I have been looking through my tutorials and the cd for beginners but I cannot find out what it really means when you want to add the Elite texture on Victoria 4 and your choices are "with AO or without AO".

AO is Ambient Occlusion. Not 100% sure but I think it has to do with lighting. Unless you are specifically using AO lighting, use the one without AO would be my "educated" guess. Hopefully someone can expand on this for you (or correct me if I'm wrong).

With AO has Ambient Occlusion nodes in the figure's material, without doesn't - nothing to do with AO on the lights.

If you're using Poser 8 you probably want 'without'.

Thanks...without knowing what it meant I have been using "with AO"

Diane

There are two flavors of AO: material-based and light-based.  Prior to P7, light-based AO was rather faulty and not reliable for shadow detail.  Material-based AO would be the preference under those situations.  From P7 through current, light-based AO has greatly improved, eliminating the need to incorporate any material-based AO.

And if you're using IDL, you don't need any kind of AO at all. IDL is far superior to AO.

AO produces occlusion shadows that are inaccurate, and does nothing about bounced color bleeding. IDL is the way to go with P8.

In P8, unless you explicitly change the settings in materials, material and light-based AO is automatically ignored when you enable IDL. You don't have to worry about it at all if you load some older materials or lights and want to use IDL. Just turn on IDL, and all forms of AO are ignored.

There are options in P8 to go into the material room and re-enable node-based AO, but don't do that unless you know what you're doing.

Wow! this is more complicated than I thought. I have been having problems with shadows on the skin. It just does not look real ( jagged)  and tried to render it at different angles to get around it to no avail. I then went into the material room and lowered the texture to 75% and that did not work either.

Well, when I get home from work tonight I will do another Lana but without AO and experiment with that.

Do you by any change have a tutorial on IDL and bounced color bleeding that would be easy for me to understand?

By the way, I am using Poser8 and so far I am just using Victoria Elite and Michael Elite series.I started with them and I think I am a little spoiled when it comes to realistic skin.

Thanks .....Diane

 Hi Again!

I was able to find a tutorial by Runtime DNA Inc on Outdoor Lighting with Poser 8 IDL. I can't say that I understand it but I shall snoop  around in my render options.

Attached Link: Tutorial Scene - Poser 8 Soft Studio Lights with IDL

Have a look at this thread. It has a link to a free scene already set up for soft studio lighting portraits, using IDL.  Instead of me writing a bunch of settings which you must copy, you just load the scene, load a figure, position your camera, and render.

It also includes shaders to optimize how a figure appears. You want to get the scene, and optionally get my free VSS script to improve how the figure looks. Ask for help with VSS if you can't figure it out. There are many postings about it. Try the scene without using VSS first.

I'll be publishing more IDL tutorial scenes over time.

Hi!

Thank you... I went to your vss home page and downloaded all that I can including your home page as I am on dial up at home. It looks like its something for me to keep until the weekend when I can sit in peace and quiet with my cup of java and just soak everything in. Again thank you.

Diane

Well guess what?

I couldn't wait for the weekend so I stayed up late and followed your instructions to a T. Then I let it render during the night. Curiosity got the best of me and at 4:00 a.m. this morning I jumped out of bed and experienced the Wow factor.

I couldn't believe the difference. I had completely missed the boat when I was rendering with AO skin and experiencing with different light options that I had picked up in my travels.

Again, thank you for rescuing me

Diane

That's great! Show us what you had before and what you got after.

I will try and do it tonight but remember I am on dial up.

Diane

Here is the verdict. Keep in mind that I have been learning Poser8 on a Poser7 cd tutorial  for only two months and I have a long way to go when it comes to rendering a good image.

This is the difference between using just the poser8 lighting and Bagginsbill VSS studio.

I couldn't believe the difference. I thought she looked real until I saw her in a completely different light. Now  I am hooked.

thank you Bagginsbill