PP2012 is finally able to do interiors with some conviction, as well.

Consider this scene I bought - bar basement - rendered as I got it.

Seems like - well - crap, right?

Big improvement. Lights are very important. But...

I make extensive use of blurred reflections in this scene. I use it all the time now. It's fast.

This is softness = 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12

Quote - With the shaders corrected as well, now it is very convincing. This looks like something more than your typical sub $10 Poser scene, right?

I make extensive use of blurred reflections in this scene. I use it all the time now. It's fast.

You said something about raising the bar in another thread.  You've definitely done that, no pun intended.

Have you considered making a merchant resource shader kit?

ETA: I know you teach us reprobates tirelessly and the hope is for us to learn to do all this ourselves.  But let's face it: we are not, most of us, anywhere close to as skilled at this as you.

Lights were 2 planes (one left, one right) at ambient value 6.  Pure white.

Render settings 40 IC and 50 ILQ, no shadows, no SSS.  I think the skin is a little oily.  I tried an edge_blend on the reflection softness and it worked a treat.

Pls excuse the color map silliness on her right hip and under her right arm (I got a bit excited in ZBrush adjusting the map).

I re-ran this render without any walls, and the result was very very similar.  The amount of light coming from the back wall back onto the figure is minimal.  Since the two planes are very bright, the reflect amount has to be dialed back (think it's 0.02 or in that region).  That's what killing the reflect from the back wall.  This could be solved by reducing the diffuse value of the lights from 1 down to something like 0.2 - then increasing the reflection amount.  Although one of the advantages of very more reflection values is that the skin does not reflect too much on itself.

I also ported this scene to both Lux and Octane.  The results were fractionally better (as you would expect), however rendertime was way more than Poser (I think even Octane was around the 4hrs mark, although that was with SSS on).

Quote - You guys didn't tell me the band was getting back together!

I posted a new shadow catcher that plays nice with 2012 IDL  + GC.

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?66824-Shadow-Catcher-and-IDL

Got it!  This will come in very handy.  Thanks.

LL - keep working on it until you get specular (reflections) without that light.  It's worth it.  I made up a simple scene with a sphere (and the 2 emitters) to get everything dialed in before progressing to fgures.  Also, wind out some of the red from the girl skin color (by reducing the red component of the diffuse color).  For some reason, with Gamma at 2.2 and emitter based lighting, the red saturates a little too much.   Chair looks great.

I've noticed that having a value in alternate diffuse channel will affect material quite a bit  with IDL... can someone explain a bit more about that? I'm not sure if I understand the alternate diffuse channel well enough.

I'm not quite sure of the material settings or what nodes to use either..lol.

Laurie

Quote - Heya Paul Maxxx.. Wow. I thought you guys were gone for good. I add this in spirit of this thread. Tried for unpredictable setting and light effects. IDL w one light. These are draft settings but will evolve. All in all Pro2012 a huge hit for me.

 

Welcome to the party.  Very good work in this render.  Skin looks great.  I'm a big fan of your realistic morphing work.  I need to upgrade my Zbrush next so i can get some realistic morphs on this VickiWM.  I love the way the weightmapped figures look in Poser now.  Big improvement over the old.  I almost gave up hope and moved to DazStudio because of the excellent weight mapping the Genesis figures have.  But VictoriaWM drov me back to Poser and I got 2012.  Glad I did.  IDL is pretty impressive so far.

Quote - Unfortunately I couldn't get the hang of it. I had to add one specular only light. Not satisfied with it.

Love that chair.  Yes, the regular poser lights often times, especially when using IDL, cast an unrealistic highlight that kind of ruins the realism achieved throuh the lighting itself.  Using objects like square planes as the source of reflection highlights solves this problem.  Definitely a time killer, so if you don't care that much about realism, it wouldn't be worth the extra processing, but if you're a fanatic about realism, like me and some others here, then it's worth it.  Your render is looking great.  I really think it's just the specularity that is causing it not to live up to your expectations.

Quote - LL - keep working on it until you get specular (reflections) without that light.  It's worth it.  I made up a simple scene with a sphere (and the 2 emitters) to get everything dialed in before progressing to fgures.  Also, wind out some of the red from the girl skin color (by reducing the red component of the diffuse color).  For some reason, with Gamma at 2.2 and emitter based lighting, the red saturates a little too much.   Chair looks great.

I dial down the saturation to 90%.  Seems to work well.  That's one of the first things I noticed.  90% should be more than enough desaturation.

Great thread

Many thanks for that shadow catcher link BB, I hadn't seen that one yet...

I have to say, whilst I have experimented a bit so far with "no lights" and just a specular... I've generally still been "cheating" and using some Poser spots. Last couple of gallery posts I did for example... although a lot of the light is from IDL emitters, ramped up to 7 or so in their ambient channel. I'm just picking out highlights I guess with the spots... everything I'm doing is now envsphere enclosed, with an HDR (or near HDR) sky now... even when the light from that is only entering the scene indirectly, i.e. through a window, etc (even an off-camera window).

Last scene I did had a total of 8 envspheres in it. But that's another issue. LOL ;-)

Those morphable prop emitters look very interesting BB.

