Here is a simple test render using the "Salon Jour" EnvSphere.

Notice three things:

1. There are small variations in light/shadow due to crappy reproducability of IDL at low settings. Sorry - I am pressed for time.

2. The large-scale lighting is the same.

3. We lost the reflections of the room.

Joe your goals contradict your conclusions.

If you want to place your props in the real world, then you want a 360 sky and you want the earth to extend a few thousand miles around your props. That ain't gonna happen unless you use an environment sphere.

Quote - Here is a closeup:

"Sun" + IBL fill vs single light.

No IDL as the scene is empty. GC + SSS enabled.

Skin shader is Bagginsbills latest via EZSkin with some light tweaks.

Is there a ground? Then it isn't empty and you should enable IDL.

Reflected lighting from the ground is a big deal.

Also, under the chin is lit by the chest. Under the ear is lit by the neck.

Always enable IDL.

Think about this.

Imagine a performer on a broadway stage lit by just a single spotlight, with a wood floor, a black curtain behind, and with the auditorium parts (walls, people, chairs) otherwise black and/or far enough away that the bounced light has decreased to unimportance.

When you simulate this, which of the following would you think is more accurate:

No IDL

IDL bouncing light from body part to body part, and from floor (Poser ground) to figure.

Render times jumped up but still bearable.

IDL only light inside Bagginsbill's envirosphere. No other lights.

I need to edit out the highlights on the forehead as in this setting they are distracting.

As I said, not really my cup of tea, but I will definitely experiment further.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Is there a ground?"

Nope, not in my empty scene. Usually I find the self lightning of the skin caused by IDL too strong. Perhaps because the skin I use is very light unlike the many "caucasian" skins sold that are really closer to mediteranian to my eyes.

It started as a V2 skin that I converted to V3 and I raised the gamma value quite a bit to get the lightness I needed.

@JoePublic: In using the sphere you don't really need to map a landscape to it. I never do that. I only use it as the sky and I supply everything else - landscape, trees, buildings, etc. So, it's not really cheating if you do it that way. And it gives that all over ambient light that a sky gives :).

Laurie

Which do you think is more accurate?

If IDL would be able to 100% accurately recreate the way light behaves in real life, then it would be indeed more accurate. ;-)

Right now all it does (with my default lights -one IBL plus one point) is to cause ugly shadows.

@JoePublic: That FR render looks pretty good to me. The FR might need some adjustment/reduction in strength, and the skin maps start to reveal a few oddities in places.

The FR will also respond to any scene elements that you might build around the figure (even if they completely obscure the environment sphere) helping to sit the figure into the scene in the final render. Ambient light bounces off scene elements via IDL adding extra fill in a natural way.

Doesn't IDL work better if the scene is enclosed? Like with a sphere or a box?

Laurie

Could be a whole host of possible reasons for the self lighting thing - don't know enough about that scene setup - lights/materials/render settings. Materials related perhaps?

Using GC and SSS and only a single light (plus the glowing orb set up as a light emitter), IDL now "behaves" properly.

Still can't make the orb to look as nice as with my "old" lights.

Joe,

Self-lit IDL skin is usually because the diffuse reflection coefficient (or value - i.e. the amount of arriving light that is reflected) is too high. This was an extremely common error in almost every shader ever made for Poser prior to IDL, at which time it started to matter, but before then it did not.

Diffuse_Value = 1 means that the only degradation of secondary light bounces (skin to skin) happens in the color itself. Typically the red component of skin textures (color map) is around 230 which in sRGB space is (230/255)^2.2 or about 80% red reflectivity.

Now consider light bouncing between arm and chest.

1 light unit arrives on chest

chest bounces .8 to arm

arm sees 1 unit direct + .8 unit bounced light, and then it bounces .8 of that or .8 * 1.8 = 1.44 units of light back to the chest

the chest now takes this secondary light into account (some of which came from itself) and recalculates that it is actually bouncing .8 * 1.44 = 1.152 versus the initial estimate of .8

The arm recalculates with the new incoming 1 unit direct + 1.152 units bounced

and so on, until the max bounces in render settings is reached.

The result is that when skin surfaces are near each other, an 80% bounce level for diffuse value, with four bounces, will result in an effective illumination level of 2.0496 light units, versus the direct lighting (no bounce) of just 1 light unit. This is unrealistic and is a simple consequence of naively setting the diffuse reflectivity at 1.

On the other hand, what happens if it is .8 instead? Then the effective red lighting is 1.577 light units. This is more accurate (though still high) and more important the erroneous 2.0496 unit is 30% brighter than this. It is noticeably wrong.

So - the correct use of diffuse shading is never have diffuse_value above .8.

This is not an indictment against IDL. It is an indictment against stupid shader values.

But with diffuse set to 85%, at least if you use a simple shader (Like just a texture plugged into diffuse), the OpenGL preview will look like crap.

And this is an absolute, positive no-no to me.

The renders will loose saturation, too, regardless of the lights used.

Your skinshader circumvents this problem it seems. I still cranked up saturation to 1.05 in the HSV node to get the same level of colorfulness back that I have in the OpenGL preview or when I look at the "naked" texture in Photoshop.

