I know BB will come in here and smack me with a stick, like a zen master with a dense pupil, but... I don't understand GC.  From how to why, I'm apparently quite lost.  I think I understand that textures need to be set to 2.2, except for grey maps, which should have a forced value of 1.0.  I'm using BB's satin shader, with built-in GC, for some things, and I like it.

But beyond that, I got nothin'.  :sad:  The adapted satin shaders look nice, but they look better to me without GC enabled in the render options.  And they don't quite agree with any of my other textures.  When I set my color maps to 2.2 and set up GC rendering at 2.2, I get all kinds of ugly.

Worse than that, some of my grey maps are multi-purpose.  I have bump/displacement maps which also function as color maps, after being run through some colorramp nodes.  I can't figure out how to deal with that stuff.  They don't look so good with GC rendering enabled.

So I come to you, forum comrades, hoping that you can help set me straight.  What do I need to do?

Note that I've been ignoring GC discussions for months or years now, because I didn't have the tools for it.  So I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. 

Are you using too much light? With PP2012 and GC, you need much less. Which is odd, as the default UI comes with four lights instead of the 3 in Poser 8. Just a suggestion.

I'm not sure, but for me it looks as if some shaders/materials aren't done right for GC. 

What kind of skin shader do you use?

How does the shader for the suit look like? 

Is the figure from your freebies? Then I will have a look today in the evening. 

Cage, which lights? Would you be willing to share settings? IDL enabled? Also are you doing material GC AND renderer GC? Doubling up isn't going to give you good results. If you have a version of Poser that does renderer GC, use that, and set material GC for everything to 1.

Cage

using GC will change your entire workflow and you have to go all in or not at all. That means paying heed to the things you mentioned but also factors such as lighting: the lights you used before GC were set up to compensate for the fact that you didn't have GC.

As ever, posting screenshots of material, light and render settings will help people see what's going wrong.

From your single screenshot, I see at least 3 lights with shadows ON.
Most of the figure being in a shadow.

When starting IDL and GC, throw all lights over the horizon, and start with ONE infinite light at 60% shadows ON.
ALLWAYS in BB"s free sphere if you are not in a complete closed room.
Build from there.

IDL + GC is a whole new ball game.
Quite useless to import an old scene, click GC ON, and render.

IDL + GC require you to think Light, be Light.

When putting more and more lights in a scene, all with shadows ON, you could end up with a completely BLACK figure. (depending on the setup)

The lights aren't optimal, but not the reason for the bad looking render IMHO. Cage included BB's light meter, the lights are a little bit darker in the "no GC" render, but I doubt that this is the reason for the suboptimal look.

Cage, before we carried away with a multitude of suggestions, let me point out one important thing.  I quickly skimmed through the posts, so I may have missed a thing or two.  If you are using any of the Pro series versions, enable render GC to 2.2 for all material shaders dependent on GC nodes.  Chances are you could be doubling gamma if both shaders and render settings are equal.  So your either render with GC enabled and set every GC shader to 1, or use CG enabled shaders and set render settings to 1.

Be sure to use the included ChangeGamma script to set your bump and transmaps to a Gamma of 1.0...

P.S. Great Batgirl!

I'm taking notes, here.

• Lighting is too strong for GC
• Optimal GC requires a closed environment; use BB's envirosphere-thingy
• GC should be 2.2 for EITHER materials OR render options, but not both; one or the other should be at 1.0
• Grey maps (bump, trans, etc) should be at GC 1.0

To answer some questions (or try to :lol:).

• The Batgirl character is available on my Antonia site, but the one pictured above is halfway updated for P9/PPro2012.  A fully updated version will be posted some time after Antonia-WM is available.
• I've always had a tendency to overlight scenes, I think, and my lights are definitely not optimized for GC (or realism/verism in general, I suspect).  I'll try to apply the suggestions given above (thank you!).
• I have IDL, IBL, and AO enabled, above.  I guess they aren't all needed, with GC?
• The suit and hair shaders are definitely not optimized for GC, and that leads into one of my main problems, about which I'll expound below.  :laugh:

The attached shows the hair shader.  As shown, the greyscale bump/displacement map also functions as the color map for the hair, after being run through various color nodes.  I have no idea how to replicate a similar effect for GC compatibility.  BB's satin shader may show the way, with its built-in node-driven GC, but I can't sort out what he's doing, to try to adapt the process for my needs.

