Hey guys. I've usually been told that it's good to leave gamma correction on. However, in some images, it tends to make my characters look flat and washed out, eliminating most of the highlights/specularity on skin, and i notice that shadows get a lot lighter as well. When i turn it off, those same characters get nice highlights/specularity and gives the image some nice depth.

The scene is lighted by a diffuse IBL, spotlights, and infinite lights. When i use indirect lighting, i never turn gamma correction on so it isn't an issue with that particular lighting.

Do you guys render with gamma correction on or off? And which one tends to be the better option?

I'm using Poser Pro 2012.

Try an emitter rather than a Poser light. FWIW, I find no problems with my images with gamma correction turned on. No matter what the lighting. Of course, I try not to make my images too bright unless the scene is in the sun ;).

Laurie

Can you show us a before and after that illistrates the problem for you?

You can try turning down the lights.  Adding a lot of light was needed before but with GC, you don't need as much.  If you are building your lights the same way for both, this might be your problem.

Also which characters have the probelm?  If their mats weren't designed with GC/SSC in mind it will really change how they look.

Quote -
...Also which characters have the probelm?  If their mats weren't designed with GC/SSC in mind it will really change how they look.

That too :)

Laurie

If you change the gamma correction one way or the other, you need to change at least the lighting as well. If you have a scene that's acceptable to you without GC and turn on GC, of course it's going to look different. The first thing is that with proper GC, you don't need as many light, or lights as bright.

Since you say you're using diffuse IBL, of course everything is going to be washed out. The first thing you'd have to do is significantly decrease the strength of the IBL. Like, a lot. Before GC I'd use a diffuse IBL in the 15-20% range to get something that looked right (albeit to me). After GC was introduced, maybe 5-10%. And odds are you have too many lights (if they are all focused on the same thing).

The 'dilemma', such as it is, boils down to making a choice between a predictable linear workflow (which is what Gamma Correction gets you) and the shambolic mess we had  without GC.

The problems you're experiencing are due to shaders designed to cope with the shambolic mess being used within a linear workflow.

You'll have to read up on all this, which has been explored in depth here and at RDNA, if you're to understand what's going on.

Linear workflow changes the way that lighting and shaders are used. The good news is that once you have it figured out, things become simpler. The bad news is that a lot of old shader and lighting setups have turned into crap, and you'll have to either adapt them to your new workflow or abandon them forever.

Both of these renders use the exact same lighting, one diffuse IBL, 2 infinites, 1 spotlight.

Here is the render with gamma correction. Notice how it looks dull, flat, and doesn't have any good highlighting/specularity on the skin.

You probably have a gray color in specular color. With linear workflow, these become numerically very different. It's not that GC reduces speculars, it's that speculars should be WHITE.

Editing 500 purchased shaders that only work with the light sets they were sold with is not how you go about adopting a linear workflow.

Linear workflow is about predictable results, in a wide variety of circumstances.

Traditional non-linear hackery is about predictable results USING ONLY WHAT YOU BOUGHT, usually TOGETHER.

The idea that lights are sold with a character is absurd - if you see such a thing, you're into lala land and will not find that set useful in linear workflow without pretty much rewriting all the shaders.

I had this issue, particularly with Poser Pro 2010.

However, with PP 2012 and Snarlygribbly's Scenefixer and EZSkin 2, fixing the most obviously problematic shaders is a matter of a few clicks. I almost never use vendors' materials as is, even when they say that they are optimized for Poser Pro 2012. But it doesn't take long to fix them sufficiently thanks to these tools.

If I use ready made lights, they will always require adjustment, which usually means deleting any that are not casting shadows and/or turning down the intensity. Most of my scenes are lit with no more than 3 lights plus IDL, unless there are a bunch of lamps or candles, in which case I use a point light for each with very low intensity and inverse square attenuation.

I've found adjusting hair materials to be the biggest PITA. And I've had to adjust the textures in Photoshop for many of them. But once it's done for each particular hair, I save the adjusted materials to the library and I don't have to repeat the process.

Most Poser renders look a bit flat to me, regardless of whether they are rendered with GC or without. Most photographs look flat as well. A quick curves adjustment in Photoshop, or similar adjustment in GIMP fixes it.

The single thing that helped me the most using GC was to start using EZSkin to fix the shaders on my characters. Free here.

EZSkin 2 can also fix hair issues.

The other majorly important thing is for you to run Gamma setup on your monitor, so you are really seeing what is there. Most video cards come with a GC setup routine. If not, you can get close by using the chart at the middle of this page.

