Hi to all,

I just got a REBELMOMMY character (RM Courtney) but I have problems lighting it with POSER:

1- Its skin looks too dark overall.
Things can be improved by increasing the intensity of lights but that is not a viable solution as the rest of the scene and other parts of the model (eyes, mouth...) is then overlit.

2- Its skin lacks contrast. Whaterver light I use, it is brownish with hardly any darker/lighter areas.

I have tried tweaking things in the material room with no luck.
The lightsets and render settings I try to use work just fine with all the other models I have.

Pity because Coutney is a lovely girl and I'd love to include her in some of my images.
Any idea on how to improve things? What parameters should I look at?
Thanks in advance.

PS: i'm quite new in rendering so please bear with me

Hi Jimmyjohn...

We will need to know what version of Poser you are using. It makes a difference to what you can or can't (easily) do.

Skin shaders vary enormously between vendors, and often between characters from the same vendor. There are lots of variables to play with... to do with gamma correction, lighting, skin shaders, etc. etc... but we don't know what to suggest unless we know your starting point.

So let's also see a render, and your lighting setup, please.

you can't post the shader tree here (copyright violation), but try turning off these channels, 1 by 1, until you spot the problem channel:

• ambient
• translucent
• alt_diffuse
• alt_specular

Thanks to both of you for your concern.
I was going to post a rendered image and print screens of my setups but now I'm not sure I'm allowed to do that!
I can see shader nodes alright but no shader trees.
Where can I find them?
(Sorry for my incompetence, remember I'm a newbie)

A shader "tree" is the whole collection of interconnected nodes.

I love RM's character sets. I have a couple of them. She uses a more complicated shader than most vendors. I would make a few corrections to her shaders, but by and large they are good - better than most.

You don't need to show us her node setup, nor are you allowed to. I think I know what they are, because in the products I have from her they are identical - just different texture maps are used.

The shader includes some nodes that absolutely don't do anything at all, as they are connected to the translucence channel with the Translucence_Value set to 0. Those nodes do a bunch of calculations which are then ignored. LOL They render a bit slower than they could because of that.

There is also some peculiar use of a colored spots node connected to the Diffuse_Value. The values end up being so close to the same that the whole chain is doing close to nothing.

There is also a ColorRamp+Diffuse node that adds some redness in shadowed areas (faking subsurface scattering.) This chain causes all kinds of grief with IDL since it makes parts of the character glow red when it should be black in the absence of any light. But that isn't a problem you encountered. This part of the shader was copied from Daz, which was made by face_off, who got the idea from an early skin shader I posted years ago when I was first trying to figure out skin shaders. It amuses me to see how many places this shader subtree shows up in. The Diffuse_Color is set to a light blue to balance against the added red from that branch.

There is a Blinn node for specular, which is the right node. But it has some Edge_Blend stuff in it copied from face_off''s shaders that are reproducing what the Blinn node would do by itself if the parameters had been set correctly in the first place.

Anyway .... long story short, I don't think RM's shaders generally produce overly dark results, or low contrast results. In fact, I'd argue they produce an unrealistic amount of contrast.

Perhaps you could show us a render and talk about your lighting setup.

They look lit well to me.

If you look closely in armpits and between the legs, you'll see the extra red glow that shouldn't be there.

The underwear on the Kyrsten figure is actually part of the texture - a "second skin". It's pretty cool, but it's supposed to be black. The reason it looks brown is because the skin shader has that dark red glow added to it.

There are quite a few subtle differences, but nothing major. RM"s shaders produce a little more contrast but that can be a matter of taste as to which is more desirable. I tend to think mine is more realistic.

Note - the darker figure seems to have an excessive amount of specular reflection on the forehead. That is not the shader. The specular is burned into the color map. This is one of the little "issues" I have with some of RM's textures.

Attachments must be under 200KB.

Sorry, it was a wrong ext (.png)
You can see it looks much darker than yours (and than the promo images) despite using very strong lights

What version of Poser do you have?

162% intensity!?! And so many lights! Oooh we have some work to do. That light set is nonsense. Complete garbage.

Don't bother posting any more light settings. I already know why you have problems.

I use POSER PRO
I m afraid I used 5 lights to get to this point.
There is obviously something wrong.
I know I am a pain but also completely lost.
As you said, the girls from RM look gorgeous so I'd be delighted to use them.
So I'd be grateful for any tips hints & advices you could give me.
Please let me know if I can help with more info.

