hi all,

I'm about to finish and publish some extensive study on GC and TM in Poser, Vue, Post (Photoshop) and alike. In the meanwhile I'm willing to help but I'm not sure any more what the questions are at this stage.

In short: Poserpro - when image GC set to render GC, and ON - is not really applying a net GC to the full image but is sandwiching the linear rendering between gamma decode/encode steps. As a result, textures (and color swatches) present themselves in the result as they are feed into Poser but the effects of the lighting/shadowing are gamma-corrected, pumping up the darks and relatively reducing the brights. This indeed makes the transitions towards dark happen in a smaller space, with more contrast. TM on the other hand is a Post-effect only, mainly effecting the brights, and should be used to mimic the response of classic film response to strong lighting. 

Applying the first - gamma decode - step to color swatches and probably as well to light emitters (IBL, IDL) can have some artifacts indeed, but does have some advantages as well. Vue for instance is not doing that, which also presents some (unpleasant) surprises - and user complaints. The Poser artifacts do effect the color arithmatic as applied in shaders and materials, like the V4 materials (zombie look), and propably EZSkin as well.

In general: watch your material settings, as the sum of them should not exceed 1 (Diffuse+Specular+Alt_Diff+Alt+Spec+Reflection+...) to represent a net light-receptor. If it does exceed 1 (eg when adding Ambient or taking defaults) it turns the surface into a light emitter, as it's returning more light than it receives.

Questions welcomed.

PS: you can mimic softboxes / arealights with a multi-spot setup (middle+on each corner, set to 25/15/15/15/15%) or with an ambient white square and applying IDL. the latter translates quite nicely into LuxRender as well.

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though