Hello,
I'm looking for a Poser trick (material setting?) which allows me to place a camera behind a wall and look into a room.
Before Poser 8, just making the wall facing the camera invisible did the trick (but sometimes even then, sunlight got into the room where it should not be), but with Poser 8 and IDL I think the idea is to preserve as much of the walls in order to get realisitic IDL.

Moving the camera into the room and lowering the focal unfortunately gives me nasty distortions (fisheye effect).

Has anyone a solution?

Best regards,
    Michael

you can apply a transparancy map to a wall to give you a hole for the camera.

The hither value on the camera works for preview but not in renders , at least not in poser 7

I think poser maybe to limted for that you need a better animation software like maya or max if you have composite software or after fx (i don't use after fx but i hear thats's good) Michael

 If you've made your walls yourself, it's easy. Simply make the walls one sided polygons. That way you can look in but not out. (or vice verca if you rotate it ;) )

For a preview, adjust the camera's "hither dial" It acts as a cutting plane allowing you to look through objects close to the camera.

Wont help with rendering though.

How about using the grouping tool to add the back of the wall to a new group and then use "reverse group normals"? Just don't use normals forward on the material then ;-)

I made an object from 2 cubes with single sided faces.
The outer cube's normals point inside, the inner cube's normals outside.

In preview, I see exactly what I expect, but in render mode, all faces become
double sided and I cann see the outside only. "Normals forward" in the materials setting is unchecked.

Best regards,
   Michael

Or you can use a "persepctive zoom lens" prop in front of your camera. What I mean by that is you can keep your camera inside the room, but give the perspective of being somewhere outside the room, perhaps even a thousand miles away.

I did this trick when I built my GenIBL tool. For purposes of creating an IBl for an enclosed room, you have to have the camera and mirror inside the room. But the perspective needs to be infinitely far away, so that the view lines are parallel.

I put a one-sided square in front of my camera, very close, and it is parented to the camera. This square must be exactly perpendicular to the view plane. So you want to do this with the camera pointing in a precise direction. Once parented you can move the camera freely.

Then you put a Refract node on the square, turning it into a lens. (You have to turn Diffuse_Value and Specular_Value off as well.) With an IOR of 1.0, the lens does nothing.  As you increase the IOR, it creates exactly the same perspective change as moving the camera straight backwards. With an IOR of 1 million, the camera is effectively hundreds of miles away.

The DS Shader Mixer has a Ray Is brick which can be used to control how a surface behaves according to the type of ray hitting it - I've been experimenting with that for things like lampshades, where I want some light to pass through without making it transparent and putting a camera behind a wall while still having the wall show up in reflections (I stilll have a puzzle to solve there). I don't see an equivalent in the docs for the Poser 6 Material Room, has something similar been added in 7 or 8?

Quote - The DS Shader Mixer has a Ray Is brick which can be used to control how a surface behaves according to the type of ray hitting it - I've been experimenting with that for things like lampshades, where I want some light to pass through without making it transparent and putting a camera behind a wall while still having the wall show up in reflections (I stilll have a puzzle to solve there). I don't see an equivalent in the docs for the Poser 6 Material Room, has something similar been added in 7 or 8?

I'm guessing about the specifics of what you've described, but I'd say no. There's no node that let's you launch any old ray you'd like. The only nodes that launch new individual rays that you can read the value out of are the Reflect and Refract nodes. These are constrained to obey the standard rules of reality, so they aren't all that useful for special effects, like SSS or seeing through specific things at a specific, user-defined angle.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Best regards,
   Michael
 

Cool. Great demo render.

Glad to know it worked!

And BB, thanks for explaining the lens thing. I'd seen it in action in your IBL probe thingie, but never really known how it was made. Not at least I have an idea of it :)

So you could make a teleconverter for the Poser camera, right? Interesting. 

Quote - I'm guessing about the specifics of what you've described, but I'd say no. There's no node that let's you launch any old ray you'd like. The only nodes that launch new individual rays that you can read the value out of are the Reflect and Refract nodes. These are constrained to obey the standard rules of reality, so they aren't all that useful for special effects, like SSS or seeing through specific things at a specific, user-defined angle.