Quote - Don't bother posting any more light settings. I already know why you have problems.

Phookin hell ! Already?
Do I have to call you Master? God? (wink)

Poser Pro - excellent. We can fix the this with GC and using a more rational lighting setup.

Just making sure - you have Poser Pro (the first one), not the new Poser Pro 2010, right?

I mean I can see it is in the screen shots, but want to make sure you don't have 2010 to work with. (If you had it, we'd use it.)

Quote - Just making sure - you have Poser Pro (the first one), not the new Poser Pro 2010, right?
I mean I can see it is in the screen shots, but want to make sure you don't have 2010 to work with. (If you had it, we'd use it.)

That's correct.
I don't have the newer 2010
BTW, what's GC?

GC is Gamma Correction. Very important. Without GC, lighting does not make sense.

It is because computer monitors (and every other digital imaging device) uses luminance values specified in a non-linear format called sRGB. Renderers calculate lighting in linear color space, not sRGB color space. When we display the result, it looks wrong. People generally compensate by adding more lights.

When you take into account the fact that images are not linear luminance, but sRGB, then everything becomes easier. The process of converting from linear to sRGB space is called gamma correction. There is more to a linear workflow, though. It requires that incoming material (user-defined colors, color maps, etc.) have to be converted from sRGB color space to linear color space. Then you do the rendering calculations. Then you convert back to sRGB color space for the final result. Poser Pro has all this built-in and will do it automatically.

If you didn't have Poser Pro, we'd have to do a lot more work.

I'm making a simple light set for you. But I haven't worked with Poser Pro in a long time. I'm using Poser 8 or Poser Pro 2010 now. Anyway, I'm testing it with my RM Kyrsten in Poser Pro. It's taking a long time because Poser Pro's library is hard to navigate. It takes me a lot longer time to find things compared to Poser Pro 2010.

Also, Poser Pro renders much more slowly.

GC: I have tried turning it on & off but it didn't make any difference so I never bothered changing its value. ( so far, it's been set at 2.20 on all my renders)
So many things to learn and parameters to take into consideration...almost frightening.

As I said, I am very grateful for your help but at the same time I am embarrassed that you spend so much time helping me solve my problem (creating a lightset, rendering...)

On a side note, I sorted out  the problem by modifying Courtneys texture JPEGS with photoshop
(adjusting brightness/contrast) so that I could use her more easily with other models and accessories.
The result was more or less acceptable but not intellectually satisfying.

Also, your avatar is simply amazing. Is it an image you made?

Sorry I'm taking so long. Poser Pro is incredibly slow. I can't believe what a difference it made since I got Poser 8.

Also, I'm getting some very strange results in Poser Pro with RM's skin shaders. When I turn on GC, it looks horrible. (And it's so darn slow it's taking forever to try different settings.) I don't want to tell you to turn on GC if the result is crap.

I did the renders above without GC in Poser 8. I've been practicing different lighting and tone mapping settings for a long time. I've gotten so used to using HSV Exponential (because Poser 8 doesn't have GC) and now going back to just GC is not getting results I expect. Apparently, my brain has been rewired by Poser 8.

Quote - GC: I have tried turning it on & off but it didn't make any difference so I never bothered changing its value. ( so far, it's been set at 2.20 on all my renders)
So many things to learn and parameters to take into consideration...almost frightening.

As I said, I am very grateful for your help but at the same time I am embarrassed that you spend so much time helping me solve my problem (creating a lightset, rendering...)

On a side note, I sorted out  the problem by modifying Courtneys texture JPEGS with photoshop
(adjusting brightness/contrast) so that I could use her more easily with other models and accessories.
The result was more or less acceptable but not intellectually satisfying.

Also, your avatar is simply amazing. Is it an image you made?

Don't worry - I like helping. And I've discovered I don't know anymore how to get good results with Poser Pro. Weird. I'm supposed to be an expert in all things Poser.

Yes, hacking the texture is not intellectually satisfying. What will you do with the other 20 textures you have or will have? We must find a way to use them effectively.

I might end up having you use VSS.

Yes I made my avatar a long ago. It is P6 James with a fish-scale procedural shader (Koi) that I made quite a while back.

