i found a great article with a lot of info how to make better CGI. how to avoid mistakes that will make the render look fake. i think those tips are more for realisitc renders . if you want something more artistic and '' fantasy '' you can use what settings you want.i think they give us a lot of good tips. we can all learn a lot.

as you can see we see things that were already explained by bagginsbill.. like never use 100 % diffuse but 80%.

www.subdivisionmodeling.com/forums/showthread.php

enjoy

Interesting, but 50% of the article can never ( at this time) be done with the render engine of poser ...

maybe in the future. but by then you would already know how to use it.

Who says it can't be done with the Poser render engine, why do they think it can't be done & have they even tried to do it?

Quote - Who says it can't be done with the Poser render engine, why do they think it can't be done & have they even tried to do it?

I said the half part in the present ... SSS and caustics arent features of firefly, or i miss something ;-)

 Actually they are IIRC. They're just not "turned on" in Poser. Doesn't mean the rendering engine itself isn't capable of it.

Quote - > Quote - Who says it can't be done with the Poser render engine, why do they think it can't be done & have they even tried to do it?

I said the half part in the present ... SSS and caustics arent features of firefly, or i miss something ;-)

Well it seems to me every time someone says "it can't be done" someone like BagginsBill turns up, proves it can be done & shows everyone how to do it themselves.

End of the day if all else fails fake it. ;)

Can Poser do spectral dispersion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon

I know I couldn't get Poser to do it, that doesn't mean it can't be done by someone who knows how to push the renderer to it's limits.

some guy will ask

''can poser get me a girlfriend?''

he he :)

If there's no node for that you'll have to fake it. Maybe with postwork.

If Poser had a few channels on the Root node of the Material Room,and a node or two that could be programmed with Python Scripts, and Python Scripts were allowed to call external sub-routines (outside of Poser), I suspect that many things FireFlye could not do would suddenly become possible.

lmk

Goldmine.

Thank you for the link ice-boy.

Can the effect on the right be achieved in Poser 8? Glossy reflection as opposed to mirror reflection?

Good stuff. It's always beneficial to be reminded of the basics, sometimes we get so locked into our own little world we forget the building blocks we are working with.

Can that be done in Poser 8?,   Yup. and with IDL it can look just as nice.  You can add a "glossy" node in the material room and attach it to the "Alternate_Specular".  For "depth of Field"  you can do that in the renderer, or you can make a depth-map and do the DOF effect in an image editer like Photoshop or The GIMP.

I dunno if 50% of ice-boy's link about optical phenomena can't be done in poser 8, but:

• it can't do indirect specular nor caustics, nor is there any way to implement those in FFRender
• it can't do transmissive fx like stained glass, altho there may be a way to implement that in FFRender

however, as we'll see in gallery here, they'll still turn off shadows and turn off IDL, hence any finer points of optics are moot for most users.

Quote - This is very informational. Thank you.

Can the effect on the right be achieved in Poser 8? Glossy reflection as opposed to mirror reflection?

you can do soft reflections in poser. but its not very good with samples. if you have quality at 1 it will get batter but still very bad. the render time will be insane huge.

Quote - some guy will ask

''can poser get me a girlfriend?''

he he :)

Quote -
If there's no node for that you'll have to fake it. Maybe with postwork.

LMAO

''can poser get me a girlfriend?'' 

No, but if you do enough NVIATWAS's, it could cost you one...;)

i was reading again this  and i noticed something.

''The inverse-square specular falloff: if you move the light closer to the specular (not glossy) reflection, it will appear bigger, but not brighter.''

so if the light is closer the specular shouldnt be more brighter. specular is basicly a cheat for glossy(soft) reflections. and a reflection of a light source doesnt get brigher when its closer right?

and if this is true then poser is doing it wrong. because in poser if you use the ''inverse square'' lights you also change the specular.

what do you think?

i made a box in blender. i wanted to do a simple brick wall. in blender you have an option to use a simple bevel. a bevel is good because your wall doesnt look perfect with sharp corners.
here i also did a simple texture and a simple bump map in photoshop.

bump is very important. i think not enough people use a bump on their surface.

Your bump need to be invert, no ? :-)

ohhhh yes. thanks.

because the wrong parts are bright and dark.

thank you so much.

You would be better off converting to normal mapping.  There is more control in determining light direction for optimal definition.  However, combining the wall texture with a good displacement map will accentuate the wall's contor around the edges.