Moriador's advice about lights is bang on. IBL is old school. IDL is what works best given the new environment. If you want to use IDL outside, be sure and snag BB's envdome here.

bagginsbill: Hmm, i'll change the specularity to white and raise the light intensities on the one with GC and see the results. The lights didn't with warorc, these are my own lights i created as i'm learning the ropes about lighting and trying out a lot of different setups.

moriador: I tend to use curves and do a lot of postworking on my renders in photoshop. I been experimenting a bit with indirect lighting as well. But i'm still a bit new. Are you using a dome like bagginbill's sphere with your indirect lighting? And how would indirect lighting work in ready made scenes with props or indoor scenes? Wouldn't the lighting get blocked especially in an indoor setting? 

basicwiz: Yeah, i started using ezskin 2 when i saw how much it improved some of my characters skins. The only thing that is holding me back right now is that i never upgraded to SR3 because of the freak 4 shoulder issue. But i just found a solution in another thread about using the joint editor and following those steps, so i may just upgrade my poser and apply ezskin 2 to the war orc model. I tampered a bit with indirect lighting, but i'm still a bit new to this stuff. I understand the whole dome thing for outdoor scenes, but how do you use indirect lighting for indoor scenes? Do i still use a dome for an indoor scene? Or what about outdoor scenes that have buildings/props etc.?

I don't own Freak. Sorry.

basicwiz: I edited my post with some questions about indirect lighting. Not sure if you saw them =P

I use IBL with IDL at times. I don't see a special reason not to. Bagginsbill released some IBL lights with an old version of VSS and I still use them (at lower intensities). Nicest lights I've ever used. If there's a good reason not to use them, I'd be interested in hearing it.

However, I don't think I've made a render without IDL since I upgraded to a 64 bit version of Poser.

I use a dome with scenes involving lots of props. Provides a nice sky and relfections for outdoors. I almost never use the lights that come with a prop/figure scene unless they are point or spot lights that refer to actual props, such as lamps, in the scene. So whether the included light sets work or not isn't an issue. Most vendors' lights are not appropriate. Some are still releasing light sets with depth map shadows or 20 ambient lights to simulate IDL.

For indoor scenes that aren't enclosed within their own prop (like corner of a room rather than a whole room), I render within a sphere that has a texture appropriate for indoors.

If the sphere isn't big enough for a huge outdoor scene, I scale it up.

To use IDL for indoor scenes, the simple answer is, place a light wherever you want there to be a light source.

For example, if you have a simple room with a couch, a pair of end tables and lamps, put a pair of point lights inside the lampshades, and set them to inverse square dropoff. If that is darker than you want, add an overhead light set to about 30% for openers. The purists will say you need all four walls, the ceiling and the floor in place, but the reality is, you can make the front wall transparent and it is still going to give a very usable (if not technically accurate) render. I've gotten very usable results out of the photobackdrop that comes in the Poser Pro 2012 primitive folder and one point light.

The whole idea behind IDL is to let the scene be lit as it would be in the real world, without using studio lights.

Typically, it takes much less light to get results using IDL than using the studio light setups. I do not know the technical reason, but this is the case. 

Outside, use BB's dome and one infinite light set to 10-30%.

I don't have a problem with studio light setups, since photographers -- in the real world -- use them, and the studio look (or Hollywood set lighting) is very often exactly what I'm aiming for, even in outdoor scenes. Depends what the goal is, I think.

moriador: Ahh cool. My main problem is that whenever i try to use the sky dome, the sky material is either too small, or i have to drastically reduce the focal length of my main camera, otherwise the sky will look too blurry. Is there a particular sky map either HDR or equirectangular that you recommend i use for my domes? And is there a way around to having to reduce my focal length so low?

basicwiz: Will IDL still work for indoor scenes that are completely inclosed? Or do i have to open one side? And do i still have to use a dome for indoor scenes? And what does setting the lights to inverse square falloff do? Sorry for all these questions. I'm still a bit new to this, and trying to learn as much as i can about lighting.

No dome required for indoor scenes. The walls do the job the dome does outside.

Ideally, all walls are visible, but you can't always do this and get the desired camera angle/composition.

The "visible in camera" options makes dealing with indoor scenes much easier.

basicwiz: Ohhhh, ok. So as long as there is something to reflect light rays, then indirect lighting will work. And i'm guessing for outside then the dome is used since there usually isn't enough things to reflect lights. Thanks for all your help :)

I'm gonna take a little break and try out a few things with that war orc model. I raised the specularity but it looks a bit blotchy. I'm starting to suspect either the skin itself or the specular maps is causing this.

Simple answer. WAY too many lights.

And my neckhair curls from any Image Based Light. Brrrrrr............

Never-ever seen an image based light in real life so???
Show me ONE.
ONE is all it takes to change my attitude towards IBL.