This is my effort to facsimilate lurex, a two-way stretch fabric which has metallic fibers woven into it.  This is a hackwork shader and does not reflect proper materials room practice.  It does sort of get me 85-90% of the effect I want, until I try to use it with GC.

try what the others said, and uncheck refl_lite_mult, refl_kd_mult. turn off AO for lites and surfaces.

Quote - Thanks, everyone.  :laugh:

I'm taking notes, here.

• Lighting is too strong for GC

This could be the case, since GC normally makes everything brighter. But since there are no clipped (white) pixels in your image, it should not be harmful. Note that the light you have in your virtual studio seems to be essentially yellow. And because Batgirl's suit is essentially violet, which is complementary to yellow, the yellow light from the environment (generated from IDL) cannot properly bring out the violet suit, so it appears somewhat muddy greyish (as it would in reality).

Quote - - Optimal GC requires a closed environment; use BB's envirosphere-thingy

Yes and No. GC does not need a closed environment. The closed environment is good for adding realism by using indirect lighting. And when striving for realism, you normally use gamma correction, too. But GC and realsm are essentially two different concepts.

Quote - - GC should be 2.2 for EITHER materials OR render options, but not both; one or the other should be at 1.0

By materials, you mean the image maps? These two are unrelated. You would use GC=2.2 in your render settings based on what you want to do with the image, after your rendered it. For the images (textures) it depends on what kind of data your image maps contain. If the source of the image maps are photos, they normally contain gamma encoded values, so you use Gamma=2.2, too.

Quote - - Grey maps (bump, trans, etc) should be at GC 1.0

Yes, but it is "should", not "must". Again this is affected by the actual data contained in your greymaps. That means in particular, you have to actually know what data those greymaps contain, which is often not immediately clear. For example, if you constructed those maps with photoshop by filling them with pixel value 128, thinking "Hey, those pixels should let half of the light through!", you use gamma=1. If you constructed them in photoshop thinking "Hm, this color looks like it let half of the light through", then you use gamma=2.2. If you got your greymaps from some dubious internet sources, you have to look at them and take a guess.

When using maps for multiple purposes at once, i would normally use a gamma-node, and not the value in the image-node. Especially since the image-node's gamma is a global value shared among all materials, which usually leads to annoyance.

Quote - To answer some questions (or try to :lol:).

• The Batgirl character is available on my Antonia site, but the one pictured above is halfway updated for P9/PPro2012.  A fully updated version will be posted some time after Antonia-WM is available.
• I've always had a tendency to overlight scenes, I think, and my lights are definitely not optimized for GC (or realism/verism in general, I suspect).  I'll try to apply the suggestions given above (thank you!).
• I have IDL, IBL, and AO enabled, above.  I guess they aren't all needed, with GC?

Usually you can skip the AO, because when you buy IDL, it is inclusive.

Quote - - The suit and hair shaders are definitely not optimized for GC, and that leads into one of my main problems, about which I'll expound below.  :laugh:

The attached shows the hair shader.  As shown, the greyscale bump/displacement map also functions as the color map for the hair, after being run through various color nodes.  I have no idea how to replicate a similar effect for GC compatibility.  BB's satin shader may show the way, with its built-in node-driven GC, but I can't sort out what he's doing, to try to adapt the process for my needs.

The shader is interesting. I don't have enough experience with shatter to see how it works in different light conditions, I will try to recreate it from the image. 

What kind of skin shader did you use?

To elabortate a bit on your conclusions

• Lighting is too strong for GC
  The interaction between the lights is wrong, putting most of your figure in shadows. It is Ok to have more lights in a scene, but start with ONE true white light, and build from there. Make area renders to test small variations.
• With IDL and in a closed scene, often one light is all you'll ever need.
  The rest of the light coming from diffused IDL light bouncing off all other objects in the scene. (As is the case in real life.) Everything reflects light in one way or another. If something does not reflect light, like a black hole in space, we would not be able to see it;

• Optimal GC requires a closed environment; use BB's envirosphere-thingy
  IDL works best in a closed environment; See above.
  Indirect Light has to come from somewhere. It needs something to come from. It needs a base. One single figure in an empty space, and you have no other actors, so no other light sources. So no IDL exept for the figure itself.

• GC should be 2.2 for EITHER materials OR render options, but not both; one or the other should be at 1.0
  Just tell colored textures to use render gamma when you load them.  And set GC for the scene in the renders options.

• Grey maps (bump, trans, etc) should be at GC 1.0
  Correct, bump, displacement and transmaps should stay at Gamma 1

Sugestion:
Put the figure above in BB's sphere, and put one infinite true white light on it.
See what happens.