I added a simple white prop to show there is plenty of light.

I'll be back. I'm not sure that RM's shader works with GC at all. I got it to work fine in P8 with HSV Exponential tone mapping, but that's a totally different formula.

Do you see the white lines in the textures? That is from texture filtering. RM's shaders have it turned on. I'd have to go turn it off in all material zones, or use a lower minimum shading rate (MSR). Low MSR costs more time. PPro is already unbearably slow for me. If I lower the MSR to get rid of those lines, I'm going to burst with impatience.

I can't believe how much I managed to learn with such a slow program.

I should be the one to be sorry for abusing of your time and patience.
Maybe you can give me hints on what to do and let me experiment with it, then I can come back to you with the results.

Are you saying there are bugs with POSER PRO and I'd be better off getting another version?
If so, which one?
(I previously had a problem with the bucket size that screwed up my renders. It took me ages to solve it)

RM includes two sets of mat poses for her sets. One set has the complicated multi-node shader. The other set is just the diffuse color map and the bump map - nothing else. She calls this the "NoShader" or NS version.

I loaded the NS mat pose and rendered again with GC. Look at the incredible difference.

What are we to conclude from this?

The complicated RM shader produces good results in Poser 8 with normal lights, but bad results in Poser Pro with or without GC. The NS version is fine with GC.

Obviously her shaders were never tested with GC. This is a problem.

Quote - I should be the one to be sorry for abusing of your time and patience.
Maybe you can give me hints on what to do and let me experiment with it, then I can come back to you with the results.

Are you saying there are bugs with POSER PRO and I'd be better off getting another version?
If so, which one?
(I previously had a problem with the bucket size that screwed up my renders. It took me ages to solve it)

No there is not bug in Pro. It's just that my earlier renders were using some tricks I know in Poser 8 that are not available in Poser Pro. Apparently those tricks make the RM shader work OK without GC and without crazy bright lights.

I have to assume RM tested her shaders in Poser 7 with crazy hot lights or something. I don't know.

I do know that this isn't the fault of any version of Poser. It's a common mistake. I even made it myself when I published the first set of VSS shaders.

Quote - Well guess what. When I turn on GC, I get horrible dark skin like you did.

I added a simple white prop to show there is plenty of light.

I'll be back. I'm not sure that RM's shader works with GC at all. I got it to work fine in P8 with HSV Exponential tone mapping, but that's a totally different formula.

Do you see the white lines in the textures? That is from texture filtering. RM's shaders have it turned on. I'd have to go turn it off in all material zones, or use a lower minimum shading rate (MSR). Low MSR costs more time. PPro is already unbearably slow for me. If I lower the MSR to get rid of those lines, I'm going to burst with impatience.

I can't believe how much I managed to learn with such a slow program.

I always get  these white lines with lower render settings (draft) but they disapear with higher settings.
As you say, it looks to me like they mark the limits between the different parts you find in the MAT room (ie: skin torso/skin arm) 

Quote - Look at this.

RM includes two sets of mat poses for her sets. One set has the complicated multi-node shader. The other set is just the diffuse color map and the bump map - nothing else. She calls this the "NoShader" or NS version.

I loaded the NS mat pose and rendered again with GC. Look at the incredible difference.

What are we to conclude from this?

The complicated RM shader produces good results in Poser 8 with normal lights, but bad results in Poser Pro with or without GC. The NS version is fine with GC.

Obviously her shaders were never tested with GC. This is a problem.

Incredible difference!
Hats off, Master !
Thanks ever so much, I can't tell you enough how grateful I am and I don't know how I'll be able to repay you.
Take care.

PS: I find the POSER manual pretty basic. It forces to work by trial and error and that makes the learning process rather tedious.
Do you know where I can find a better tutorial?

Now I've put in a new shader. It's still pretty simple, nothing like RM's or my VSS one, but works great with Poser Pro when GC is enabled. The goal is something you can do by hand pretty quickly.

You could use VSS to do it faster, but I don't want to pile too many new things on you.

Here's the latest render.

I'll give you the light set, and also a screen shot of how to set up the skin shaders. It should only take you 15 minutes.

Quote - PS: I find the POSER manual pretty basic. It forces to work by trial and error and that makes the learning process rather tedious.
Do you know where I can find a better tutorial?

