Just bought Poser Pro 2010 and noticed that the renders look quite different from Poser 8 renders. Here's a couple of samples:

http://miscfiles.net/temp/0001/P8vPP/index.html

All the light settings I can find are set the exact same way in both programs. So I wonder what makes the difference. Some settings I've overlooked?

p8 has exposure control (HSVTM) but not gamma control (pp2010).  hence any shaders with GC nodes may need adjustment.

OK, thanks. So how/where do you adjust this?

First, the default lights are crap.  You should be rendering with raytracing, defaults have depth mapping.  Miss Nancy make a very valid point, however, you did not mention using material GC which can possibly account for the some flatness.  But you will need to enter the material room an check your shaders; any transparencies, bump, and displacement maps must have their own GC reset to 1 for render GC to work correctly.  At this point, we really should see your render settings for verification and MR shader nodes.

OK. Think I'll have to check the manual first, not used to play with the material room settings.

Thanks!

The graying indicates you were using a typical Daz shader, with blue tinting of the color map.

Most all skin shaders designed before Poser Pro were done for rendering in the absence of linear work flow, i.e. in the absence of gamma correction. They include various compensations to make the render look less wrong. Linear workflow changes all that. The compensations built into the shaders must not be used. It's like wearing your contact lenses and your glasses.

If you're used to glasses and want to stay with them, you must not put in your contact lenses. If you want your contact lenses, you have to take off your glasses.

This means, either continue to use non-linear workflow and you can use your complex compensating shaders, or use linear workflow and switch to simple non-compensating shaders.

The irony is that so much content has already been developed to produce decent results in the absence of a linear workflow, and now it seems to be more work to use the new, so-called easier technique.

If you're a click-and-render type, you may find it easier to just not user Poser Pro features, because so much content doesn't work right when you enable GC.

A lot of content doesn't work right with IDL, either.

If you want the most realistic content that work in the broadest set of lighting regimes, in the shortest render time, using the simplest techniques, with no screwing around with lights for 20 hours, you will want to learn what's wrong with your content and learn to fix it. Learn to take advantage of GC and IDL provided by Poser Pro 2010.

OK. So what you're saying is that the content needs to be edited first of all?

Or can it all be fixed by using the right settings in Poser Pro?

Almost all skin shaders are compensating shaders and need to be edited so they stop doing that. This is not because shaders have to be different for regular Poser versus Poser Pro. I make shaders that work great in both. It's that a handful of skin shaders were copied over and over by most of the vendors at Daz, and these happened to be a bad choice.

Most prop shaders work fine without any changes, mostly because prop shaders are usually not full of compensations for monitor gamma and also they are usually simple shaders, not trying anything tricky.

Some skin texture sets come with two sets of shaders - simple ones that work great in Pro, and compensating tricky shaders that don't. If you have the click-to-load simple shaders, use them. Most products don't come that way, though. I don't know why. Pro has been around a long time and many people have published (by asking for help and getting answers) what the the vendors are doing wrong.

You can configure Poser Pro to not use linear workflow. Just disable the gamma correction in render settings. Then it will act like Poser 8, 7, etc.

Hm, sounds complicated (I'm a KISS fan...).

Is editing these shaders a matter of changing some settings in some files or do you have to fire up a graphics editor? Or perhaps both?

No graphic editor - shaders are defined in the advanced material room within Poser.

I'm afraid that shader design is very rewarding but not simple.

Even simply following somebody else's design can be tedious, since it is a lot of clicking and typing. Poser doesn't make it easy to edit a bunch of materials simultaneously, which is what is needed on a typical Daz figure.

There are alternatives. You could use my shaders and use VSS, the (free) script I wrote to distribute shaders on figures and props so you don't have to edit each and every one by hand.

There are other tools as well, like Semidieu's Advanced Material Manager (not free but way cool).

There are many gallery images showing results with VSS - some people use it better than others. In general it sounds like a lot of work but it isn't. However, if you don't follow instructions well (albeit only 5 instructions) it will be useless. People who are familiar with how Poser works (click click click) and can't deal with automation (including the possible automation of horrible mistakes) have trouble. Most have no trouble.

OK. Well I'm all in for automation, though I prefer to use or write software to take care of it, whenever possible.

Will check our your VVS page and links and see if I can figure out what's it all about...

Thanks very much!