In addition I used the Elite textures on her and EnvSphere from BB and one regular spot light + indirect light in PP 2012.

What are those black dusts and dirts on her ? Btw, the problem only occurs when I render to 5000x5000. In an initial small preview render, everything seemed to be ok.

Secondly, what render setting should I use to optimize the picture for such a huge resolution ? I mean to get the most from the Elite textures.

Thanks,

Michal

What is your shadow min bias? Set it low - 0.10000. Also looks like you might have AO turned on somewhere, either in the materials or in the lights. You don't need AO with IDL.

You also have a more than one light with the Envirosphere. I wouldn't recommend that. Also check to see you have ray traced shadows and not depth mapped.

That's all I can think of.

Laurie

Yep, I have AO in materials enabled, that's my mistake...

Shadow min bias is set to 0.5. Is there a need to lower it down so much ?

It depends on what your units are.  That's pretty high if your units are feet...

For inches, BB had been recommending 0.1.  And if you are using the Envsphere without any textures, you could forego any additional lighting.

It's perfectly valid to use lights, especially specular-only lights, to make specular nodes work. (Blinn, Glossy, Specular, Anistropic, ks_microfacet, etc.)

If you want to go no lights, you gotta totally go over everything that has any shine at all and add Fresnel_Blend + Reflect nodes and set the Reflect softness correctly.

When done right, no lights are needed.

This is a no-light render. Observe the TV reflected on the figure.

Quote - No lights here. All three surfaces use Reflect and the Fresnel effect to handle specular - which then comes from the EnvSphere.

Wow! Is there any specific tutorial on how to achieve this thing step by step ?

BTW, a beautiful render of the man in your first post. Where do you have these high res textures from ?

Cheers,

Michal

BB - those renders are absolutely amazing.  You sir, are a true genius.

Amazing stuff! Some real magic there Bagginsbill...

So adding specular lights, as opposed to no lights, sounds much quicker to do than going through and adding / tweaking nodes?

Would there be any noticeable benefit to doing the latter over the former?

Also, when I have no lights, or minimal lights my OpenGL preview is either entirely black or very dark... respectively.

Is this normal? Or am I just being a big newbie and missing something?

comparing my renders to BB's renders makes me wana hide under a rock...

:O)

:-), am gonna rent a submarine to dive for cover.

I wish I could send a trainload of "time" to BB. Extra time to teach.

(and a cake and some flowers to his wife to let him teach). :-))

The problem , as usual, is that all his valuable info get so disperced over hundreds of posts. :-(
No way to keep up.

He definitely should write a tutotorial book or something.

By the way, if Smith Micro headhunted him, they would make one of the best deals in their business. 

A huge talent.

Quote - By the way, if Smith Micro headhunted him, they would make one of the best deals in their business. 

I think they have :P

Laurie

Quote - Also, when I have no lights, or minimal lights my OpenGL preview is either entirely black or very dark... respectively.

Is this normal? Or am I just being a big newbie and missing something?

Just for preview, use an infinite light and change the diffuse_color and specular_color chip to black.  That will give you plenty of preview lighting and will not render.

Quote - By the way, if Smith Micro headhunted him, they would make one of the best deals in their business.  A huge talent.

He wrote the Poser Library interface, and did the skin shaders for Miki 3...

Oh, I wasn't aware of that ;). Still new here.

Quote - > Quote - Also, when I have no lights, or minimal lights my OpenGL preview is either entirely black or very dark... respectively.

Is this normal? Or am I just being a big newbie and missing something?

Just for preview, use an infinite light and change the diffuse_color and specular_color chip to black.  That will give you plenty of preview lighting and will not render.

Aha - I see! thanks ;-)

I still feel that someone needs to tap into BB's brain so we can his arcane arts at things and produce a book on it. :D

..... okay, it'd likely be a volume of books rivalling the now-no-longer-printed Encyclopedia Brittanica.... but still. :D

Now that I finally have time to explore my PP2012 that I'd gotten from the launch date, all these fun IDL threads of BB's can finally start to make sense to me!

BB is/was in the process of writing a book.  But it may need to be pushed back in light of PP2012 release.