No, it doesn't launch a ray - it tests the type of ray for which the surface is currently being evaluated. So if it's a direct line of sight ray from a camera it will be true when Camera is the ray type, and you can use an If block to apply the desired value for a camera ray. Light I guess is for illumination, since light passing through seems to be transmission and there are a couple of other values. Not that it helps here, unortunately, just offering an explanation (in as far as I understand what it does).

 bagginsbill - I have your GenIBL tool.  Does that mean I can use the dolly camera to look through walls once I've loaded the GenIBL tool?  I can't seem to get it working.
Love esther

You don't need any kind of lens to look through walls.

To see through anything within a distance of X, simply set your camera's "Hither" (as in hither and yon) to X.

Note: Excuse me: I had a tooth pulled today (mighty painful) and so I have been given the choice between narcotic medications, or alcohol. I chose Vodka Gimlet, and am feeling no pain. As a consequence, I cannot spell or make proper grammer. Whew, took me ten minutes to type this. Holhyee shhhititit. I clikcckkk languagggee to compentsate.

 Hi BB, sorry to hear about the pain.  At least you have
some tablets for your headache tomorrow,  i won't ask what time of day it is there.
i too have a problematic wisdom tooth but no pain - so have put off the surgery as I'm too scared.  maybe i could try the vodka as a premed?
back to my question - i want to see through on the render
love esther

 BB are you still conscious?  Don't forget my question - i want to see through on the render ie not just in preview.
Love esther

Forget what I said in last post. I was high and thinking only about preview. I didn't even realize we were in a thread where I already talked about  the lens for rendering.

 okay, so now my question.  Do i have to make the lens all by myself or can I just use yours from the genibl tool.  I tired it and I coudlnt get that one to work by adjusting IOR in the material room.
Love esther
PS I hope you are feeling better now.  they say it takes about 2 weeks to recover from having a big tooth pulled.

The lens in GenIBL is tiny, and has a torpedo in front of it.

You want to use a much bigger lens. Imagine lines from a distant camera reaching the four back corners of a small room. You want the perspective created by that distance camera, but of course it cannot see into the room.

So you place a one-sided square such that its edges intersect those lines from the virtually distant camera. You put a refract node with very high IOR on it. Then you place a very wide angle camera inside the room that shows what the lens shows.

 that sounds like something I would have difficulty making.  Could you not make one that I could use please?
Love esther

Quote - For a preview, adjust the camera's "hither dial" It acts as a cutting plane allowing you to look through objects close to the camera.

Wont help with rendering though.

Thanks, that has helped me out. I was pulling my hair out wondering why my render showed only a wall, now I know the camera was outside the scene and the render showed the wall only. I had mistakenly assumed that having the wall properties "invisible" would mean it would be invisible when the render was done.

 If the wall is actually set invisible in properties then it should not show in the final render.  Maybe you just set part of the wall to invisible.  Sometimes walls are made of several bits.
Love esther

Quote - Or you can use a "persepctive zoom lens" prop in front of your camera. What I mean by that is you can keep your camera inside the room, but give the perspective of being somewhere outside the room, perhaps even a thousand miles away.

I did this trick when I built my GenIBL tool. For purposes of creating an IBl for an enclosed room, you have to have the camera and mirror inside the room. But the perspective needs to be infinitely far away, so that the view lines are parallel.

I put a one-sided square in front of my camera, very close, and it is parented to the camera. This square must be exactly perpendicular to the view plane. So you want to do this with the camera pointing in a precise direction. Once parented you can move the camera freely.

Then you put a Refract node on the square, turning it into a lens. (You have to turn Diffuse_Value and Specular_Value off as well.) With an IOR of 1.0, the lens does nothing.  As you increase the IOR, it creates exactly the same perspective change as moving the camera straight backwards. With an IOR of 1 million, the camera is effectively hundreds of miles away.

I'm just getting around to needing this trick because of a scene I have set in a rather confined space, and I really don't have other options for setting a camera up, but I can't get it to work.  Increasing the IOR of the lens zooms in, it doesn't "back" out.

Clearly I'm missing something blatantly obvious here.

 I wish there was just some market place item that I could buy that would do the trick.
Love esther

Keith,

I can't see what you did, so I'm guessing at the problem.

Imagine a camera outside the room, looking in with the persepective you want. Mark the boundaries of that camera's view in your mind, drawing lines from the camera to the widest parts of the room the camera can see.

Now imagine placing a lens (one-sided square) into that room so that it fully blocks the virtual camera view, and shows a drawing of that room.