Yes. I'm writing a book. When it is finished, please buy it. I don't know any book that exists today that covers lighting and shaders the way I am doing.

Note - my Poser Display Units are set to inches. This is important. The Bump parameter you see in my screen shot is .02 INCHES. If your PDU is different, you will need to switch to inches before entering the .02. Then you can switch back to your preferred unit.

Save the file in your Runtime, libraries, Light folder or a subfolder in there. Remove the .txt extension that I had to add to get it to upload to this forum.

Load that light set. Make sure GC is enabled. Also in render settings you must enable raytracing and shadows. Don't show me a render without shadows - I will vomit. grin

Note - I saved it from Poser Pro 2010. You'll get a warning about it being a newer version. Ignore that - it will work.

The main light is white at 80%. You can adjust that up or down, but stay in the range 50 to 100. Don't be tempted to go over 100 unless you know why and have discussed it with me. Don't change the light color unless you know why and have discussed it with me.

The rim light is white at 40%. You can adjust that up or down or turn it off, too.

The IBL is white at 30% and is set up as a procedural light - so no image is needed. This is your ambient or secondary lighting control. It is very good for adjusting overall illumination. It does not make specular effects. Only the main and rim light make highlights.

Show me what you get.

(Note: Close to bed time for me, so I might not reply till tomorrow.)

Please let me know when your book is out and where I can get it, I will definitely learn a lot from it.
I am a bit dizzy from having absorbed so many new things.
I'll digest them, experiment and come back to you with the results.
Thanks for everything.

Look at this. What is up with the eyebrows?!?

Have a look at this thread. I think you'll find it enlightening.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2796835

If yours looks like this, after you get your luminance sorted out, come back and I'll discuss how to put a procedural bump on your figure that will work much better.

Quote - Here's the simple shader you should use for skin. The nodes called Color Map and Bump Map are just Image_Map nodes. I renamed them using my shader building tools.

So far I haven't been able to find a shader for the whole body, but one for each part (arm, leg...)
You now realize how much I have to learn... 

Yes there are many parts of V4 that each have a shader. You need to set them all up with the same nodes, but with the appropriate texture files.

This is what my VSS script does. You load the skin shader in one place and it copies it to all the different skin zones, but using the right maps. You load an eye shader in one place and it copies it to both eyes. You load one nail shader and it copies it to both fingernails and toenails.

Once you get into doing lots of shader adjustments, it is a huge time saver. But there is a small learning curve for those already familiar with shaders, and a larger one for those who aren't.

For now, I'll try to adjust one shader (let's say skin torso) and see how it goes.
(I've just realised it's 5.30 am...!)
Tomorrow, I'll check your VSS script.
Thanks again

Quote - I'm not too fond of RM's bump maps. She makes them from the color map and they are f'ed up.

Look at this. What is up with the eyebrows?!?

Have a look at this thread. I think you'll find it enlightening.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2796835

If yours looks like this, after you get your luminance sorted out, come back and I'll discuss how to put a procedural bump on your figure that will work much better.

Procedural bump would be a treat.  I don't know how many texture kits I have with annoying bump maps.

1st of all, unlike other models, RM Courtney has only 1 MAT, no choice between shader & non shader sets.

I've been able to load the light you gave me and to run your VSS script.
Attached is a render using the "default" VSS shader.
What can I say but that it looks great, 1000x better than what I achieved before.
And now, RMC reacts to light the way it should.
Thank you Sir! You're my hero and a great teacher.

 Hmm... seems like you're using VSS1.  There is a version 3 on bagginsbill VSShomepage:

[http://sites.google.com/site/poserbagginsbill/vsshomepage

](http://sites.google.com/site/poserbagginsbill/vsshomepage)It's the link called VSS PR3 Control Prop.  Give that one a try...

Actually, I have dloaded both like it says, so I have 3 props.
I am loading the VSS generic one.
Do you mean I should use one of the other 2? (PR3 AO or NO AO?)

Probably best to start with PR3 NO AO.  The other one adds ambient occlusion to the character which will slow down your render time. 

Yeah just throw away the old ones. PR3 is the way to go.

I've got some things to do but I'll be back.

The bumpy skin is because your Poser display units are not same as mine. Your .02 is not the same as my .02. Change your units to inches, then enter .02 in the Bump value.

Then render again.