So I now can have my cake and eat it, too, and as I said, my default scene now uses GC and SSS and I'm in the progress to convert all my figures to use your shaders.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

But now for something completely different:

Any way to compensate for the "blueness" around the mouth if you reduce scatter scale to 0.8 ?

It's gone when I stick with the recommended scale of 1.5, but for this render I found the softer 0.8 scatter more pleasant looking.

I gather I'm not going to get a response to my question:

"I'd be interested in opinions on this IDL plugin:

http://www.runtimedna.com/IDL-STUDIO.html and the expansion packs:
http://www.runtimedna.com/IDL-Studio-Expansion-1.html and
http://www.runtimedna.com/IDL-Studio-Expansion-2.html"

Because, as I hear it, it's better to create my own setup depending on the envirionment. That's fine, but this discussion is a bit above my head. So if I could ask, what settings and where in the Poser 8 application (render settings, light settings, etc) do I set up depending on:

1. dark indoor setting?
2. bright outdoor setting?
3. dark outdoor setting?

If I could get a manual or files or a step by step it would be very helpful and a great boost to what I'm trying to do.

Bright outdoor setting:
Use BB"s sphere
Use One infinite true white light at 55% (and please stay away of those IBL Lights)

Render with IDL. (You have Poser 8, so no Gamma Correction)

Dark outdoor setting:
Use BB"s sphere
Use One infinite true white light at 15% to 25% (and please stay away of those IBL Lights)

Render with IDL. (You have Poser 8, so no Gamma Correction)

Joe public uses an IBL ligh AND a point light.
I recomend against that.

Simple reason? There is ONLY one sun, and ONE only.

Why, oh why, use an IBL light that does not behave like the sun does, but then need a second light to correct that, but does NOT behave like sunlight either?

Indoors:
Sorry, too many variables, depends heavily on the scene.

But in Poser8 you will not have the fantastic preview of the IDL light, as you would in Poser9 or PP2012.

And sorry, but I am against using someone elses lights, as they do not care for what is in YOUR scene.. You will allways have to adapt

And with a Joke; It is not by going to Mc Donalds that you will learn how to cook. :-)

Mc Donals can be acceptable, OK, but nothing more, and you will not learn a lot.
And as I said before, and others repeated; Most light sets out there are from before IDL.
So forget them. They wil do more harm then good.

For bright sun I actually use brighter infinite.

Infinite is 150% intensity!

You have to imagine you are a camera. You compensate for darkness by increasing exposure. This means in a high contrast environment (bright single light source - either sun or moon) you would perceive that light source as incredibly bright.

On the other hand, with many indoor sources of light, none are individually bright. Typical indoor intensity might be 2% but you have 12 of them.

Similarly, outdoors on an overcast day, the sun is muted and spread out, so you would not use 150% intensity.

The balance of moonlight through the window is decreased - why?

The moon doesn't change brightness. Why am I successful by changing it here?

Because our mental "camera" is at a different exposure!

I added other lights - interior lights. So there is plenty of light in every corner. The camera is set for a faster shutter speed. Thus the moonlight is less bright than before.

Now - how do you "buy" a set like this unless you also buy the room with it?

There is no single correct moonlight. You have to take into account camera exposure, which means you have to also consider other interior lights, which means you must also consider the shape of the room, and how would such a room be lit?

If lit from ceiling lights like an office, it is very different than lit from table and floor lamps like a home.

Here all the components are kept, with the following changes:

Environment sphere luminance set to 3 (3 times brighter than the original photo)

Infinite light for sun set to 270% intensity.

Thank you vilters and bagginsbill. I have downloaded the env sphere, and set up the Render settings as bagginsbill has shown and the one light (the moon). Is that the render settings to have with dark or bright environments?

Rendering now but sure is taking forever. And forever.

Michael - the reason these techniques are sort of "new" in the Poser world is because typical hobby CG computers were too slow for them just five years ago.

Render settings are about quality not about luminance. I made them (the render quality settings) low hoping you would find the render times tolerable. Mine are usually much higher. Sorry I have a good computer. grin

My advice is to render small. I don't need 1 mega pixel images to see I screwed up the light level. I do quick test renders at around 200 to 300 pixels.

What setting are you referring to? Pixel samples? I definitely need my test renders to speed up.

Size of the image. Each pixel takes a certain time. The more you have, the more time it takes.

I use the Render Dimension dialog to adjust the size of the image without changing preview window size at all. Or I use the pulldown on the Render time to render Half or Quarter size instead of Full.

A 200 by 200 pixel image is 40,000 pixels. Suppose that takes 5 minutes.

An image that is 1000 x 1000 is going to be 1,000,000 pixels. That will take over two hours instead.

The ones I posted earlier took almost an hour each.

I have reduced the dimensions to 200 x 200 and it is still only about 35%  done after an hour.

I'm trying to think what settings I have to cause the increased rendering time. One thing I remember is that I selected sub surface scattering in the material room for the character's skin. Would that cause a big increase in rendering time?

