Oh, I'm such a dummie!

You really arn't going to believe how simple a mistake I've been making for 3 or 4 days now....

It has nothing to do with GC, or TM either...

Trust in the bagginsbill - he knows whereof he speaks

Do not use shader GC with IDL,

Do use TM....

And for the love of all things you hold sacred....

USE MORE THAN 1 IDL BOUNCE AT RENDER-TIME!

(Imagine lots of intermediate renders of the same where I added GC to the shaders, used and didn't use TM, fiddled with lighting for hours....all of which was pointless)

On the right we have the render where, today, I realised that I'd only been using 1 bounce for IDL - this one has 3 bounces as set up in the D3D dialogue.
Problem solved.

The moral of this story is that you should always check your render settings carefully...otherwise you'll be a dummie, just like me.

That's it! I'm pretty sure I spoke of this before - that playing with IDL revealed to me that much of what we have always thought was SSS is actually bounced light, skin-to-skin. This light is pink. When it lights a nearby skin surface, it makes that area more red. The more it bounces back and forth, the redder it becomes.

That's why I say drop the SSS in VSS with IDL.

Face_off was the one who first told me to make the shadowed areas more red, because SSS is happening there. I believed it, because it looked right. But it wasn't SSS - it was indirect lighting at work! In any case, whatever we call it, the VSS shader is adding some red in the less-lit areas of skin. This is redundant with IDL. In fact, it's more than redundant. It's wrong. If you put a blue t-shirt on the figure, the underarm should be more blue, not red, and it will be with IDL.

Face_off, before he dropped out, was working on using reflection to pick up nearby colors, because he felt that something was missing. Indeed, something was missing, and that was GI. With GI, we don't need the fake redness, or soft reflections, to get that effect.

The fact is that IDL is soft reflections - extremely soft, in a cone of 180 degrees. If we could control that cone a bit, making the angle less than 180, we'd actually get soft specular effects. Sigh.

You certainly have talked about this before. I'm so annoyed at myself for not realising what I'd done here - I've been chasing my tail over this.
I had everything set up with no GC, a much lower SSS value (0.4) and exactly the diffuse colour maps I wanted...but I kept getting those dark areas. I'd even set up the EnvSphere so it was adding just a little more saturated cour from the environment.

but not all of the red in skin is due to indirect light.  i noticed this issue years ago when looking at 3d.sk reference images.  as a result, i've tried to postwork more red in certain areas.  and i've been anticipating this advance in the Firefly renderer (yay!).    that said, i still see SSS in the face where there's nothing to reflect red onto the face.  if you've got a diffuse texture with little or no burned in SSS or manipulated the texture to remove it, then IDL isn't going to remove the need for SSS unless you're trying for the dead look. 

oh!  and shadows might still be redder.  i've been glancing over my skin reference materials recently, and they all agree that dermal and subdermal scattering need different settings.  i'd have to re-read stuff more carefully to understand more about the implications, but it could be that their relative falloffs mean that single-layer skin SSS should get more red as it gets further from the source of light and is within the scattering radius.  then again, it could mean that it should get less red.  i have to read more.

Some of that extra red (especially in the cheeks and ears) might be related to blushing - I left a little burned in red in these areas of my diffuse maps for this character for that reason.

I meant to add a little more info about my diffuse maps.
I lightened them in photoshop (except for a few key areas like lips & nipples) quite a lot, as well as giving them the dead-yellowish colour bias. I also added a little extra contrast to some of the skin details that were being over-softened by the shaders. This took a little time to get balanced to work well with the VSS SSS.
I was going for a paler skin type, but I think this had the added effect of taking on more of the colours from the environment maps (I increased the saturation of the shaders in the EnvSphere to get more of this effect).

The VSS PR3 setup was as loaded from the prop, except that I reduced the bump value to 0.2 and the SSS value to 0.4. (I just tried one with SSS at 0.3 with 8 bounces that looked even better).
Oh, and I wasn't using any bump or specular maps for these tests, only the procedurals already in VSS.

Have you tried my VSS albino skin shader? It is adjustable, and at low settings, it basically makes the skin more pale and yellow. It also has parameters that, depending on how you use them, can emphasize or exaggerate skin details.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2784202

I hadn't seen that one - just been playing (I posted an albino in the thread you linked to).
It's very useful having the bias for skin details - have to be careful balancing the strength, range and gain. It does a good job at slightly paler skin from tanned maps like the V4 defaults.

