I see on the official SM poser 8 gallery the ralphling scene that there is colored light from the robot and from the screens
do we have a glow material now on P8?
and how do we set it up?

If you plug your texture (or a color) into the ambient channel (or alt diffuse), it will serve as a light source when IDL is used, and will appear to be lit regardless of lights in the scene.

(Disclaimer: I'm a total newbie as far as Poser is concerned, so none of this is guaranteed to make sense)

oh! that makes sense! it is easier than I thought!
tomorrow I'm going to do some test
thanks for the info!

Just a note on this.

The use of the ambient light channel (or alt diffuse, etc.) to self-light an object is the same in Poser 8 as in Poser 7 and Pro. It is this, not IDL, that makes the object visible regardless of lights in the scene.

The difference when you use Indirect Lighting is that the self-lit object is now also a scene light source that illuminates nearby objects, as in the Ralphling scene.

Thanks for the note!
Another question, does this lighting material create shadows as a real light would?

I changed the pic....

Hi,

I think I don't understand something right.
I made this simple scene of a TV set (product known as Home One LR).
There is an IBL light in the scene, you can see its settings (very pale light).
In the upper right corner you can see a sample render with TV screen textures using regular diffuse node, and since the light is very pale the TV is in the dark and its image is almost unseen.
Then, I changed the TV screen material to use the alternate diffuse and specular and in the render you can see that the TV texture is lite even though the scene light is pale, BUT the TV doesn't act as a source light for the other props.
I'm using Poser 6 here. What did I miss?

Yarivt -- that is the Indirect light making the "source light" out of the ambient or alt_diffuse, and is NOT a feature of Poser 6. You need to upgrade to P8 for that feature.

-- Jeff

There is no IDL in P6 or P7 unless you activate it using python (sorry, I don't have a link to the script) and it wouldn't utilise the optimisations that P8 with SR1 hasfor it in any case.

Even in P8, there are issues with creating ambient objects to light scenes. Fistly, IDL only 'sees' diffuse light, so you have to find the specular component using other techniques in order to have any kind of realism.
Secondly, in order for the ambient object to significantly light a scene you need to increase the value of the ambient material. If using the Alt diffuse channel for example you'd need to use a math node to multiply the effect. Using the ambient channel and using values higher than 1 is an easier solution.
But this introduces a new problem. In the example of the TV screen, ambient values greater than 1 will cause the screen image to render washed out - not realistic.
We might think to increase the sensitivity of the objects recieving the ambient light, but this will interfere with other ways in which IDL is working (i.e. the bounce light effect, the primary effect IDL was designed for).
I haven't been able to play for long enough to find solutions as yet, but I think it's important to remember that IDL wasn't initially intended (at least as far as I know with P8) to deal with 'glowing' objects, even though it can be made to do so.
That said, there may well be ways of balancing the way IDL deals with diffuse and ambient objects through use of materials and render settings. However, I suspect that more work probably needs doing on the way IDL works to have it properly working with ambient objects.

I see.

I plan to upgrade to P8 soon, I'll wait patiently.
Thanks for explaining.

Yariv

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2217798&ebot_calc_page#message_2217798

For a type of indirect illumination in Poser 6 or 7, you would use a Gather node in the material room. Have a look at the linked thread, particularly the posts by Little_Dragon. It can add ***seriously*** to the render times though.

Yarivt, alt_diff is enough no need alt_spec ;-)

for the washed out texture image you canadjust the texture strength to balance the difference

IsaoShi thanks for the image as it seams it casts shadows too! very interesting!

Quote - for the washed out texture image you can adjust the texture strength to balance the difference

...which will reduce the light cast into the scene in the IDL render.

I've found it easier to just render the scene using a white or coloured ambient  (set to an average of the colours of the image), then re-render the scene with no IDL or lights but with the ambient image set to value 1, and then composit the two renders in an image editor.

I should clear something thing up.

In the Ralphling scene, there was in fact very little light added to the final render from use of ambient materials. I did set them up, but back then (with the IDL in the beta versions) the results were far from satisfactory. I was actually advised not even to bother trying to use ambient materials with IDL.
I'd added a couple of extra Spec only lights to deal with specular that was missing with the IDL anyway - I just put a little diffuse back into those lights that accounts for a good proportion of the glow from the monitors and lit signs. There is, however, still some light from the ambient materials (which surprised me at the time).

Just out of interest, that scene originally took over 6 hours to render. I re-rendered it recently with the final release with SR1 and it took just over an hour (and I significantly ramped up the quality settings)! How things have improved.