I'm also following the thread Anthanasius started and which was subsequently elevated to a whole 'nother level by BB, about "Lights and watts"... in case there's more to come there??

cheers ;-)

Thanks for the link monkeycloud :). I missed that one.

Laurie

* I need to upgrade my Zbrush next so i can get some realistic morphs on this VickiWM.*

Maxxx, I'm convinced that if realism is the goal, each mesh will need to be tweaked in ZBrush and with an eye for the quirk or non symmetry. .These meshes are just too doll like.  Proper creases in flesh need ZB as well.  I think real collision detection for flesh would take things up a notch.. Someday

Love the new works btw

On the topic of ZBrush, thinkcooper mentioned in another thread that they were working on GoZ integration... in case anyone missed that too...

But, subtle tweaks using the V4 base expressions morphs can be pretty effective too, in a lot of cases, I reckon...

...I think that a lot of facial asymmetry in a person is maybe down to muscular / neurological factors... so using the expressions morphs is perhaps not inappropriate relative to that.

;-)

...I think that a lot of facial asymmetry in a person is maybe down to muscular / neurological factors... so using the expressions morphs is perhaps not inappropriate relative to that.

Totally agree but I meant the mesh in general. There is a level you can get to with straight mesh. Then you have to break it up with detail. Musculature,, aging, quirky details are the things we remember in a glimpse. These meshes are devoid of detail to meet rendertime requirements( and our obsession with youth...;)) plus the million morphs that can be run through together in compromise.

I'd love to see the Poser Zbrush pipeline fixed once and for all.

Quote - Totally agree but I meant the mesh in general. There is a level you can get to with straight mesh. Then you have to break it up with detail. Musculature,, aging, quirky details are the things we remember in a glimpse. These meshes are devoid of detail to meet rendertime requirements( and our obsession with youth...;)) plus the million morphs that can be run through together in compromise.

Yeah definitely, I agree right back, of course... a big part of why I just bought the bullet yesterday and got a copy of Zbrush ;-)

question for bill:  is the shadowcatcher in the linked rdna thread the same one included in your tomcarscene.pz3?   tomcarscene shadowcatcher gives me good ground shadows with hdri only, but darkens the entire area covered by the plane, for which I don't know how to calibrate.  the rdna shadowcatcher gives me a white opaque plane - not sure how to calibrate that either.

I'm guessing that once I get a render with a shadow over the bottom of the hdri sphere, I click on darkest area (black) to calibrate shadow colour and click on lightest area (light grey) to calibrate lit colour.

I looooove zbrush!!!

Lot of my modeling and morphing and displacement and texturing happens in Zbrush. I'd say 70% or more.

Hi maxxxmodelz 

"Yeah, just two single-sided planes.  I would send you the PZ3 file to examine if it's legal to do.  Not sure about what we would need the same for you to see it correctly, but I'd be more than happy to do that."

I would be happy to receive the file if possible!!!!!

Thank's 

mauk

Quote - Totally agree but I meant the mesh in general. There is a level you can get to with straight mesh. Then you have to break it up with detail. Musculature,, aging, quirky details are the things we remember in a glimpse. These meshes are devoid of detail to meet rendertime requirements( and our obsession with youth...;)) plus the million morphs that can be run through together in compromise.

 

I'd love to see the Poser Zbrush pipeline fixed once and for all.

I think Zbrush or Mudbox ( I personally love how intuitive Mudbox controls are) would  both great tools for adding realistic changes to Poser.  I'd like to see integration for either or both  in the Pro version pipeline.

That said, however, even a doll can be made to look like a real doll.  Point being, we need to know the secrets of how to get as realistic as possible with what we have natively, even before we expand on that.

I think it's finally possible to get  photorealistic results from Poser, just using Poser, which is why I'm excited about the PP2012 workflow.  We could always come really close before, but in the end, I always had to take it to another application  to polish the results.  Finally, I've hit a version  of Poser that seems to be able to  do everything I demand. haha.  Will see.

Quote - Well, this was the best I was able to do today with this experiment. Since this is a promo test of a character set I'm working on, I had to move on and use Poser lighting (a set I think I'll include in the package). But I will continue to follow this thread as long as it goes to see all the excellent input.

Even though you ended up having to use native Poser lights to some degree, the results look impressive.  Very natural lighting.  Great work.   Yes, I hope you continue following and trying to get this workflow to work well for you, because this is the way most "physically accurate" (as we love to say) renderers usually work.  With mesh-based area lighting to simulate light that doesn't begin at an infinitely small point (like spotlights or point lights).  For the most realistic specular FX, this is key.

As Baggins mentioned earlier in the thread, highlights in the real world are reflections.  Some are very subtle, but almost every surface in the real world has them.

Maxxmodelz, this is coming so out of left field for many of us. I am in shock. This is the realism I have been aspiring to without achieving. Much of what you guys are saying is zooming over my head and the Poser manual glosses over it so lightly there is nothing to be gained there.

I switched exclusively to IDL long ago, using an environment sphere and lights from several packages I purchased, but always the results have been less than. And now you're telling me my problem was I should have been turning off the lights they sold me? Wow!

I gave what is discussed here a go:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2338501

Probably a lot less than anyone else here is doing, but much better than anything I previously did.

Some questions:

The pic I did used the two one-sided planes as you did and I am assuming the "normals" side is the side I can see. So, just cranking up the ambient value makes it a light, huh? Wow! Anything else I need to do to those planes besides the slight coloring you mentioned?

I used a envirosphere.

Neither character came with sss so I used ezskin. I used the only the ezskin "make art" button, the highest value at the bottom of the window. Oh, and I turned up the "softness" in the skin from 2.5 to 3.5, though it may have not been enough.

Does the room you are refering too supplant the sphere?

I'm in the middle of doing another, this time with no planes, just cranking up the ambient value in the envsphere. It is in its 10th hour of render, so I overcranked something, but the results so far look good, no not as realistic as the one with your two planes.

Quote - Well, this was the best I was able to do today with this experiment. Since this is a promo test of a character set I'm working on, I had to move on and use Poser lighting (a set I think I'll include in the package). But I will continue to follow this thread as long as it goes to see all the excellent input.

I think it looks great Liz :)

Laurie

Quote - On a final thought, I made sure there was absolutely NO Occlusion on any of the objects or materials.  Meaning, stay clear of AO when rendering with IDL. You don't need it, as you probably already know, and it just muddles up the light calculations.

I've just spotted this post by Maxxx earlier in the thread...

...I've still been unsure about whether to include AO nodes with the "Evaluate in IDL" option ticked in some shaders.. or not... should I not be doing this??

Come to think of it, the last scene I was trying where I had this consideration, that I recall, I was using Stonemason's Utopia C set.

The default shaders in this set have AO nodes set up. I'd gone through and ticked the "Evaluate in IDL" for all of these. But I was certainly having blotchiness issues, rendering with IDL.

Was this likely due to the AO nodes... i.e. should I just be ditching these AO nodes altogether then? Are they serving any purpose other than interference, when I'm using IDL?

Cheers ;-)

Quote - ...I've still been unsure about whether to include AO nodes with the "Evaluate in IDL" option ticked in some shaders.. or not... should I not be doing this??

I wouldn't do it. IDL does a pretty good job on it's own. AO leaves a very dark shadow that isn't really realistic. IDL is a step up from AO ;).

Laurie

Hmmm. Thanks Laurie... I should go back to that scene and delete those AO nodes... see how that goes...

...there's only something like 20 prop parts with a half dozen material zones each on that set.

Shouldn't take me too long. LOL.

Obviously I already went through it once to tick the "Evaluate in IDL" boxes... LOL again.

Am I being a dufus and missing an easy way of doing this??

;-)

o.k., got it so bill's shadowcatcher doesn't darken bottom of hdri sphere, when rendering contact (occlusion) shadows. IMVHO this is adequately addressed in rdna thread in bill's first message.

First off - The posed figure.  No lights in the scene, so use Hidden Line display style.

I /think/ in general you are better have < 1 for the diffuse_value, and then having higher values for the skin reflection.  In this case I tried 0.5.

The final render.  I need to reduce the reflection on the walls, but you get the idea.

Mmmmm, it appears I have somehow managed to delete the final render!!!!  Will post it after re-rendering.

@ face_off
Allow me to interupt your tut. (Really sorry; I mean that)

Lots of users will read and try to use this.

Please remove the light blue from diffuse_color, and lower the difuse_value.

That was part of the "IDL+SSS+GC faking" before PP2012 came out.

Please remove the light blue from diffuse_color, and lower the difuse_value.

Very good point.  I am using the Alyson2 texturemaps from come with Poser, which I find are not quite pale enough for me, so I adjust the texture color accordingly.  Most people using other maps should go with 1, and pure white.

Good pickup vilters.

Another point (and Maxxx may have covered this originally) - the light emitting from the planes is area based (so the bigger te plane, the more light emitted).  So if you want sharp shadows (as opposed to blurred), use smalled planes as emitters (say scaled to 30%), and increase the ambient_value (a lot!).

If, and sometimes there s no other way, If I have to use older textures (pré-PP2012) I put a HSV node between the texture and the diffise_color and work with that HSV node to change the texture as needed.

When using this technique, of planes , squares with ambient, you might ad a "pose light to your scene to see what you are doing.

To create a Pose-light?

Add a point light.
Position the light.
Parent it to the main camera with inherit bends ON.
Remove shadows (remove the "V" in the properties palette.)

Goto the mat room and set diffuse and specular to pure black.

You now have a point light that allways shines on your scene from your camera's position, but does not render or make false shadows.

Ideal to work in low light situations where most of the light is coming from IDL.

Happy Posering
Tony

I'm curious... why is the cast shadows box not ticked in the render settings, and what does that achieve?

Paul,

You want to use Fresnel_Blend on every surface where you do reflection. No exceptions. Skin - walls - everything.

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?64164-RENDER-V4-with-SSS-Fresnel-Reflection-amp-Dynamic-Hair.

Imagine your character looking in a mirror, it look like a real chrome ...