Pretty pleased with this now - I can move on to some clothing and hair (that's a whole other thing!).
I have issues with V4's lashes - when she closes her eyes they intersect with each other and cause IDL artifacts...annoying. Are there any lash morphs out there? (the V4++ ones are limited).

Dan -- your renders are always the most realistic that I see. Great job on sussing out IDL.

I just got P8 and am tinkering with IDL, the envsphere and other new things. Thanks, Bill, for all of the info and settings. What I've seen of IDL, I love, even though the precalculations do take a bit of time, but the actual renders scream past (as compared to previous Poser versions).

I'm nearing completion of my first "serious" or semi-serious IDL render. Just need to try one more thing.

-- Jeff

Cheers Jeff - not seen you around for a while.

Really, I've just tried to follw bb's explanations for using VSS and the EnvSphere. The theory is all there. Funny thing is that at various stages (like with my mistake not using enough IDL bounces) I've deviated from his logic and tried lots of other tweaks and approaches, but eventually ended up with almost the original default settings using both systems.  The only changes I'm making are to the bump and SSS in VSS, and to the GC in the EnvSphere where specific environment maps require it.
I think the only thing I've been doing that I haven't seen suggested elsewhere on the forums (it might have been and I've just missed it) is to use a second EnvSphere scaled slightly smaller than the one that's visible to IDL (I set this second sphere to not be visible to RayTracing in the object parameters). This just means that any adjustments I make to Sphere that's lighting the scene don't affect how the background image renders.

I've never had renders come out so close to where I'm happy with them before now - seemed to require much more aggressive levels adjustments in post work. Now I think I'm just doing very minor balancing to account for differences between TM and GC (that P8 lacks).

Quote - SR1 is a lot better at this. You can drop the render settings to levels way below what you're using now, and still get good results.

This render was just over 5 minutes. There is reflective glass in the cabinet. There is reflective metal on the lamp. There is transmapped hair. There are two spotlights with super-soft shadows, using extra shadow sampling available as a knob in SR1!

Those of you who are familiar with the render settings will be surprised at what I"m using here.

IC = 20.
ILQ = 4 <=== !!!

Geez, can you please please please tell us exactly how you achieved this result or is it your secret?   How many lights, what kind?  Is there any ambient occlusion nodes in any of the material?  How about in a light? 

What settings did you use exactly to render? 

That is definitely one of the best renders I've seen in poser and the girl is hot too ;)

A lot of renders I've seen have way too much light.  It seems too much light and IDL = bad.

I think I can guarantee that if it's a Bagginsbill render, there won't be AO in an IDL-lit scene. Nor a superfluity of lights.

Those are really nice furniture models too....

I'm just starting to revisit IDL after these new service packs.

I just did a render. I can't believe it. It looks like they fixed it.   I got a decent IDL render in under 10 minutes.   It looks better than my previous IBL lighting system method.

(Also using bill's envphere)

Quote -

Geez, can you please please please tell us exactly how you achieved this result or is it your secret?   How many lights, what kind?  Is there any ambient occlusion nodes in any of the material?  How about in a light? 

What settings did you use exactly to render? 

That is definitely one of the best renders I've seen in poser and the girl is hot too ;)

A lot of renders I've seen have way too much light.  It seems too much light and IDL = bad.

It's not a secret, but some folks get wildly different results than I do, and I honestly don't know why. It almost requires that we compare everything and see what's different.

I no longer have this scene, but I think I recall making it. It being an interior, there were two point lights, both set to inverse square falloff. They were white in color, and probably set to different values, perhaps one at 30% intensity, the other at 50%, give or take 5%. I probably used shadow blur radius = 6 and shadow samples=50.

The key to believable lighting is to do "motivated" lighting. By that I mean the placement of a light has to be motivated by the real scenario you are trying to simulate. Artists (not me) like to place lights to create specific artificial lighting regimes. Realists (like me) place lights where they would really be, and no more than would really exist. Outdoors, I use only one infinite light. Indoors, I may use anywhere from 1 to 20 lights (spot or point, usually point). For demos I try to go simple - 1 or 2 lights. In any interior, I try to place the lights where they would be in a real room. This usually means close to the ceiling, or in a corner about 4 to 5 feet above the ground. In large interiors, I will place multiple ceiling lights, but always in a pattern that would be real. Like in a hotel hallway, I will place one in the center of the hall, every 10 feet or so. In a multi-room interior, I'll place one in the center of each room. For dining rooms and kitchens, I'll place it below the ceiling where a chandelier would be. In living rooms, I always sprinkle lights in corners.