You would be better off converting to normal mapping.  There is more control in determining light direction for optimal definition.  However, combining the wall texture with a good displacement map will accentuate the wall's contor around the edges.

Quote - i made a box in blender. i wanted to do a simple brick wall. in blender you have an option to use a simple bevel. a bevel is good because your wall doesnt look perfect with sharp corners.
here i also did a simple texture and a simple bump map in photoshop.

bump is very important. i think not enough people use a bump on their surface.

There's also a beveled box in P8. It's in the prop library under CP Partners - Dimension3D. It's called round box.

Quote - You would be better off converting to normal mapping.  There is more control in determining light direction for optimal definition.  However, combining the wall texture with a good displacement map will accentuate the wall's contor around the edges.

Is there a tutorial or a good description somewhere of what difference there is between normal mapping and displacement, bump.  How does one go about creating a normal map and how do you use it in Poser?  I've seen some amazing things done with normal maps but I haven't found any material on how to use it in Poser.

Quote - > Quote - i made a box in blender. i wanted to do a simple brick wall. in blender you have an option to use a simple bevel. a bevel is good because your wall doesnt look perfect with sharp corners.

here i also did a simple texture and a simple bump map in photoshop.

bump is very important. i think not enough people use a bump on their surface.

There's also a beveled box in P8. It's in the prop library under CP Partners - Dimension3D. It's called round box.

i needed to texture it and make an UV so i made it in blender. plus i lie low polygon objects .

Quote - You would be better off converting to normal mapping.  There is more control in determining light direction for optimal definition.  However, combining the wall texture with a good displacement map will accentuate the wall's contor around the edges.

was normal mapping fixed with the SR1? 

@ice-boy:  They appear to work with the release of SR1. 

@vestman:  Here is a quick link tutorial for Normal Mapping:
http://www.bencloward.com/tutorials_normal_maps1.shtml

There is software that can exclusively create normal maps from diffuse textures, however they can be pricey.  GIMP has a plugin for creating normals and NIVIDIA offers a plugin for Photoshop.  Both are free downloads.

Tyhx hborre ! Trying the nvidia plugin

You are welcome, Anthanasius.  I almost forgot, www.poserpro.net does show how to plug-in normal maps to the Poser Surface.  It is illustrated here:
http://www.poserpro.net/New_Index_9000.html

There is also a tutorial using ZBrush to create a facial normal map.
 

hborre where can we find the tutorials on that site?

The best determinant of whether to use bump or displacement, is the size of the feature(s) you're trying to represent.
Roughly anything less than 0.5 inches use bump, otherwise use displacement (depends on how close the object will be to the camera, and on scene size).

Pitklad, if you are referring to the PoserPro site, here is the link:

http://www.poserpro.net/New_Index_9000.html

When you compare bump and normal, you are often not comparing apples to apples. The bump depth is adjustable, while the apparent depth from a normal map is fixed.

To do a proper comparison, you must dial the right amount of bump with the bump map.

Thank you for the links hborre!  I can't wait to try this out!

Quote - @ice-boy:  They appear to work with the release of SR1. 

.

well i remember that they didnt work with reflection and with alternative specular. if it works now then they changed it.

bagginsbill do you maybe know if it was fixed? i can not look today.

Quote - Pitklad, if you are referring to the PoserPro site, here is the link:

http://www.poserpro.net/New_Index_9000.html

That link doesn´t go directly to the tutorial. It just goes to the main page, probably because the page uses frames or something. You'll find the normal map information under "Texturing & Materials" in the tutorials section.

Quote - > Quote - @ice-boy:  They appear to work with the release of SR1. 

.

well i remember that they didnt work with reflection and with alternative specular. if it works now then they changed it.

bagginsbill do you maybe know if it was fixed? i can not look today.

Hmmm. I was about to post yes, but then I found another case where the answer is no, not fixed.

In the original bug report, I said that using any specular nodes with NMaps didn't work - only the built-in specular worked.

I just tested a Glossy node in Alt_Spec and it works. But that's all that works. Anything more complicated and it no longer works.

For example, I used 1 - Glossy into the Diffuse_Value of the root node to do the Conservation-of-Energy trick, and the normal was ignored for specular. This is wrong.

But, when i used a separate Diffuse and Glossy node, wired up as I do in my GC shaders, including the CoE trick, it does work.

Weird.

The left flash menu doesn't appear on my firefox for some reason but loads fine on explorer! I found it! thank you both for the reply!

i tryed it now. and it works with reflection now.