thaliagoo opened this issue on Mar 27, 2011 · 52 posts
kobaltkween posted Tue, 29 March 2011 at 7:29 AM
Quote - So does anyone actually have some good renders done with gamma ? And sorry but I dont mean the crappy 'everything lit at equal intensity' stuff that people keep posting, but stuff with creative, artistic lighting, esp stuff with low/night lighting. Like basicwiz, i'm also an ex and somewhat current photography guy and frankly all the examples (in pretty much all threads i've looked at) look like something a tourist with a mobile phone camera would shoot. If that's what gamma does then yeah i'm also gonna stay away.
as requested, "creative, artistic" lighting, including some with "low/night" lighting.
the following were done with P6
SOMA VI: Fear (NOTE: when i mentioned things being "washed out", i meant the light color, which wasn't linearized)
these three were done with P7, and include the raw renders for comparison, except for the last where all i did was a tiny bit of hair painting.
those are my medium light studies. i haven't posted my dark ones yet. that said, i think you can see there's a good amount of tonal variation in these. i didn't have to kill myself trying to match the lights in my photo references, and i haven't even had the opportunity to use IDL yet. the last was actually strikingly accurate to its source photo.
estherau - if you like things as they are, and you don't need your work to get any better than it is right now, then you don't need to take any more time. load and render works about like it always did because most products don't take any of this into account. most haven't changed much material-wise since P4 days. those that have, almost uniformly haven't taken any current material concepts into account (conservation of energy, Fresnel effect, SSS fakes, etc.). just turn off the features that have been added to Poser in the past few versions and enjoy. don't be afraid of losing anything. instead, realize that you can, with some effort, make your work even better than what it is now. realistic materials and linear workflow are just one way among very many of doing that. maybe they'll never be that important to you, and you'll focus on other areas.
for me, i find i want control over all my materials anyway. no one forced me to change. i spent ages and ages trying to make my own skin shader that worked consistently in all lighting, and found i absolutely could not get decent performance in both bright and dark lighting, let alone good performance. then bagginsbill discovered linear workflow and started posting about it and releasing his skin shader. i followed his threads, looked into it critically and thoroughly, and found that it was the difference between fighting to make decent materials (to the point of wanting to throw things and pitch a fit) and having them actually just work, no matter what type of scene i put them in. i was on a path, and linear workflow made progress along that path easier (so i never did pitch my computer out of the window). if you're not on a similar path, it's fine just to know it's there and how to use it if you need it.
basicwiz, K1Kun, pardon, but could you post some links or examples of your own work that you do find acceptable or exemplary? neither of you have a gallery here or links to sites. it would help to get an idea of where you're coming from and the type of results you're pursuing. basicwiz, i've seen you post on this subject more times than i can keep track of, but i've never seen any of your work. i never have any sense of what you're trying achieve artistically, or how you're coming to your conclusion about what's worth it and what isn't in terms of quality. i think you raise valid points about making choices to balance effort vs. results, but you extrapolate from your work to others without showing what your work is like. context and examples are very important when talking about different workflows.
those of us using linear workflow have consistently put our own work on the line and opened ourselves up to criticism in general and your criticism specifically. it seems to me that it's only fair for those supporting untranslated workflow should start posting their work and opening it up to similar critque. it would also make the conversation richer than simple for and against.
just to say, why is it that when bagginsbill uses a term like "crappy" in a general sense, GC opponents feel free to rant and rave, but when someone explicitly refers to previous posts in a thread as "crappy" as was done above, there's no outrage? Kalypso, i think your images looked good and certainly better than most on this site.