Now place a camera inside the room, with a wide enough field of view to include that entire lens, even though the lens is only a few inches in front of the camera.

That's the situation you're trying to set up.

If you're using a lens that is only 10 inches across, than the picture you see in it will be a very small part of the room - a "zoom".

Yes the lens zooms, but if you start with an ultra-wide perspective, you "zoom" it back to a normal perspective, one that appears to be from outside the room. If you start with a normal perspective, you are going to "zoom" it to a telephoto perspective.

Okay, got it.  I was heading the right way, I just didn't take the focal length of the camera far enough down.

Quote -  I wish there was just some market place item that I could buy that would do the trick.
Love esther

I think these two freebees would do the trick unless you wanted to rotate the scene 180 degrees!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=21394
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=42043

Quote -  If the wall is actually set invisible in properties then it should not show in the final render.  Maybe you just set part of the wall to invisible.  Sometimes walls are made of several bits.
Love esther

The problem with doing that is that it will affect the accuracy of the IDL, at the very least.

Quote - > Quote -  If the wall is actually set invisible in properties then it should not show in the final render.  Maybe you just set part of the wall to invisible.  Sometimes walls are made of several bits.

Love esther

The problem with doing that is that it will affect the accuracy of the IDL, at the very least.

Serious for a second if that is even remotely possible.

Couldn't you move the wall out in Z and drop some primitives in place around the edges to plug the new gaps as long as they don't show in the camera-render view and not affect the IDL accuracy. 

But my question would then be how "light" or air-tight would it really have to be to trap the IDL bounces?

 thankyou for the links grichter.  Now I just need some free putty somewhere and I'll be all set.
Love esther
PS it's a bit drafty now

 It would be really useful if hither and yon worked for rendering and not just for preview.  It is soooo quick and easy.  I wonder why SM didn't enable that. I'm not a programer but I would have thought if it can work in preview it could be made to work in render???
Love esther

Quote -  It would be really useful if hither and yon worked for rendering and not just for preview.  It is soooo quick and easy.  I wonder why SM didn't enable that. I'm not a programer but I would have thought if it can work in preview it could be made to work in render???
Love esther

Excellent point. Now I wonder it myself. Seems pretty useful.

 normally poser does some sort of occlusion thing during rendering so it doesn't render the bits that you don't see on camera.

Hi Bagginsbill.  I'm trying to do this:-

"Or you can use a "persepctive zoom lens" prop in front of your camera. What I mean by that is you can keep your camera inside the room, but give the perspective of being somewhere outside the room, perhaps even a thousand miles away.

I did this trick when I built my GenIBL tool. For purposes of creating an IBl for an enclosed room, you have to have the camera and mirror inside the room. But the perspective needs to be infinitely far away, so that the view lines are parallel.

I put a one-sided square in front of my camera, very close, and it is parented to the camera. This square must be exactly perpendicular to the view plane. So you want to do this with the camera pointing in a precise direction. Once parented you can move the camera freely.

Then you put a Refract node on the square, turning it into a lens. (You have to turn Diffuse_Value and Specular_Value off as well.) With an IOR of 1.0, the lens does nothing.  As you increase the IOR, it creates exactly the same perspective change as moving the camera straight backwards. With an IOR of 1 million, the camera is effectively hundreds of miles away."  

It isn't easy as it is for you.  For a start I had trouble putting the sqaure just in front of the camera.  everytime I changed the camera eg from main to posing camera the visibility box for the camera got unchecked again.

half the time I couldn't even see the one sided square properly.

well anyway I think I put it in the right place, found a wacro on the right for a refraction node i the material room and hit the button.  but changing IOR does nothing.

would you please be able to give me some mat room screen caps?

and tips for positioning the square? how close does it need to be and what size?

Love esther

The lens in GenIBL is tiny, and has a torpedo in front of it.

could i just resize the square and somehow remove the torpedo here?

I tried that and it still didn't work.

I dont know if this will work but make the part where your camera is "transparent" by using a transparency map on the van. I.e. black and white. Draw a circle and make a hole transparent and place the camera in there, almost like a window looking in. I dont know if it will work but in theory it should. And to keep the lighting from outside from shining in, place a large square side on top of the van or camera, acting like a roof, if you have outside lighting.

i'm sure that would work but I wanted to try the BB lens idea.

Love esther