In this shot, I think I used one in the ceiling and one in the back corner.

The hot girl is Eva, which was pulled for suspected copyright violation. Personally, I think it is the P6 Jessie mesh, and since I have P6 Jessie anyway, I should be able to use Eva, but I'm not using it anymore, just to avoid trouble.

I think a big ingredient in your good renders, bb, is your attention to the realistic lighting setup and your attention to shaders/textures.

I have been really liking renders I've seen made using Fryrender, which is much more expensive than Poser and works only as a plug-in to mostly more expensive packages except for Sketch Up. Reading the tutorials for Fryrender, I noticed how they kept stressing how important it is to set up lighting the way it would be if it's supposed to be a real location, if that's what you are aiming for, and that even the lights should physically look like they do in real life. And they stress that materials/shaders should be worked on as much as possible to look real. This actually requires mixing in real, well prepared, texture images if need be with the other nodes.

Kevin

I'm seeing this occur in other renders as well. The light doesn't appear to behave correctly or realistically. This render by carodan seems to have the same problem.

Insufficient IDL bounces, perhaps?

Is the infinite light set to raytracing?

Up to six bounces on both raytracing and IDL didn't yield any appreciable difference in result, and yes, the Infinite light is set to raytraced shadows, though that shouldn't cause this.

What happens if you set the light intensity to 500% or higher?

Have a look at this article:

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

Something that is directly lit by the sun appears to be over 200 times brighter than a typical interior. You need to set things up like you're using a camera in that room. You would not set an exposure for the outdoor light level, but rather for the indoor light level. Which means that any object directly lit by the sun would be severely overexposed, such as a patch of floor getting light through a window. You need to increase the relative brightness of the light source, because we don't have camera exposure controls in Poser. We can't change the sensitivy of the "sensor", but if you change the effective luminance of the light source, it amounts to the same thing.

Okay. So the fstop camera variable does not affect exposure?

Is there any way of quantifying light output in Poser in a meaningful way? It would be useful to know how many lumen or candela a point light or a spot light at 100% outputs.

But shouldn't a strong light through a window be able to light up a room with IDL?   You can put the intensity to 500, 750 or even 2000% and it won't matter.  Poser's IDL won't distribute the light in the room, even at 12 bounces...

Yep. Just verified this myself. The area where the light initially strikes the ground is brighter, but the surrounding area is not appreciably brighter.

We might be asking for too much of Poser's IDL.  I´m not sure that GI in other apps would produce better results with one light.  Anyway, by placing a point light with low intensity and no shadows into the room, you can get pretty pleasing results.  Of course that's cheating but it's not like that's unusual with Poser lighting...

Max's Radiosity (back when I had Version 5) used to do quite well with a single directional light, but it did take  a while for the solution to complete. There were exposure plus a heap of other controls for lights and renders options as well.

I think Poser's IDL still needs some work, especially on the artifacts of intersecting and near-neighbouring geometry. I wish we had just a little more control for exposure.
I'm starting to really feel the lack of a decent translucent material now also.

VRay works pretty well with a single light.

This was lit with a VRay physical sun as the only light source

That's exactly the type of lighting I was trying to replicate. I guess I'll have to fake it with Poser or export the scene and render it with an application that's capable of actual GI. The way light behaves in Poser is from from realistic.

we need cache for IDL.

if i dont move any lights or props in the scene then i should have to  whait that poser again calculates IDL.

What I'm wondering about Poser IDL is whether there is any kind of bias (similar to that on lights) that is in operation.
I've been encountering issues with close fitting clothing lately where there's transparency involved - resulting in black artifacts. Changing the bias on regular lights doesn't cure the problem so I guess it's an IDL  issue.
I tried adding displacement to the clothing and even scaling it slightly to increase the distance between it and the figure that cured the IDL artifacts but that resulted in unrealistic shadowing from my main light.

I've heard that scaling up everything in the scene (by 10x or so) will reduce the side of the IDL artifacts, but they cannot be fully eliminated.

I haven't tried this, but I doubt that this will work well. The falloff would most probably be wrong. I would assume that you don't see artifacts because there isn't much IDL anymore - after all, all distances are wrong by the factor 10.