Quote - try what the others said, and uncheck refl_lite_mult, refl_kd_mult. turn off AO for lites and surfaces.

Oh, man.  I keep forgetting to do that!  I even have a script which will do it for me, but I keep forgetting.  Thank you.  :laugh:

Quote - What kind of skin shader did you use?

I've used BB's "post #240" SSS skin shader, modified with some bits from an older skin shader (for the purpose of shifting the texture color or adding some detail to it).

My standard testscene is inside BB's sphere;
(actually the sphere is allways there wahtever I do)

And with one infinite true white light, set at 70%
Load textures using render Gamma

Set GammaCorrection at 2.2  in the render options

BTW, you speak of AO?
Where do you use AO?
IDL replaces AO calculations. (very brief of what is actually happening)
So it is completely pointless to set AO somewhere when you render with IDL.

AO is old and is essentially replaced with IDL in newer Poser versions.
You can till use it, if you do NOT render with IDL.

I didn't realize there was a "Gamma" node, now!  Ooh.  I will use that thing!  :laugh:

And I will test using BB's sphere.  I'll have to go DL it.

"uncheck refl_lite_mult"

Is good practice but you have no reflections build in the shaders anywhere so less important.

I've tried to rebuild your shader (what are the values for wave and were do the math nodes go there?) and it looks like this, rendered with GC. One light and a skydome with the image of a grey room loaded, RDNA's infinity cove in the background. Your material is very bright. Does that look bad to you? I still don't know why your material looks that crappy in the render above. 

Your shader will need a reflection node too if you work with IDL. Indirect light does not trigger specular nodes, you need low level reflection for that. 

Well done bantha.
Now if you want to show the IDL interaction between objects?
Put a large true yellow box on her left, a large true green or red box on her right side, and a smaller true green box front or back.

IDL works best when there is interaction between different objects.

In-Direct-Light action that is.

ha-ha- or put lots of different but true colored boxes around her and let the Light and IDL do their thing...

PS, I think your shadows area bit on the HARD side, and it shows.
I would soften my shadows a bit in such a render.
A shadow is never an ON-OFF thing, it smooths out.
u use raytraced shadows? Yes?

Possibly the weave node settings are important, but hidden, in the shader screengrab I posted.  Weave is also dependent on UV mapping, which can vary results.

Rather than try to re-post the shader image, showing the bits hidden above, here is the whole set of WIP lurex shaders I have on hand.  They're not great, don't work in GC, but maybe someone can get some use from them.

The one seen above on Batgirl is lurex1.  The displacement map has been set to None for all of the shaders here.  Change the extension on the attached file from .txt to .zip.

@cage,
Sir, you also have very hard sharp edged shadows.
A shadow is never hard sharp edged, but smooths out in distance.

It is (only in 2010, and i guess in 2012, too) in the "Math" section (see illustration).

Quote -
Your shader will need a reflection node too if you work with IDL. Indirect light does not trigger specular nodes, you need low level reflection for that.

I think, IDL does not work with reflection neither, only diffuse (hence it is called IDL :-). Anyway, for the glitter effect any of those should work, but with specular you need some directed light (point/infinite/spot).

Yes sir, there is a Gama node, and there is a script to change Gamma too.
Who ever said Poser was not full of options..... :-)

But?

:-) just let's try to get Cage on the road.

Load textures with; "Use render Gamma settings", and in render options set GC to 2.2

Use a single infine light at reduced setting in BB's shere, and soften your light shadow a bit.
This should get you in the right direction.

By doing small steps, one can climb a hill.

But????
Where is BB - shader mastermind?????
He should have been here hoursssss agoooooo ;-)

IDL is his favorite playground :-)

He'd blink at your render and solve it in supercruise.
Leaving a wave of; "Why did not I think at that", behind.

Okay.  I did all of the above, and the attached shows my results.  One infinite light, softened shadows, intensity = 60%, shadows = 0.5.

Quote - Where is BB - shader mastermind?????
He should have been here hoursssss agoooooo ;-)

I hope I didn't chase him off with my crack in the original post.    That was a joke!  I just forgot the laughing smiley.  Which is unusual, for me, as I generally overuse smileys & emoticons most egregiously.  :lol:

Oh boy,

I did take a long look at your last render, and at the material setup.

The last render.

