Hi everyone. Pretty new to Poser and here. Actually this pic started out as an attempt to drastically change the P4 guy. Now, he looks kinda jaded though. It finally gave me a chance to use Phil Hokusai's Lara and renapd's great wall textures. Anyway I sure could use some ideas with the lighting and shadows.

Where was this image rendered? It looks great, but the shadows on the wall are a little distracting. Maybe if they were softer? -Jeff H.

It was rendered in Poser with no touch ups. The shadows are my nightmare. Can you make them softer? How? Also I noticed that it renders shadow maps for each light. So, I can keep some light's shadow and not others? By the way, I love your hair but when I open it up it gives me a message "This file has updated geometries (something to that effect) Poser will try to read it." Then, it comes out fine. Is this supposed to happen?

Wow, that's great for a straight Poser render. I think you can change the shadow map size with the paramater dials after selecting the light you want to change. The shadow casting of each light can be de-selected in the properties dialog. Yes, that error message is supposed to happen ;-) -Jeff H.

Thanks Jeff. Coming from you it means a lot seeing your work both in your art and the Poser resources you created. I really liked your Flame posting but wasn't registered yet to answer. Do you have a website?

I have a website, but it sits unfinished for now. My 8 month old son takes up most of my extra time these days ;-) I'm one of those people that actually likes the render quality of Poser. The only things that give me trouble are the non organic props like buildings. Poser makes everything look soft. -JH.

Yeah I noticed with the square prop. Didn't get the effect I wanted. Anyway, thanks for the tips with the lights. I'll see what I can do. Babies do that, they take up ALL your time but they're worth every minute.

heyas; you can select the lights and change the shadow intensity from 1 (very black and ugly shadows) to 0 (no shadows). if you use .8 or so, they look better, i think. i use .8 for the main light and .3 for the secondary lights. and... this is the second picture i've seen like this... the wall needs to touch the floor, because the shadows arent lining up. look near lara/cara's feet and her shadow goes off under the wall somewhere, but not where the wall shadow appears. (the shadow should be bent, but continuous from floor to wall.) or else its the other lights screwing things up.

Yeah, that was bugging me and now I see what happened. The wall is actually below the floor. Thanks for pointing it out. By the way I'm working on a sculpture using one of your swans and I'm really hopeless with the posing because I need it standing but with the neck upright. Any suggestions?

heya; oh, is that what it is? you're using the ground plane, right? well, the problem with that is, it is invisible in any of the isometric cameras (except the top). get rid of the floor and use a big cube, so you can see where it is from the side, and position the walls. oh... the swan shouldnt be too hard to stand up. you can pick one of the swimming poses that came with it (if you want folded wings), then move the legs so it can stand on them. and probably turn on the leg ik chains and tilt the hip so it is balanced. or, bend the thighs down to standing position, and bend the neck up. (be careful as you do this not to twist it.) make sure the neck ik is off and start from the base of the neck. in fact, grab the neck base part and bend it back very far, that is how the neck is designed to move upright. if you have any more trouble with it, you can email me. (look me up in the members list.) :)

I dont care what anyone says, that does not look like Lara Croft

Heya, Screw..everyone's allowed their opinion....personally I happen to think it's a fairly good likeness. But if you think it's not how about making an ideal model of Lara so that the rest of us can see how the "real" Lara looks away from her busy life in the gaming arena. I would do so but my modeling abilities are zero, so I appreciate the efforts of other people who make what I cannot. Regards Eshal

No, no, no...that is NOT Lara Croft! Remember, Phil made a "Cara Loft" figure ;-) -JH.

heya; that's right. doesnt look ANYthing like lara croft. its cara loft. i can tell them apart any day. (actually lara has a box-shaped butt, because she is only made up of a minimum of polygons. ;) ) oh, kalypso... i also though of this the other night: if the wall goes down below the level of the floor, that's not such a bad thing... unless the floor doesnt extend TO it. you can grab the ground plane and scale it up so it meets the wall. (though that'll make the wall further away.)