This was posted in the material room bookmarks thread.

I thought I would move it here so that he can get an answer to his question:

PLEASE HELP MEEEEE! I'm stuck in the Material room. 

After three hours spent creating a figure which looks perfect in preview, every time I render it in the Material Room it goes to a barely defined yellow sillhouette. I've disconnected all the nodes and tried to start from scratch - but the render still blasts all the detail.

Is there a magic button somewhere called WYSIWYG which realigns all Material Room parameters to erase all the mistakes I MIGHT have made and makes the render look like the preview?????

Infinite thanks for any help provided......  

The render will never exactly look like the preview, because the preview lighting is highly simplified, whereas the rendered lighting is very sophisticated. As well, the preview shader is highly simplified versus the actual rendered shader.

Meanwhile, you probably have a material that glows - because you set things up so that some nodes or channels are producing bright colors even without any light shining on it.

Post a screen shot of your material room setup, and we can tell what is wrong with the material.

Have a look at your lights as well. You might be flooding the figure with light. It doesnt show that badley in preview but a render will show it,

screen cap of the material room would be great.

You're right, BB. My project is to turn a posed Alyson into a golden statue. It looks fine in the Preview (Image 1):

....and this:

It's going to look like complete bobbins with that setup anyhow.  If you really don't want a proper gold material (but you really should) then set your specular to a very, very pale yellow (almost white) and hike the Specular_Value to 1.0.  Highlight size should be 0.1 or less. 

You really should get a decent gold material together, though.  I'm sure BB will be able to help you there.  I guess I could but BB's approach will be much better than any I could offer.

Addendum:

Forget the Simple view in the Material Room. It's useless.  Also, uncheck Reflection_Light_Mult or whatever it's called. 

And while I'm taking up your time, can anyone tell me why switching to some cameras makes the figure's eyeballs and teeth fall out most horribly? Is there any way I can retain the integrity in all camera views?

A million thanks for your help.  

Yep.  That's because the Hither setting on the camera is different from the one you were using.  It's only a preview error, it won't render like that.  You can alter the Hither setting if it annoys you.

Some graphics cards don't co-coperate very well with the cameras in Preview mode, too. 

 Thanks, Sam. 

Aha. Gold. OK. (Lots of requests for metals lately.)

So ... time for some basic understanding of materials.

When light strikes a material, it has some chance of bouncing off immediately, at an angle very close to the angle it arrived, but on the opposite side of the impact point. This is called specular reflection. If it doesn't specularly reflect, the light can very slightly enter the material and then get bounced out with a new color and direction. This is diffuse reflection. (The physics of this is not actually very well understood, but that doesn't really matter to us.) If diffuse reflection doesn't happen, then the light can tunnel through the material farther and possibly bounce out through some more complex path (subsurface scattering). Or it can get absorbed and become heat. Or it can pass through the material completely (refraction). So a proper implementation of any material must mimic these behaviors.

Leaving aside things that are transparent, we can divide the world of materials into two groups - metals (conductors of electricity) and dialectrics (insulators).

The appearance of dialectrics is dominated by diffuse reflection. Dialectrics that are polished will exhibit some specular reflection, but not much, except at very shallow angles of incidence. In most cases, the color of specular reflections is unchanged by dialectrics.

On the other hand, for metals, the appearance is dominated by specular reflection. Most metals have almost no diffuse reflection at all, unless they are dirty or covered by a thin dialectric coating, such as a metal oxide formed from chemical joining of the metal with oxygen. (Also known as rust or corrosion.) A highly smooth and polished metal is almost 100% specular reflection. Further, unlike dialectrics, specular reflections take on the color of the material.

So - how do we get specular reflections in Poser? For specular reflections of light sources, you use one of the specular nodes - that is their job. For specular reflections of other 3D objects in the scene or environment, you must use the Reflect node.

The trick, then, is how to hook them together, and how much of each to use.