1. In the GC DISABLED (left)  you see on the light meter that you have too much light.
   Reduce light till the light meter says it is OK.
   Render.
   What will you see?
   Yes, a very - very DARK suit.
   With that light setting, the right one will become even darker.

First step; adapt the material settings to get what you want NON GC.

1. The material setup.
   This is a material build for multiple lights, or in a period before IDL and or GC came to Poser. (one of the 2).

Result; the material only looks good when light is shining directly ON it.
It is a disaster for ambient light.

The fall off from light purple to dark purple is overdone.

In most of my tests I get edge purple that is darker then black. :-) :-) :-)
In the armpit, in shadows, the purple color fading from front to side goes too fast. 
And as bantha said, it could use some specular.
The edge blend steering over the Color ramp nodes is too agressive, darkening too fast and too harsh.

02:30 AM here, the rest is for tomorrow..
Happy experimenting, and happy Posering.

One of my growing concerns, based on what I'm learning about GC, is specularity and highlights.  The lurex suit picks up highlights very strongly and I've been trying to recreate lighting from certain photographs, guided in part by the suit's specularity.  The photographs in question often show three strong areas of suit specularity, indicating at least three lights affecting the scene.  (And... granted, I have them wrong, as is particularly evident from the shadows.  :lol)

I don't think I can get the specular effects I'm after, using one light and the envirodome.  I'm kind of hoping this is just a sort of a "starter scene" recipe for learning to set up GC.  If these lighting conditions are the new scene setup restrictions for using gamma correction in Poser, umm.  :scared:

Anyway, a little worried about that.  I'll try more of the thread ideas and see what happens.  Thanks everyone.

Quote - ...

I don't think I can get the specular effects I'm after, using one light and the envirodome.  I'm kind of hoping this is just a sort of a "starter scene" recipe for learning to set up GC.  If these lighting conditions are the new scene setup restrictions for using gamma correction in Poser, umm.  :scared:

I guess the point here is: You do no need to add many lights into your scene, when you just would need one. I.e. when you render your scene with GC, you typically can use as many lights as you would use in a real world scene. Not more, to light up your shadows (as you would do without GC). When rendering a room lit with a thousand candles however, you still use thousand point lights (or three, in your case).

Quote - Anyway, a little worried about that.  I'll try more of the thread ideas and see what happens.  Thanks everyone.

Perhaps you could render your scene with a more neutral background (as banta did), and to get the suit alone look right, and delay the yellow background for later.

Quote - When rendering a room lit with a thousand candles however, you still use thousand point lights (or three, in your case).

Okay, good.  Whew.  :laugh:  'Cause I was getting a bit worried.

I'll try the neutral background, as you say.  I've been working on the suit shader with IDL disabled, so that hadn't been a problem, previously, but it's a good idea if I'm treating IDL as more essential.

I'm still kind of wondering why we supposedly need gamma correction.  What is the actual benefit of it? 

IIRC, the outer ring of the Light meter measures specular lighting, which you can see is black in your image post.  To introduce that specular lighting, create another light with the Diffuse chip black and the Specular chip white.  This new light will not increase your overall lighting for the scene.  Of course, I am assuming you are still using IDL for these renders.  The costume is beginning to look correct under these conditions, but her skin still does not look realistic enough.  You did mention that you use the new Post-240 BB introduced at RDNA, right?

Correct.  I'm using the 240 shader, but I've added some bits to the front end of it.  Those bits just modify the texture before it plugs into BB's shader.  So AFAIK, I can say I'm basically using his.

I didn't realize you could separate the diffuse and specular effects of a light.  How cool!  :laugh:  I'll try that.  However... the suit really isn't looking right.  It, like the skin and hair, is coming out way too dark.  :sad:

Quote - This is what I get in this WIP with 1 infinite light and BB's envsphere with IDL, rendered with Gc in Render settings.

Well, huh.  Why doesn't mine do that?  Maybe the alterations I've made to BB's setup really are affecting the GC results.  I'll have to tinker.