Wow!
you did that scene? I just realized that!
this is sooooo cool!
it was the image that made me think that P8 worth the try!
Yes P8 even with IDL (which I find great till now) renders much faster even  for my 5 years old pc ( in comparison with P7)

I'm glad someone saw it! (I kinda thought some of those promo images got a little lost on the SM site). I do think IDL is a big step forward for Poser

Having messed with 3dsMax's radiosity some years back (version 5, an age ago!) I'm probably a little more forgiving than some of the xtra time it takes to render using a feature like IDL with reasonably high settings.
With Max's radiosity everything had to be modelled just right, and you still frequently got light and shadow leaks that could ruin a long render. And soooo many settings for radiosity (model, light, material, render) - all needed balancing!

P8's IDL settings (even the more advanced D3D dialogue) are incredibly simple by comparison. In fact I really think we could use just a little more control, but it'd be cool if they just ironed out a few more of the artifact issues.

I'm generally finding that for some lighting situations using an array of lights rather than trying to use ambient materials seems to work better. For example, for flat plane area lights, I'd use a simple array of 4-6 lights with RT shadows and a moderately high shadow blur (see above render). This still seems to render relatively fast on my dual-core machine with IDL enabled - it's more controllable and the bounce light seems more accurate than using ambient materials.

IDL is the greatest step on FF since it was added on Poser, AO and IBL were nice additions then but now we really have a great tool on our hands!
the shadows on that image are perfect!

I think that image alone is quite an impressive display of Poser 8's IDL capabilities. I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind...

I'm wondering about the rough areas of shade immediately underneath the chest top and the two drawers. Would higher IDL settings improve that, or is it an unresolved bug?

What type of lights did you use for the flat plane? Where are they positioned in relation to the plane itself? Did you use ISF?

Thanks

Attached Link: animated spotlight texturing

*Yarivt*, you might also try placing a spotlight in the TV facing outward (make sure the "lens" of the spotlight is outside the TV screen, just a little.  In the material room, apply the same scuba image to the spotlight's preview material (but Uscale = -1 to flip it horizontally) and set the spotlight's *angle end* to 160 degrees.  Select the spotlight's shadow camera, so that you can see what the spotlight will shine onto.  If you can see some of the shelving in the perimeter of the view, you should be good to go.

The link shows an animated clip I did in Poser 6 which used an AVI plugged into a spotlight to create an animated light (note the flickering light on the wall behind the firepans). 

Attached Link: gather node demo P6

Oh, and this is a demo of the gather node, used in Poser 6.

If you use the gather node method, apply it to the shelving material, i.e., use the gather node on the material which you want to receive light.  In my demo, I used a gather node on the grass material.

The rough shading on the chest of drawers, as well as those on the door frame, are the IDL artifacts that I was referring to that still need to be resolved by the programmers (SR2 hopefully). I'm pretty sure these have already been reported, and have been discussed in at least one thread here that I know of. They appear directly related to how IDL is calculated in relation to certain types of geometry, but particularly in areas that are only illuminated by 'bounce light'. From what others have posted, there may be issues with how IDL deals with intersecting or near neighbouring geometry, and geometry at 90 degree angles. There was a suggestion that 'filleting' in models might help, but this isn't always possible or realistic. I've tried a variety of very high quality settings using the D3D render dialogue but have as yet been unable to completely eradicate these artifacts (although I should stress that I modelled this scene myself so there may be geometry issues I am unaware of). They would probably be far less noticable with a fully textured scene, but I prefer to test without. These artifacts do present problems with quality render output IMO and need fixing.

See above pic for how I set up the area light array - six spotlights, sitting just proud of the geometry on which I had an ambient material with a value of 1 (so there will be some ambient light added just from this).
I just noticed that the falloff was set to linear - it was supposed to be Inverse Square.

Oh, and in my render settings I had tone mapping disabled - there's something I can't quite put my finger on that I don't like about this feature. It seems to kill too much of the whites for my liking.

This was just testing.

Never realized you could plug-in the texture (or whatever node) back into the alt_diffuse. That works great, thanks for the hint!

OK, this is another Glowing IDL result.

The 4 main color Balls, the middle ball, the walls, roof and floor have a Reflect in the Duffuse and the Reflection.

The 4 main color balls are true color with an ambient of 40.
There is NO other light in the scene.
All other balls are felections. . . . . . . 
First a preview;(click)

Next I installed a light to show what will be rendered. (click)

next remove the light, and render just with the glowing  4 balls ( click)

Render settings,
cast shadows ON
raytrace ON
bounces 2
IC 10
IQ 50
Pixel 3
MSR 0.5
And this is the result: (click)

that is a lovely disco scene! :biggrin:
this feature could also work nice for candles!

Glowing balls, candles, lamps; TV screens, anything that emits light.....

if it did not take 3 hrs to render, I would make something with bouncing balls......
That would be something??????

this is so cool! this was a big "want" over all these years, and no one has mention it since poser 8 was out
We were using various tricks to get those results but now we have it! great! :biggrin: