Hello all me again.

I was wondering if someone could help me figure out why I can’t get stronger lighting, or I should say shadows in my finale render.

Below you see two attachments.  The first is a screen print before rendering.   In this picture you see very strong lights and shadows on the wall and TV in the background.  Also too, if you look at the floor under the table and luggage your will also notice very strong shadows.

My problem is that once I render the scene there are hardly any shadows at all?

For the wall I have my light source I have a spot light on the other side of vertical window blinds; which I was hoping would create some nice shadows.

Note:   For this scene I would like it to be early morning just after the sun came up.  For one render I tried light blue light in hopes of getting that early morning blue-gray look and feel, and for the other I chose a red light to get the look and feel of early morning sunrise.

Below these two you will see my full render.

Any help you can give will be very much appreciated

Thanks again for all the help you’ve provided in the past

Steel

 

May I pleas ask:-

What render settings are you using?

Are shadows enabled in your light properties?

Thanks.

Phil thanks for your quck response was just bout to leave for work lol

Is this what you mean by shadows enabled in light properties?

This is a look at the properties of light shinging through blinds.

Hello,

I could imagine 2 reasons: Shadow setting or too much light.

Check the shadows, if the min bias is too high, light shines "through" the objects. (Don't set it too low, what can also cause problems). The default in my installation is 0.8 meters. Reduce that to something between 5 and 10 cm (or 2 to 4 inch if you use that scale).  Use raytraced shadows instead of depth mapped shadows.

For the second attempt, reduce the light intensity to 25% of their current value (maybe 50% for the main light (sun)). If too many (or too strong) light sources shine on the shadowed areas, they might "erase" the shadow by providing too much light. If everything fails, disable (uncheck "on") all light sources except the sun, and then do iteratively enable single light sources again, until you find the "culprit".

 

Best regards,

   Michael

 

Thanks for the info Michael314  On my way to work now but will try as you say soon as I get in this afternoon

Thanks again

I see depth-mapped shadows. Your depth map size will be a factor. The depth map necessary to cover, in detail, a lone figure, is very different from a whole house. Even though the camera only shows a small section, the whole thing is considered by the lighting subsystem, especially if you're using infinite lights.

Should there be some reason you insist on depth-mapped shadows, you will need to increase the shadow map size - perhaps even need to increase the max value that you're allowed to enter. 1024 is not big enough.

If you did not choose depth-mapped for a reason, then switch to raytraced.

Is there a roof/ceiling? Shadows are localized absence of light. I have seen more than once users not realize that the entire room was in shadow because of a ceiling. The lighting may be just IBL that's left, which is unaffected by walls and ceilings, unless you enable IDL as well.

And, of course, did you enable shadows in render settings?

Quote - The default in my installation is 0.8 meters.

 

That's not meters.

Well, it has been mentioned, but..
Too many lights.
Way too many lights.

Render with Gamma corection ON
Render with IDL to ON

Start with ONE single infinite light... YOUR SUN !

Use ONE single infite light to "play" SUN => There is ONLY one SUN shining on us.

Even in your preview, I see that all shadows are in the wrong place for the position of your "sun".

And from what I see ?
When rendering, all other lights, light up the places where the "realistic" shadows should be. => Results? No shadows left over.

"Think light".
"Be light".

Think shadow. => Be shadow. 
Remove the light that is shining on you. You should be in the dark as a shadow.

ONLY Indirect Light should be able to reach you as a shadow.
Think Vampire; they fear the sun. They fear direct light.

Vilters - this render can't use one single infinite light. The "sun" is outside and low, and isn't going to light the room - just one wall, through the blinds.

The slavish rule to follow is not "one light for all situations" - it is "one light in every place that there would be a light in real life".

So - if the room has a ceiling light, you should have a ceiling light.

If the room has a desk lamp, you should have a desk light.

Etc.

@BB => You are absolutely right about that.

That is why my statement: "Think light, be light" comes into play.

For a scene like this I would remove the roof as it is not visible, (or put some transparancy on the roofsurface) and put the lot in your self lit sphere, and add a infinite sun light somewhere around 30% strenght.
And go from there with some area renders to fine tune.