Also: Ooh, Alex Ross Superman! :woot: 

A little something on the back burner for a new avatar.  Dial spun.  Still mulling over the hair and suit.

poser materials room allows adjustment of diffuse and specular on directional lites in recent versions.  to simulate specular surface in absence of specular lites (e.g. hdri bg), use refl. channel as mentioned above.

just sharing my experiences (after having been beaten up by BB, and he was right doing so).

rendering GC: should be ON, and 2.2.
if you don't do that your image will suffer from severe and non-recoverable dynamic loss in the dark regions. BB showed this in a scene with a white ball reflecting on a just 2% reflective black box. With no CG you cannot see reflections, even not when pumping up the darks in post (Photoshop), even not when using 32-bit HDR image formats.

material GC: should be "like rendering" (or 2.2 manually) for all color textures
and should be 1 for alle value-textures like bump, transparency, etc. There is a script doing this for you.
If you don't do that on color, than a full-red texture (external source) will deviate from a full-red colorswatch (internal). If you don't do that on values, you will loose contrast in the mid-gray (20-80%) region, showing less bump, less specular, less transparency except for the extremes.

When these settings make weird results, check the materials setup. For instance, the Vicky-4 HighRes textures from the package throw in a cyanic color swatch disturbing the diffuse channel. Fine for the default colored lighting but a nightmare when lighting is set to plain white, and wrecking your GC interpretations. When I set the color swatch and the lights to white, all was fine.

IDL: is great for radiosity and self-illumination effects, and for large-scale / outdoor scenes using a SkyDome object. But do note that you need explicit lighting to get the shadows and highlights in, like photographers are using flash when working outdoors.

Explicit light setups on the other hand are preferrable for indoor close-up portraying studio results, as it will be the shadowing which does the job. Buth then, like photographers are using white, silver and gold panels, IDL can be of support as well.

All the best.

I missed next page of responses, doh! please ignore, I was never here

GC is just a tool.  it's not a religion or a value; it's neither good nor bad.  you don't have to use it.  it can help with realism, but that also means it realistically desaturates everything.  you're doing hyper-saturated stuff, so it will work against what you want your stuff to look like.  it will realistically reduce contrast, but again, you're doing really high contrast style work.  unless you're specifically making this for use by yourself or someone else for photoreal results, giving up your existing workflow, lights, and materials, along with the results you like, isn't helpful.  if you find you're having consistent problems with overexposure or realism or just results that are too high contrast, try GC.  of if you're just curious and want to learn new stuff.   until then, you're just making work for yourself and getting results you don't like.

just to clarify, i always use linear workflow myself.  but that's because it saves a lot of time for me in terms of getting the results i want.   when i switched, i didn't end up spending more time on lights or materials, because i was already spending tons of time on those.   regular workflow presented me with more problems than linear workflow did, so switching was beneficial.  but that's not true for everyone.  only you can decide whether it's helpful for you. 

i follow an ungodly amount of really skilled artists here, and very few use GC.  of those that do, most use Luxrender, not Firefly, for rendering (and most of those use DS/REALITY).  to be very honest, the work of ones that do aren't any qualitatively better than those that don't, and they're often weaker in terms of other aspects.  they're not even necessarily more realistic, except in light and shading.   i could list all of the other considerations involved in making an effective image, or even a realistic image, but that seems unnecessary.  the point is that you should choose what's important to you in your work, and then use the workflow that helps you achieve that most easily.

Thanks, kobaltkween.  Hmm.  I do prefer a colorful, high contrast image style.  If GC isn't compatible with that, perhaps I'm simply using the wrong example files with which to try to learn.  Hmm.  I would like to learn to use it, just to understand what it is and what it does, to be able to use it should I want to.  Perhaps I shouldn't be trying to convert my character shaders to  it, though.

for more vivid contrast/colours, try it with HSVTM, exp. 1.66, gain 1.33, instead of render GC.

the following is baffling to scientists, but check out the great masters who were trying to do realistic paintings starting in the renaissance.  they used non-linear application of pigments to depict illumination of the scene because they learnt thru trial and error that human perception varies, but is decidedly non-linear in its aesthetic sense.

Quote - for more vivid contrast/colours, try it with HSVTM, exp. 1.66, gain 1.33, instead of render GC.

Oh, absolutely.  But where do I get fifty hagfish? 

Errm.  Pardon.  Too much coffee tonight, methinks.  :lol:  I should say, "Huh?  What'd you say?"  What is HSVTM? 

tone mapping.  HSV = hue saturation value.  exponential (exposure).  this is called exposure control in photoshop.  it's a way of snazzing up colour photos that are low-contrast or too dark.  gamma control doesn't work as well in terms of human perception, but it is the linear method.

Should I try this in Poser, with HSV nodes?  (If so, where do you suggest?)  Or do you mean I should apply the idea as a post-work step? 

Quote - This is a render opition for Firefly

Wow!  Something else I've seen over and over, but never really noticed!  :lol:  Thank you.  :laugh: