OK I have to start commenting SOMEWHERE in a thread that has sprouted three new pages ssince I last read it L So I'll start with this quote:

Quote -

The tone in these threads gives one the impression that the majority of Poser users read the forums. Seriously, how many Poser artists actually read these forums? I've read posts by Poser users with posting numbers under 10 who claim they've been using Poser for years. I think we might be flattering ourselves to think that we're reaching a large part of the Poser community.

Remember that not all forumites are inclined to actually comment. Some are apparently satisfied with *reading" for years and years. I suppose it's like watching television.. there's no need to yell at the TV... Personally (as it's obvious from my post-count) I find the concept alien, but OTOH I know several really OLDTIMERS here with very low post counts. Doesn't make them less active here when it comes to reading and absorbing the reading. They're just not commenting.

And then.. Aeilkema.. How come, no matter WHAT The F is discussed here, you always have to be so negative about it? I seriously pity you. It must be hell always to be looking at the bad side of life.

And you'll probably tell me I'm dead wrong and you're never negative, just sceptical or something. Well it comes out as NEGATIVE. And it's getting tedious. At least to me.

Of course, Gamma Correction isn't absolutely necessary. After all, it was a feature introduced in Poser 7 Pro and saying it is absolutely necessary is the same as saying any render before P7P is crap. Which of course is not the fact. Some people learned, very cleverly, to compensate for the lack of gamma correction, either by carefully selecting the JUST RIGHT lights, or, like me, by postworking the living cr** out of my renders. The end result is what counts.

And there are situations that looks WRONG with GC (bear in mind that I do not own any Poser Pro, except the very FIRST Poser pro which is essentially Poser 4 and thus doesn't really count ;) ) at least the GC you can get by manipulating materials into linear .. er.. thingie (OK I'm cr*p at remembering terms)

but that doesn't mean that GC is neither The Big Thing nor The BAD thing. Just that it's optional and may very well improve your rrenders. If you don't want to fuss with it.. leave it and postwork or whatever you used to do. JP's pic illustrates quite nicely that ok things can be achieved without GC (then again although both renders are NICE, I don't find any of them photorealistic

And that's the next thing. Photorealism. Listen there's a reason why it's called PHOTOrealism. It's not because it should look like something you can see with your naked EYE - it's like something you could see on a PHOTO.

Even a photo isn't realistic. When you look at something with your own eyes you won't have a finite distance blur, because your eyes will adapt. When you look at the horizon, your eyes adapt to the big distance and when you then switch focus to a snail righ in front of you, your eyes adapt.

A photo, being a static NOW can't do both. With a photo you can EITHER focus on the snail, and have a blurry background - OR focus on the horizon and have a blurry snail. Unless you're using CG, which is capable of having both in focu, but for that very reasun tells your brain that "here's something wrong"

And you may not even realise WHAT is wrong. It niggles your brain as "wrong" but the thing is.. a static picture can NEVER react like your eye would. And when, like in common CG, it does, it comes off as WRONG.

For a long time, I've been trying to make *PHOTO" real pictures with Poser. I've found that it requires a LOT of phtotshopping to blur edges, blur distances and in general.. make the thing into B/W. The human eye is adapted to recognize human skin and CG skin will almost always look wrong. In small amounts, but still wrong. Once you make the whole thing into blac-and-white however, your brain treats what you see as a "picture" and is apparently a lot more forgiving. People with Psychology degrees can probably tell you a lot more about the phenomenon.

As I said, I'm a recent VSS/Material GC convert. Now that I've seen what it CAN do, I'm GC'ing textures and stuff.. sometimes it looks better, sometimes it looks worse. When it looks better, I use it. When not, I skip it.

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You just can't put the words "Poserites" and "happy" in the same sentence - didn't you know that? LaurieA
  Using Poser since 2002. Currently at Version 11.1 - Win 10.