I was under the impression that IDL falloff was based on the number of bounces and not distance.

jwf, IDL from posersurface approximates inverse square fall-off for each bounce, given that the
surfaces are large (not point sources), hence the math may be complex, as mentioned by bill. 
some of these things are not fully documented yet.

not complex as in complex number (real and imaginary component).

what is D3D?
dph

menu Scripts/Partners/Dimension3D/Render FireFly

I don't have it in Poser Pro, is this a commercial product?
dph

It comes with Poser 8 and Poser Pro 2010. Do you mean you have Poser Pro, or you have Poser Pro 2010? If you mean 2010, always say so.

The reason it's of interest is it gives full access to the true set of IDL parameters, instead of a baby version that the standard render settings provide. Using it, we can optimize quality and performance more effectively. SM thought the few extra parameters would be confusing to users. The reality is that those of us who really know how to optimized IDL almost always can't do so without it. So we make everybody use it if we can.

Poser Pro NOT 2010.  The one that followed Poser 7.  Right now, I'm using three lights: IBL Diffuse, Infinite Diffuse, & Spotlight.  The IBL is set with OC checked on; GC is 2.20.  The IBl is set to 20% intensity, the Infinite Diffuse is set to 50%, and the Spotlight is set to 50%.
dph

OK, but you don't have IDL so this thread isn't relevant to you. IDL is not a kind of light - it's a lighting model dealing with secondary bounced light from object to object. It stands for Indirect Diffuse Lighting. It allows objects to light each other. IDL scenes can be rendered to good effect with no lights whatsoever.

By the way, in the last post you said a couple peculiar things:

• Saying you're using IBL at 20% is like saying you drive a vehicle at 20% of its maximum speed. 20% of what? The image used in the IBL (Image based light) can mean that one man's 20% is another man's 100%. If you meant you're using an Image Based Light without an image, and just set to white, then I know what you have, but you need to say that in order for the reader to know what you actually have.
   
• An Infinite Diffuse light is an Infinite light where you disabled the specular component. Is that what you did? If not, it's an infinite light that is not just diffuse. Image Based Lights (in Poser) are only diffuse. An ordinary infinite light is just called an infinite light.

Is there some reason you described your lights in this thread? Is there a lighting problem you're interested in solving?

In any case, this thread would not be the place if we're not talking about IDL.
 

dph,

I thought you'd already asked this question, and I found it.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3618982&ebot_calc_page#message_3618982

There you also came back about you not having it and Believable3D and hborre both exlplained that it was a feature of P8 and PPro 2010 only.

dave, d3d may still be selling the FFRender script for poser 7 and later.
bill's point is that directional lites (spot, inf.) have specular component by default.
they haven't yet added specular to IDL (GI), which is what FFRender script is for.

Is THAT what this is all about?  Boy, did I ever miss the boat!!  I always thought that specularity was something manipulated in the figures and objects material nodes, not something controlled by the light source.
dph

Quote - @BagginsBill;
Dear Sir, These are the Material settings on my IBL diffuse.  I do remember my earlier post on this thread, but only after you reminded me.  I've been much distracted lately with my various projects, that my right doesn't always remember what my left has done.  Also I was diverted to this thread from a link posted in another one, that I was reading, and well, etc.....
Mainly I posted my light settings as to solicit possible advice as to ways of improvement, now that I'm here.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Change IBL Contrast to be 1 instead of 3, because otherwise it is much weaker than it is supposed to be.

Is remapping similar to what Texture Convertor does? Because I remember that some textures looked also washed out, when I used that, especially in the face - the textures are stretched. Get the textures stretched when remapping too?

Quote - dave, d3d may still be selling the FFRender script for poser 7 and later.
bill's point is that directional lites (spot, inf.) have specular component by default.
they haven't yet added specular to IDL (GI), which is what FFRender script is for.

D3D has the Firefly render script for FREE on his page:

Render Firefly

Works for P5 and up.

Quote - Here's a render of my remap of Michael 4, (with the AtlantisStyle Andre M3 skin applaid), with the corrected IBL.  Now, how would I go about applying your VSS to improve him.  Frankly, everything here looks to me a bit washed out.
dph

Dave, there is a vast amount of information on VSS here at the forum.  If you haven't got VSS your first stop should be bagginsbill's VSS page:

VSS Homepage

Download VSS PR3 Control Prob and VSS Free Preview Release 1.   The you'll also find some documentation and links to some discussion threads.

 [auote]dave, d3d may still be selling the FFRender script for poser 7 and later.
bill's point is that directional lites (spot, inf.) have specular component by default.
they haven't yet added specular to IDL (GI), which is what FFRender script is for.

wait.. what? the FFRender script adds spec lighting to IDL ?