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

There are no lights, so no need for shadows.  You could tick the box but it wouldn't change anything.  I had it unticked to make the point....:-)

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

There are no lights, so no need for shadows.  You could tick the box but it wouldn't change anything.  I had it unticked to make the point....:-)

OIC.  That makes sense.  I did not know that the box referred only to shadows cast by lights. 

Thanks.

Quote - 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!).

Many thanks for the clarification ;-)

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

BB - wouldn't that stop the reflections from the light originating from the camera angle reflecting off the skin facing the camera?  Or am I missunderstanding this node?

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

BB - wouldn't that stop the reflections from the light originating from the camera angle reflecting off the skin facing the camera?  Or am I missunderstanding this node?

Am I right in understanding that the fresnel_blend acts to diminish reflection toward the point on the object nearest the viewer... so that reflections are not as powerful there as towards the perceived edges of the object?

EDIT: Or have I got that backwards now?

I just stumbled on the thread here which I found very interesting, if perhaps still more confusing... :unsure:

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

BB - wouldn't that stop the reflections from the light originating from the camera angle reflecting off the skin facing the camera?  Or am I missunderstanding this node?

Sorry I'm not answering as usual - really overwhelmed.

The Fresnel_Blend does the Fresnel reflection coefficient calculation. Every surface obeys the math here. Yes, it does decrease the reflections on surfaces that face the observer, but you use a coefficient of 1 with it, not some lesser value that you cast about trying to guess what it should be. .1? .12?, .15? Forget it.

I have been doing the true, exact fresnel calculation for quite a while using many nodes, or Schlick's approximation, or some of my own approximations. Now we have it in a single node.

There are some tricks to using it because real life is not simple. Surfaces that are not smooth do not exhibit the ideal Fresnel effect at a macro level - only super smooth polished surfaces do that. Real surfaces do exhibit perfect Fresnel effects at microscopic levels, but there are so many pits, peaks, and valleys on a surface that the effect is smeared a bit.

I handle this by:

1. Using a slightly higher IOR than is indicated by the speed of light through the material I'm simulating, or by not using 0 as the inner value.

2. Using less than 1 for final multiplied reflectivity - usually .5 to .8.

3. Using softness on the Reflect node

In this scene, the materials that have Fresnel reflection are glass, metal, plastic, rubber, wood, paint, nail polish, skin, eyes, and leather. The only materials that don't have it are the hair (and it should but I forgot), lashes, the lamp shade, the diffuser, and the backdrop.

There are no Poser lights used here.

Wow, would like to know some much about that test image! When you have time, of course!

I keep forgetting I have those light props from the Car Patio set to use! Doh! They'd be perfect for the scene I'm trying to do just now...

;-)

It only took 19 minutes. What do you know.

Observe how much brighter this is - the extra bounces make that much difference.

My first image was only 1 bounce - basically lit by the glowing sphere and diffuser, but no tertiary lighting. This image was 6 bounces.

Quote - I just posted this to my gallery, but I might as well see if I can show it here in this thread.  It's resized to almost half it's original size, which you can download and see in full.  Or go to my gallery to see enlarged.  Hope it works..

So this is my first stab at rendering with Firefly in Poser 2012, and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with it so far.  Thanks, of course, to the shader gurus around here who made multi-layer SSS a reality finally in Poser, and for IDL working as expected.  I really didn't have to do much to get realistic area lighting out of a studio scene.  Basically positioned two different single-sided planes in the scene with normals facing the character.  One to the right, and one above and to the left of the figure, removed all the standard lights completely, and turned up the ambient value on the two planes till they lit the scene nicely.  Worked out well for a quick and dirty studio lighting setup.  I'm really actually enjoying Poser now, and may find myself exporting scenes to other render engines far less.  Very impressive.  My hat is off to the developers so far.

The image attached here were not postworked in any way other than to composite the two seperate renders into one big image, then save as jpg for upload.  You may need to view full size to see all the details.  In fact, I'm sure you will.

You wouldn't mind sharing the info on the model/character/textures you're using, would you? I love this image.

Knowing the shader set up would help on BB's image. It would help a ton. I'm also assuming that according to his description, he wasn't using the Envsphere for that image, so I did away with mine in the one I'm slaving over.

latex, he said he used "the glowing sphere".  this may mean envsphere.  it would speed up the render and it's more realistic to have the scene surrounded by an environment.

Yes, I have discovered that it does render more quickly if the environment sphere is on in the render. I just cannot guess what his settings are on the sphere. I assume he's using his favorite Dodge hdr on it as well, but I could be wrong. But I'd also like to see his skin shader set up. I've been trying again to do this challenge and not having great luck at it.

Mine isn't turning out too great either Liz :P

Laurie

Yeah, Laurie, BB makes it look so easy!

I am using EnvSphere with an indoor photo I got from flickr. Let me see if I can find it, because I assume I cannot redistribute it. If I find it I'll give you a linky.

The shaders on the wood and lamps - you can get them in my store and you will get hundreds of wood, paint, brass, chrome, etc. Plus you get cool props. Seriously I'd just give them to you but they took me hundreds of hours to assemble and perfect, and I have barely made beer money from it. grin

The skin is the free S+B+R shader I published at RDNA, applied via EZSkin, so just get EZSkin.

I'm thinking my problem is the box I'm using is too big. I'll try scaling it down and try again.