Keep in mind that to get a very realistic metal, where pretty much you can't actually see the metal, you must produce good reflections of the things around the metal. If you have nothing around the metal, then essentially the metal is inviisible. In real life, for the most part, things are always surrounded by other things and we see those things in the metal. If you don't take this into account, and try to render shiny metal in a featureless void of Poser emptiness, you will see nothing but black.

Enough theory. Now let's build some gold.

We want a bright and tight specular reflection of our lights. (I'm using a single infinite light and a little IBL.)

I set my Specular_Color to RGB 255, 230, 95. This is the color I use for gold.

I want a really bright highlight, so I set the Specular_Value = 2. And for a nice tight highlight, I set Highlight_Size = .002.

Wow, that looks terrible. But we're not done. As far as reflecting our lights this is correct.

I add a Reflect node. I set the Reflection_Color to the same gold I used in the Specular_Color.

I set the Reflection_Value to .85. The value 85% is pretty much the most any natural metal can reflect. (Some weird materials in physics labs can do better than that, but you're not simulating those.)

So this looks more like gold but it's still mostly black and the parts that aren't black are dull.

That's because the only thing we can reflect in this scene is the ground. And the ground is dull.

We need to do something about that, because for the most part, the material is done. I'll do more in a bit, but first we have to set this prop up in some kind of realistic environment, otherwise we're just wasting time.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure you turn off Reflection_Lite_Mult and Reflection_Kd_Mult.

 I'm following you every step of the way, BB. And I'm going to do all that now. Wish me luck - and many thanks. 

I haven't changed the materal. I changed the environment. The material reflects the environment. We don't see gold - we see the environment reflected in the gold.

My Environment Sphere is free - see my signature to go to my free stuff area to get it.

If you do not have Poser Pro, then we need to do a surprising bunch of nodes to implement GC. But the results are always worth it.

Do a flip-comparison of this render with the previous. The difference is GC.

The actual shader I use for metals is a lot more complicated. This has 11 nodes. My best metal shader has over 40, and implements quite a few more effects.

I'll be posting the full-blown metal shader in another post at the Node Cult.

Judging by alantun's post images, he is using P8 on a MAC.  BB, what would be his alternate route to get similar Gc results using tone mapping?

With P8, you can get something like GC (not the same, and not as good) by just turning on the HSV Exponential Tone Mapping in render settings, with an exponent of 2.0. In that case, you can use the simple 1-node gold shader. You'll want to decrease the Gamma Out on the environment sphere in that case. Here I used Gamma Out = 1.6 on the environment sphere and the simple 1-node shader on the gold.

For copper, use less green. Here I used RGB 255, 180, 95.

 Okay, a slight snag is that I'm doing a figure, not a bowl, and I'm having to repeat your parameter gold formula for the body, the head, the lips, the inner mouth, the teeth...and umpteen other body parts. Is there any way I can command that the same parameters be applied to all parts??

There are three tactics you can use.

1) After making one material zone right, right-click select all. Right-click apply to all.

2) Save the material. Go into each other material and double-click your saved material.

3) Use VSS.

However, above is the resulting preview....

It appears you haven't created a background scene to reflect as BB illustrated. 

You wasted a lot of time, because you didn't read what I said. Every word I write is important. If you don't read every word, you will miss the point and then you will start experimenting and you will waste your time and become frustrated. ;-)

I quote myself...

Quote - Aha. Gold. OK. (Lots of requests for metals lately.)

So ... time for some basic understanding of materials.
...
Keep in mind that to get a very realistic metal, where pretty much you can't actually see the metal, you must produce good reflections of the things around the metal. If you have nothing around the metal, then essentially the metal is inviisible. In real life, for the most part, things are always surrounded by other things and we see those things in the metal. If you don't take this into account, and try to render shiny metal in a featureless void of Poser emptiness, you will see nothing but black.

As BB said, reflections will only work if there's something to reflect. 

Yes that works, but it is more work than necessary.

I suggested using the "Apply To All" context menu item. It copies the currently selected nodes to every material zone on the current figure, all at once.