You clearly see all his shadows are washed away because he seems to use too many lights.

Could we also have active ambient channels on the props?

I think  what viters posted is what I would try... start with one light... the Sun outside the window
then render ... then add interior lighting one at a time after that, and render in between each added
light..think about where the light is coming from , ceiling light, lamp, or another room... I like to add light
as if were coming from another room to add depth to the picture... say like she left a light on in the
bedroom, or bathroom or where ever.. even from the kitchen area would be an option...
think about where the light would be in reality... and think about how dark it would really be if
the only light you had was coming from the blinds... even in the morning it would be very dark in the room
with no lights at all... As it is now in my house,  as I am posting this.. .
"Think Light" is a good analogy... put yourself in her spot and image where the light is actually coming from
be it other rooms.. other windows. other light fixtures.. and also play with the settings, intensity and such..
that also helps...

Do area renders, it goes faster and you can concentrate on critical area's.
Lights?
One at a time, and tweak but keep their intensity LOW as not to saturate the main light or its shadows.

Think light, be light
Think shadows and be shadows.

it is a sensitive "game".

Are you rendering at 300 dpi? If it is only at, say, 72 dpi, I don't think it will show. 

Another thing is that you may want to try to use the sidebar controls to reduce the intensity of the red light and to increase  the shadows.

The DPI's have nothing to do with shadow appearance upon rendering.

Hey guys just wanted you to know all your input was much appreciated and I think Im on my way to a pretty good render.  My problem now is memory but that will be taken care off this week; getting another 4Gb stick this Tue. or Wed.  

My only problem now is running out of memory when trying to render useing Poser 9 with indirect light.   Attached you see where it stops rendering bout halfway through but what Im getting looks good.   Dont know if I will be able to add a few more props or not, but let me know what you think.

Thanks again for all your help

Steel

I don't know what kind of computer you have and if you already used what I'm suggesting, but, did you try the FFrender, the option to render in a separate process?

In most cases you will solve the "out of memory" problem.

Show us your render settings please.

As with lights.
Start simpel, and build up to what your system can handle.

Try reducing bucket size.
Try IC at ZERO or 10 and build from there too.

Start by reducing bucket size. Might work out for you.
And YES; render in a serarate process.

For more, we would have to see the render settings.

 Fonpaol Going to try the area render you talked about next.

As for system I have a pretty powerful system with 12 GB's ram and can add another 4 GB's to max out at 16.

Thanks again

Steel

Quote - So - if the room has a ceiling light, you should have a ceiling light.

If the room has a desk lamp, you should have a desk light.

Etc.

 

Hum ... At full day i dont put on the lights in the house, the sun is enough ;)

Oh Yeah!  Sorry Anthanasius I had not given a set up for this scene which would explain the lighting.    In this scene the 2nd one in the series, it is early early morning just after sunrise.   The room is darken because she has just killed the man at the table and is packing up the money they had stolen together for a quick get a way.  I orig. wanted the light on the wall and througout the room to have a sort of blue/gray color like that of an early early morning sky around 5am, but it just did not show up right in the scene; this is why her clothing and stuff have a sort of blue hue to it.   I went with a burnt orange light on the wall coming through the blinds to give the color and shadow,  also you cant really tell but did the same with light on her as well.

Attached you will see the first scene in the series with no post work yet

 

You do realize that some of your props and clothing are self illuminating, they are wiping out shadows that naturally should be there.  For example, the corset shows a white interior rather than black.  The gun on the desk is not casting any shadows at all.  Even in a darkened room there are occlusion shadows at adjoining surfaces.

Yeah hborre I know bout the corset but was thinking I would try to fix in photoshop   as for the guns I was thinking since there are on the table not floating above.   Im thinking sometimes you just have to move on and just learn from past errors lol     

you are running P9?  adding ram won't make much difference as P9 can only access approx 2Gb, plus another 2Gb if you render as a separate process ( P9> 2Gb, Firefly > 2Gb)

if you're running P9 in a 32-bit Windows, then check out my "Running out of Memory" tutorial on how to boost your available user ram to 3Gb. See my signature for the tutoials site.