Laurie

The EnvSphere was SalonJour.jpg,

go here: http://www.philohome.com/panogallery/indoor.htm

fourth image 

It is not HDR, nor does that matter in this case.

I am rendering a wide shot to show you the setup.

Okay, good, I have that pano in my folder already. I was using a different fresnel set up you published. Just ran EZSkin on my figure and trying it again. I intend to get the furniture set. Transferred some $$ into my paypal so will be getting it soon.

There's something strange about Poser. I was able to render the normal composition in 5 to 15 minutes (depending on settings) but now I'm doing a wider shot from a distance and it's taking super long on the one bucket where V4 is.

So here's the setup. I'm using two copies of this curved backdrop I made. The one behind the figure is a normal dull white material.

The one in front, the bigger one, the one that is providing almost all the light here is self lit!!! With a gradient, using a shader I designed to allow you to adjust the light from different parts. It's pretty cool and very versatile.

The lit one is (normally) set to be invisible to the camera, so it provides light but does not interfere with my ability to put the camera anywhere I would like. Although the camera cannot see it, the props use it for lighting and for reflections.

For this image, obviously I had to make it visible so you could see what it was doing.

That's why I said it doesn't matter what the room EnvSphere was - I was just using it for ceiling light and for the fact that it makes renders go faster. The smooth and even lighting here is from the giant curved wall.

I did mention a couple pages ago that you want large light props. I think maybe some underestimated the importance of that suggestion.

I don't think the gradient matters much, but it is there. The lit part is modulated by the P node, which is pulling out height above ground.

The rest of the shader is doing a brown floor and white wall, based on the normal. I did it that way because this is a morphing prop and I can adjust the curved section between floor and wall to be any size. So I wanted the gradient to follow the curve, hence I used the Normal.

Okay, I have a primitive that's a half tube thingy, I'm using that for this try. I ran EZSkin and it looked crappy. Thank you for that distance shot!

Haha! You're an insane man! Okay, got the backdrop shader.

Removing the diffuse tall lamp, leaving the white wall and 5X EnvSphere, looks like this.

Clearly this is dull.

By boosting the LDR image 5X, I turned it into an HDR image. Most of it was very dark.

This is 5X in linear terms, mind you. If you're not using GC, then you're not doing linear workflow, and you will have to guess like mad.

In non-linear (no GC) workflow, a multiple of 5 is actually 5^2.2 times brighter on your screen. That's almost 35 times brighter.

In non-linear workflow, getting a 5X multiple requires that you say 2.08.

A 10X multiple is 2.85. See how difficult non-linear work is? Your lighting tweaks seem small but they're huge. The difference between 2x and 3x is very large.

Hah! Glad you asked about that. I had accidentally loaded an old EnvSphere preset where the shader Gamma In and Gamma Out were also 2.2, unlike yours where it is 1. This mistake on my part meant that the 5x multiple was effectively only 5^(1/2.2) or about 2.08.

Try again with 2.08.

Now that I have correctly set my Gamma In and Gamma Out to 1.0, with render GC at 2.2, my HSV Value is 2.08 producing the equivalent light when I mistakenly suggested 5.

I used the light meter to verify that shader gamma=1.0 and hsV=2.08 is the same light level as shader gamma=2.2 and hsV=5.

And as you can see by the meter, that is near-perfect lighting.

Ah, okay now. Let me change things up and run this again. Yes, I have your meter in my studio but it is out of camera range at the moment.

Did you use the option in EZSkin to make real reflections?

Yes. I ran EZSkin and ticked the box that said add Fresnel reflection to the skin.

The texture I'm using is one that I'm working on for the market place. Just in case something was wrong with that, I applied a different texture and ran EZSkin on it with Fresnel checked. Still kind of fuzzy and indistinct.

Laurie

Thanks for the tut, BB!

I still have a question about properties of the big curved light emitter.

What options should be be checked/unchecked?

I was that having "light emitter" checked, "cast shadows" unchecked, which were pretty clear to me. But I'm never sure about "Visible" and "Visible in Raytracing".

Visible=On or otherwise it isn't in the scene at all - if this is off everything else does not matter

Visible in Raytracing=On or otherwise it will not contribute to IDL as a light emitter and it will not be visible in reflections, which we want

Visible in Camera=Off - this is optional - if the camera is on the wrong side of it, it can interfere with your line of sight - you can make it invisible to your camera so you can see through it

In my attempts, I think I was having trouble with the shader on my figure. I believe that I had most of my set up close to your demos, BB, but my figure was not as clear and sharp as in your demos. I'll be watching this discussion to learn more about this and maybe see what was wrong with my set up.

wow. face_off and Maxx   HI!   It is like a band reunion.

This is the thread I have been waiting for, will try to catch up.

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Welcome, welcome! I really enjoy discussions like this, even if I am usually one of the fascinated and eternally frustrated viewers!

at the risk of seeming either too dumb to make one, or too obivious to find the link, or....

the mesh for BBs curved panels....?

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He just said that it was a morphing prop he had created. I think he said he's swamped with work, so we'll have see when he has time what he says about the prop. I tried using a half tube primitive that I had in my library. It sort of worked.

ok no problem. I have a few ideas for mesh to try...i think you want a complex curve.

:: og ::

Maybe. I'm not a modeler. I wish I were. If you've got a link to a freebee that would service, let me know.