Quote - ...Would that cause a big increase in rendering time?

Most definitely ;)

Laurie

I can't get over how people bite off trying a new thing by doing a whole scene, with figure, skin shader, hair, cloth, and then they wonder why they don't have enough time to learn everything.

Render a couple of primitives in a white room with a doorway. Once you know that inside and out, then you have permission to use a figure.

Until then, you're in way over your head.

Would you be willing to post a screenshot of your render settings, Michael? We might be able to trim that time down for you a bit... also, LaurieA has a strategy for making Poser activity a "low priority" Windows activity... IIRC, (which I probably don't). Not sure even if that strategy works for 32-bit versions of Poser, which P8 is, or if it has an impact on render times.

Running at low priority has no impact on render time. It simply lets your computer react to your presence quickly.

Quote - I can't get over how people bite off trying a new thing by doing a whole scene, with figure, skin shader, hair, cloth, and then they wonder why they don't have enough time to learn everything.

Render a couple of primitives in a white room with a doorway. Once you know that inside and out, then you have permission to use a figure.

Until then, you're in way over your head.

I really think you're addressing an issue I was actually going to mention: workflow, BB. You experiment until you feel you have a reasonably good understanding of a given component of Poser (shader/lights/what-have-you). Michael's keen to finish a project, so he just wants to get a reasonably decent render out in as quickly a period of time as possible. Which I think is where most Poser users are... they don't have that experimentation mindset.

Poser, unfortunately, is of a complexity that precludes load-pose-render-getKillerResults workflow: there really are no shortcuts. You can't buy a shortcut, either, unfortunately. I purchased and had a play with the IDL 360 light thingie available over at DNA: the promos looked awesome and as per usualy, I was sucked into thinking that I'd get the same results.

Actually did - there was no false advertising. But it wasn't the look I was actually after. So, I dissected what was being offered in this set and on occasion use bits of it because that suits my workflow.

But really, Michael, I really think that in the short term, you're best off spending a bit of time with that doorway and primitives and really basic render setting that crank out an image in no time so you can get a feel for what Poser does. You do need to include that in your workflow, only until you get a feel for it. It will flatten that learning curve significantly.

When did we start this thread? How much have you learned since starting it? Where would you be now with your renders if you spent a bit of time messing with lights and simple props to get a feel for what Poser does instead of trying to get a finished product straight away?

Not criticising you at all, mind you: I'm there too. I get impatient and just wanna get the thing done. But Poser resists me at every turn: I keep getting some new wrinkle I don't understand and then I can either Photoshop it out or decide I need to nut out what's causing it.

If you're into Poser for the long term - good CHOICE! - then stick around, read a lot, experiment, develop your style and enjoy. It's an amazing programme ... with the exception that there's no make-art button. :biggrin:

Nah...no impact on render times...lol.

Laurie

Quote - Running at low priority has no impact on render time. It simply lets your computer react to your presence quickly.

Thanks, BB... wasn't sure about that.

Seems a consensus, then.

There IS! Hidden in the Python Scripts window, under Wardrobe Wizard > Utilities > More. I guess it's PP2012 only though LOL

It really does make art. Quite literally actually.

Sorry for the diversion. I couldn't stop myself xD

Quote - I can't get over how people bite off trying a new thing by doing a whole scene, with figure, skin shader, hair, cloth, and then they wonder why they don't have enough time to learn everything.

Render a couple of primitives in a white room with a doorway. Once you know that inside and out, then you have permission to use a figure.

Until then, you're in way over your head.

I understand where you're coming from, however, I'm not exactly that new at this. I've been creating and posing characters on and off for over two years, but that being said, I've never gotten too heavily into lighting. Now I'm at a point where I feel I need to and was hoping that I could find a better, faster, easier way than the hunting and pecking - the time laborious experimenting, trial and mostly error -  I have been doing with lighting.

Point well taken and a good idea to experiment with a very simple scene.

You wanted to see my render settings. They are attached. Also attached below is a screen shot of the small render that I THOUGHT was going to give me a night type envirionmnet. I know, I know.... try the door.

Cool, thanks for the render setting screenshot, Michael.

1st tip: take minimum displacement bounds to something a bit more than 0.000. That will speed up things HUGEly. Like 0.004 or 0.008.

Your IDL quality is really final quality... you can do trials at less. Like 4-5.

Raytrace bounces... 3 is final quality as well and only if you have something in the scene that requires the bounces... for checking stuff, go with 1. I'd go with sinc instead of box for post filter size: gives you better quality for the same price.

Well, that's my suggestions, anyway... :blink:

I would kill displacement for test renders.  Depending how extensive it is used within a scene, that can cause render times to increase significantly.

Thanks, RobynsVeil. Changing to the settings you recommend definitely speeded up!  Really appreciate the tips.

However, I have two questions:

1. With the settings I have for the sole light in the scene (as shown in my screenshot above) why does it render as daylight and not night?

2. And, how do I turn off Subsurface Scattering? For a lot of the skin materials I clicked on Add Subsurface Scattering and don't see how I can remove it.