Hi Folks

I purchased Poser8 but due lots of messy things I couldn't have time to install it until now. Can someone tell me threads for an easy tut in order to use the new P8 features? Over all about realistic lightning

Thanxxx  :)

Read this:

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

Poser's Indirect Lighting is basically Global Illumination.  It's a pretty major thing all by itself, although there is other stuff that's important also.  Good place to start.

Thanks Paul  :)

EDITED

But Poser8 tuts?

• Enable Raytracing in render options
• Set Render Options: Raytracing Bounces to about 8 (that's what I use, experiment with it)
• Set Render Options: Irradiance Caching for speed/quality you like (I leave it at 1, oddly this is both faster and better-looking than higher values)
• Set Render Options: Tone Mapping mode to HSV Exponential (I think that is the default) with an Exposure of 2.2 (this value is arbitrary and happens to look good, it's not the same as a Gamma Correction value of 2.2; Poser 8 still doesn't do Gamma Correction and these features aren't doing the same thing)
• Enable Render Options: Indirect Lighting and experiment with quality setting for speed/quality you like
• Start using a fully enclosed polygonal environment that completely contains everything in your render scene (I made and use this one for studio style rendering, there is also Bagginsbill's Environment Sphere; if you don't fully enclose the render scene then you're missing the point of Indirect Lighting/Global Illumination)
• Stop using Infinite lights for anything but simulating the sun, and don't use more than one in a scene
• Start using point lights and maybe spotlights; point lights are very good for presenting an evenly-lit image where the light spreads around a great deal, while spotlights tend not to bounce around nearly as much.  Bottom right image in this pic (nudity) is lit with a single spotlight, the other three are lit with two point lights each.
• Stop using depth mapped shadows, because they are poo; set all shadows to cast Raytraced shadows.  Never use any lights that don't cast shadows! 
• Set shadow blur radius for each light to something above zero (I use 5.0 most of the time); set Shadow Samples for each light to 30 or more (I use 60, probably overkill); set Shadow Min Bias to something very small (I use 0.05)
• Nearly every material in the scene will need some attention, particularly the Diffuse_Value setting; you want it to be set to lower than 1.0 (the default) to simulate light being absorbed by a surface.  This is a pain to set by hand, so here is a script to set it to 0.8 for all surfaces in the scene.
• The Ambient_Color and Ambient_Value properties of a material will now actually emit light (glow) allowing for some pretty cool effects (look at the girl's right hand holding the gun in the lower section of this pic, illuminated by the glowing parts of the gun)
• If you've been using Ambient Occlusion, consider just disabling it, as Indirect Lighting (IDL) produces a similar effect but in a much more realistic way; if you do leave it enabled, you can turn it way down from what you needed it set to in older versions

There's other stuff but imo those are the big key things.  Attached is my default scene that I start every Poser 8 scene from, which relies on the render room prop I mentioned earlier.  Right click the attachment -> Save -> rename and remove the '.txt' extension, it's a zip file.  Have fun :)

You can waist anawful lot of your time and energy with Poser unless you get some good tuition.

This is the best I have found , you have to pay for it but it is good.

I started with Poser6 and left it for 3years becouse I could not work the D**********thing

What a waist ! If I had this I would have been avery happy Poser user.

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Oops, a pretty important thing to note:  Transparency takes gobs and gobs of time to calculate with Indirect Lighting enabled.  This isn't really unique to Poser, it happens in other apps that render with Global Illumination too.  A crappy workaround is to just make stuff like hair invisible to raytracing.  It's not ideal because this stops hair from casting shadows, but it's better than waiting a week for your render to finish.  The more complex the geometry of a semi-transparent model, the worse this is; some very simple hair models may be tolerable to render without this workaround, e.g. Kozaburo's.

Quote - You can waist anawful lot of your time and energy with Poser unless you get some good tuition....

SPAM???

Quote - This is the best I have found , you have to pay for it but it is good.

While I'm sure that's a great overall instruction set, I looked at the full listing of topics and there is no section on using Indirect Lighting/GI, which is ... pretty crucial.

Quote - SPAM???

Naw I think he was trying to be helpful, but I don't think that training set is really what you're asking for here.

There is a small learning curve, but you'll have it down in no time ;o). Like Paul said, the biggest thing to get used to is the lighting. You sort of have to relearn it...lol. Most Poser users before Poser 8 were fairly used to faking GI, but since the IDL, you have to unlearn those habits.

Laurie

Great tut, Paul. I'll use it. Thanks!  :)

As far as setting up the actual lights, start very simple - you'll notice that that blank scene I attached earlier only has two point lights for rendering.  There is one infinite light for convenience, called "WORK LIGHT - TURN OFF TO RENDER".  If you are accustomed to using IBL, try going without it until you get some idea of how Indirect Lighting behaves.  I used to use IBL as an omnidirectional fill light but that isn't required any more with Indirect Lighting (as Laurie said).

Unfortunately, Gamma Correction is a feature exclusively found in the Pro series.  For any other version, this will need to be introduced into your materials, a long and drawn out process which I wouldn't recommend unless you are willing to convert many items to new shaders.  Bantha did create a script for the Wacro to automate this process.  Light based AO is inactivated by IDL, however I do know that material based AO, present in PP2010, can be considered under IDL rendering.  I don't know if the same feature exists under installation of SR3 for P8. 

Definitely, install all the service packs available; there have been some major fixes which will make the workflow easier.

Quote - There's a lot of threads that go back and forth, I don't think there's any one good concise tutorial.  Some key settings and techniques (at least for me):

....

• Set shadow blur radius for each light to something above zero (I use 5.0 most of the time); set Shadow Samples for each light to 30 or more (I use 60, probably overkill); set Shadow Min Bias to something very small (I use 0.05)

.....

That's really a great list, Paul, thnaks.

makes some notices himself

If you don't mind, could a have a few more words on my bolted selection of your quote, why you suggest it and why using it this way, please?

I never really seem to have understood these parameters (even tho they probalby are so easy to explain .. LOL )

Thanks.

Shadow blur radius - this is in degrees (I think) and the larger it is, the more the shadow will blur as it is farther from what is casting the shadow.  Real shadows are not sharp the way a setting of 0 will give you, except under conditions not found in nature (light is absolutely uniform, no air, other things).  Spend some time looking at real shadows from various sources and you'll see what I mean.  I like a setting of 5.0 "just because", it's not for any scientific reason.

Shadow Samples controls how smoothly the shadow is filled in - as this number is higher, the shadow is drawn more smoothly, but takes somewhat longer to calculate.  I think the default is 15, and it leaves you with shadows that look a bit grainy or dirty. Setting it to 30 is pretty good in most situations, 60 pretty much always looks good.

Shadow Min Bias is better explained in this thread - it had a lot of fun observation about how the first release of Poser 8 behaved, some of it is now obsolete so take it with a grain of salt.  The talk about how shadow min bias behaves is still accurate.  Many other things have changed since we wrote that thread though, keep that in mind.

Hi there,

I need a help about poser 8...how can i drag rendorosity to poser 8 picture to there.

Please email me chialsiu@yahoo.com..and i also do have winzip...how can i do that when i open poser 8 file.

Quote - Hi Folks

I purchased Poser8 but due lots of messy things I couldn't have time to install it until now. Can someone tell me threads for an easy tut in order to use the new P8 features? Over all about realistic lightning

Thanxxx  :)

If you are completely new to Poser then you can check out my site. I have a few free-ebooks focused on the bare basics required to get started, tutorial links, free workshops each month and some other things coming in January.  Not sure if something like that would be of use to you but, that's what I got at PoserByDesign.com

So far I haven't gotten any complaints yet. (fingers crossed)

Quote - **Casette

**

Joined: 19 Sep 2002

Thanks for the explanation and the additional link, Paul.

Much appreciated :)

Quote - If you are completely new to Poser then you can check out my site...

Yes, I'm a completely new in Poser... 8. Not in Poser4, ProPack, 5, 6 and 7. As pjz99 quoted, completely new since september 2002. Oh, and official product betatester at Animotions and Renderotica. A complete newbie :lol:

Thanks alot pjz99!

I am absolutely new to the new IDL system (just know that from Cinema4D) and after I did what u wrote my render look WAAAYY BETTER!!!