote - I honestly have no idea how it should work. All I know it that at present our IBL's in Poser only influence the diffuse aspect of any material when using HDRI's, and it'd be nice to have access the specular as well. Maybe this just won't be possible in Poser (or maybe I don't understand HDRIs.)

It's not possible in any software. The feature you're talking about actually works with reflection, not specular. You start with a normal HDRI, do a diffuse/specular convolution on it in HDRShop (or similar apps) and use the resulting images on a sky dome. When this sky dome reflects in your surface, it appears to have a specular. The size of the specular can be controlled by choosing appropriate values while doing the convolution. But what we usually call 'specular' as it is found in the phong or blinn nodes plays no part in the whole thing. See:

Diffuse and Specular Convolution