Raddar's thread (just below this one) reminds me how frustrating it is to buy a room or building model only to find out that two or more of the walls are modeled as one piece. This makes for a camera position nightmare, rendering the model of very limited use.

What works is to model the item so that every wall can be turned on or off with the visibility switch. I'm sure it takes more time to do it that way, but the solution "Just make the wall transparent in the Material Room" is a cop out. Transparent distorts the render by desaturating the colors. The visible switch does not.

It is my personal policy not to buy again from vendors who pull this shortcut. And yes... I keep a list.

My $.02

Could you explain further what you mean by transparency desaturating colors ?

I have several room models where each wall segment is a material. I cant say I have ever noticed a problem.

Making a room into a figure does increase its size in memory.

its not a lot of work. you seperate every wall as  seperate piece. and then you have the option to load every wall seperate.

the problem is you dont want to turn of walls. if you use IDL then your light will bounce. and for light bouncing you need every wall.

The Stateroom at Daz is like this. Very frustrating.

Useful opinion. Thanks for sharing it.

The colors appear somewhat paler when rendered through a transparent item. Just why this occurs is a question for Bagginsbill or other optical guru. I just know they don't look right when you set a wall to transparent instead of invisible.

Iceboy: In that case, make the wall movable. Just don't "box in" the camera, forcing the renderer to use wide angle lenses *(which introduce curvilinear distortion which is not usually wanted.) You can always put a wall behind the camera to help if it's a problem with IDL.

My point is, the modelers who keep the walls out of the way are the ones that have created something I find truly useful.

all mine are built as Figures with walls as bodyparts. makes things so so much easier.... I thought it was the standard method actually...

I didn't read all of the above, but if using poser 7 or later, it's not necessary to make any wall
invisible.  just put the camera inside the room, put bill's "refractive zoom lens" in front of camera,
then set refract node of lens to some large value that gives desired FOV inside room.

Attached Link: http://www.sweethome3d.eu/index.jsp

It's even simpler than that, just apply different materials to the different walls. It is a good idea to model rooms a little large though and save yourself trouble.

What you should do is download Sweet Home 3D and make your own damn interiors.

 Are Sweet Home interiors exportable to Poser? I've never explored this app.

Miss Nancy: Got a link for the "refractive Zoom Lens"?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3534407&ebot_calc_page#message_3534407

I tend to model things in ways where the user has more options to choose from than fewer. I feel it's important to anticipate how the end user might use your product, and this is also where having a quality beta team helps out a lot.

 I simply create new materials for each wall part, then add the faces for each new material.  Make the new material 100 per cent transparent.  

LeVillage would be so much better if it let you invisible the back walls.

Victorian Street, too.

Santa's Boot shop.

Some models will let you invisible a wall, but it leaves gaps in the floor. (Old West Saloon)

Quote -  Are Sweet Home interiors exportable to Poser? I've never explored this app.

It apparently will export to .obj + mtl.  There is a Linux version as well.  Interesting...

Quote - > Quote -  Are Sweet Home interiors exportable to Poser? I've never explored this app.

It apparently will export to .obj + mtl.  There is a Linux version as well.  Interesting...

The materials do need to be UV mapped if you want to apply an image texture, which is really pretty easy for something like interiors.

Quote - The colors appear somewhat paler when rendered through a transparent item. Just why this occurs is a question for Bagginsbill or other optical guru. I just know they don't look right when you set a wall to transparent instead of invisible.

Iceboy: In that case, make the wall movable. Just don't "box in" the camera, forcing the renderer to use wide angle lenses *(which introduce curvilinear distortion which is not usually wanted.) You can always put a wall behind the camera to help if it's a problem with IDL.

My point is, the modelers who keep the walls out of the way are the ones that have created something I find truly useful.

on the first count, i've never once observed that behavior. and it doesn't happen to anyone else, or everyone's hair would make visible discolorations on their figure's skin and their backgrounds.  so you might actually check on that, or on your implementation, because transparency shouldn't effect anything behind it unless it has unmasked specular or some kind of falloff.  personally, i've made myself an "invisible" material, just for random situations.

on the second, that would mean distorting the room.  you don't just need a wall floating in space for proper IBL.  you need a 360 environment.  "moving" the wall would require scaling the ceiling, floor, and two other walls attached it.  unless you think people should only use procedurals for walls, that will look like butt pretty quickly.  and i think even the procedurals would need tweaking every time you changed the scale of the polys. 

a much better answer would be to not put normals forward on the room materials.  then they wouldn't be visible from their backs. you only can't see through the back of a wall when someone deliberately made them render no matter what side you see them from.  this is very useful for hair, clothes, and other situations, but not for most interior-only walls.

 Cobalt: The effect seems to be related to a number of variables, and you are correct... it does not always show up. It usually happens when I'm trying to "shoot" through multiple planes that have been made transparent, or something that seems to have different textures on both sides. Gamma correction also seems to aggrivate it. 

Item two we'll just disagree about. You are technically correct, obviously, but the end results have not impacted anything I've tried to do, and I view this as a viable solution.

What I DO agree with you about 110% is that the very best items I own are ones that show textures and walls as solid from the inside, but disappear when I get outside of them. This sounds like what you are proposing as how to face the normals, and I agree it's the perfect solution. It dodges all of the issue/arguments set forth on the other solutions. Is this hard to implement, or is it just a matter of the modeler deciding to do it that way? I assume it's not something I can change as a user... correct?

 Bagginsbill: I've tried to make a "Refractive Zoom Lens." 

1. Loaded a one-sided primitive.
2. Plugged in a refraction node to it
3. Placed it in front of the camera
4. Set the first two values to "0"
5. All I see is a black screen.

Any ideas as to how I managed to mess up something this simple?

The method I plan to use now is show/hide (body part) poses.

So that even walls complete with the stuff on them can be totally hidden. Yes it's a bit of extra (and sometimes fiddly) wok with the groups in UVmapper work but I think like the rough screenshot shows it works really well. 

Quote -  Bagginsbill: I've tried to make a "Refractive Zoom Lens." 

1. Loaded a one-sided primitive.
2. Plugged in a refraction node to it
3. Placed it in front of the camera
4. Set the first two values to "0"
5. All I see is a black screen.

Any ideas as to how I managed to mess up something this simple?

You have to enable raytracing.

Also, the lens will cast a shadow and show up in reflections and you don't want that. Disable cast shadows and visible in raytracing on the lens.

 Done.

All I see is still a black screen.

Do I plug the refract node into anything other than the top channel? Also, should the camera be looking at the visible or the invisible side of the square?

Ahh - sorry - I can't fathom questions like yours. I've been immersed in the nodes too long.

No, you don't plug the Refract node into the top channel. The Diffuse_Color channel has been turned off, and wouldn't be the right channel anyway.

Plug the Refraction node into the Refraction_Color channel, and set the Refraction_Value to 1.

Node parameters have either a color or a number. Whichever it has is multiplied with what is connected. You have Refraction_Color set to black. Black is the value 0. 0 times anything is 0. Black times anything is black.

Set it to white. White is the color of 1.

Now it renders as solid white.

I appreciate your time and trouble, but this is beyond me. I'm giving up.

Thanks for trying to help.

It renders solid white because you set the background of the refract node to white and you have nothing in the scene for it to show you, so the result is white. The background color on the refract node is what you get when the raytracer leaves the scene.

You shouldn't give up. None of this is complicated, it's just that you aren't aware of practically anything about materials or raytracing.

I don't mind answering these questions at all.

 I've got to go take care of some business. I'll give this another try later this afternoon. Many thanks, BB. I appreciate it.