Again: You cannot see metal. You can only see the things around the metal, reflected in the metal.

The environment sphere is more than a background. It is the entire 360 degree environment, captured in a photo. We see the photo in the figure.

Essentially don't use the gold material shaders provided by P8; they will not give you the results you are looking for.  In addition, those shaders do not follow BB's convention.  They would need to be tweaked and modified which might be a little above your head.  But that's alright.  Follow BB's instructions; you will get a better comprehension on shader dynamics.

Those shaders that come with P8 were written when Poser 5 came out - when the node system was introduced. At that time in the Poser community, there was no understanding of GC, little understanding of how reflections really work in real materials, and no provisions for the more sophisticated lighting models we have now. Don't use them except to amuse yourself with how far we've come.

The big problem with that particular gold shader is it introduces self-lit response to compensate for the fact that Poser 5 didn't even have image based lighting, let alone IDL.

 Thanks, all. I'm fit enough to have another go. now. 

 Sorry to bother you again, but I've downloaded your EnvSphere, and can't get my Poser8 to install it. It keeps telling me that the file does not seem to be a runtime folder. 

The Ref Manual seems to ignore Macs, but I've tried every way I can - and still get the same message. Can you help?

I've also downloaded a room interior (a simple room) and that installed okay - just by clicking on the Add Library button and choosing the file from my desktop.

Many thanks.   

Could you give us the steps how you installed the file?

 I downloaded BB's envirosphere to my desktop - where a folder appeared titled 'runtime'

I consulted the Ref Manual, and opened my wip Poser8 project and clicked the 'Add Library' button at the top right of the Library palette.

When the 'Choose a folder' window opened, I steered to my desktop and clicked on the 'runtime' folder.

A window opened saying 'This does not seem to be a runtime folder - please choose another'

So then I went through the process again, but this time, when the Choose Folder window opened, I opened the runtime folder and selected in turn the folders inside named 'libraries', 'materials', 'props', and 'EnvSphere'. Each evoked the same rejection message.

The manual helpfully mentions that while the library item loading process is automated for PC owners, Mac users can "open and load from their desktop in the normal way"

Huh!?

I hope you can help, hbore :o(  

(I just might have bitten off more than I can chew with this golden statue concept)

Sorry, I misquoted: the manual actually says (P121):

"Macintosh users can simply unpack the downloaded files, and install them according to your needs. Windows users can use the auto-install option, as described below:"

When you add a library to Poser, you select the parent folder of the Runtime folder you are adding. The name of this parent folder will be the name of the new library in Poser.

So as a quick fix I would suggest the following:

Create a new folder in your home folder (or wherever you keep your other external libraries, if you have any). Call it (for example) "EnvSphere".
Move the envsphere runtime folder that you downloaded off your desktop and into this new folder.
Go into Poser, add Library, and select the EnvSphere folder you just created.

That should work okay for now.

But I would be more inclined to put the EnvSphere into an existing library, rather than create a new library for it. I use a Mac utility called DittoGui to install new Runtime content into my libraries. If it comes as a packed file, I unpack it first, then DittoGui the Product runtime into the Library runtime.

For historical reasons, an external runtime must include a parent folder above the folder that is called Runtime.

You do not have to organize new content in its own runtime, although it is possible to do so. You can just merge the stuff in with your existing runtime.

But here's what I suggest you do. Create a folder somewhere of your choosing to hold all your external runtimes. I have mine in my desktop. You could have yours there or in your favorite documents folder or whatever. Suppose you call it PoserStuff. Within that, for each library you want to be able to add/remove on its own, make another folder. Suppose you want to keep everything you get from me in a library called BB. So make a sub-folder called BB.

Then, drag my EnvSphere runtime folder into BB.

Then you add BB to your P8 external runtimes. You do not pick Runtime. You pick BB.

 Alternatively, you can just merge my stuff with your main runtime, but I don't suggest that. It's good to get into the habit of organizing content now. Fixing it later is tedious.

cross post Izi. LOL