And in Digital art, not only is it old school, it is fake, and the fastest way to screw up.

Hey Vilters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image-based_lighting

http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems/gpugems_ch19.html

http://renderman.pixar.com/view/image-based-lighting

Google shows plenty on IBL. now, read up and get the idea. it's not a image on a light for godsake. it's projecting an enviroment like a Gobo in the Theatre allowing you to match the lighting of an enviroment. it's simple to understand... if you want to that is, which given your track record you don't.

oh and

Never-ever seen an image based light in real life so???
Show me ONE.

*here - http://goboman.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/gobo-lens-003.jpg a real life IBL. aka a Theatre Gobo.

There's nothing wrong with image based lighting. It's used a lot actually.

Laurie

The meme won't die. I have written many times IBL + IDL is great. IBL+AO is old school.

Thing is, though, that if you have walls (or EnvSphere) then IBL does nothing because it is, by definition, outside of all your scene geometry, on a virtual sphere infinitely far away and infinitely large.

There's nothng wrong with that. It's simply not going to light a subject that is completely surrounded by geometry that is visible to raytracing.

I also showed that, when properly constructed, you can get identical lighting from my EnvSphere and from an equivalent IBL.

The images, however, are completely different format. (UV layout)

Angular map, versus equirectangular.

* I suggest you watch the extra's for the movie Moon - they use an IBL of the enclosed Set to light Gertie and Gertie's arms to match the live action plate.. thats the main use of IBL in the movie industry... so I'm not repeating a Meme.. I'm actually studing techniques rather than just repeating what ppl have posted round here..*

Quote - * I suggest you watch the extra's for the movie Moon - they use an IBL of the enclosed Set to light Gertie and Gertie's arms to match the live action plate.. thats the main use of IBL in the movie industry... so I'm not repeating a Meme.. I'm actually studing techniques rather than just repeating what ppl have posted round here..*

I was agreeing with you. The meme that won't die is what Vilters wrote.

The meme that won't die and needs to die is that IBL is discredited. It is not. There are other advantages to the sphere having to do with reflections, but for basic diffuse lighting, an IBL works fine.

This troubles me. I use the word "great" and still I"m not understood.

IBL is great. It's fast - it's low on memory. IBL + IDL looks the same as EnvSphere + IDL, assuming you have no reflections, and you know how to build one. Those last two things are deal breakers for some situations. That doesn't mean IBL is useless. It means you have to know your tools. It means that shouting about any absolute thing means you're wrong.

I find IBL + IDL useful when I have a fully enclosed room that nevertheless has a small window through which the light emanates, which - when I think about it - describes most of the indoor scenes that I do.

I'd be glad to know that I'm not crazy for finding this a perfectly acceptable lighting method.

I think your render settings also have something to do with the way things are turning out. Particularly the min shading rate. Let me know if you are still needing some help. The War Orc was done before GC was really around.

This thread is interesting to me for several reasons. I recently just started using poser 8, so IDL is a topic I've been looking at. Just a quick couple of questions... I imagine I can expect a significant increase in render times by using IDL (I'm on an older single core machine, by the way). Haven't started using it as I'm distracted by other things... Any tips about Rendering with IDL and managing resources without sacrificing image quality?

This next question is aimed specifically at Moriador (please, anyone else, feel free to chime in)... what kind of IDL Hybrid/Rig would you suggest for an interior shot with light coming from an exterior environment, i.e. a window?

Second, the space occupied by the windows relative to everything that is not self-lit means you have to use a really high number of samples. This will make it exceedingly slow.

Third you will have to have a lot of bounces - also slow.

I have been struggling with this indoor-lit-by-sky-via-window scenario for several weeks, as I'm trying to pre-light the new room for Bedroom/Furniture Set One. I can't do it.

My suggestion would be to fake it and not fully enclose the room. Open the wall where the windows are and put the camera there facing in. I haven't tried that yet, as I've been perfecting materials and the indoor/night lights first.

In the render above, which is night (black outside the windows) I have three point lights. IDL is still a very important factor in this appearance, as without it the room lighting looks more harsh.

I'm using 150 samples and 4 bounces. My EnvSphere luminance value is 8x.

Observe the splotchies that start once the sky is obstructed by the room so that less than 1/4 of the environment is visible.

Also, observe the light leaks, especially along the floor-wall joint in the back corner near the armoire.

These leaks have been there forever and SM tells me they can't correct them. They are an artifact of the irradiance caching algorithm. IC gives us speed, not accuracy. In cases like this where the light source is really bright, the inaccuracy is really high.

You can turn off IC but the render times will make you choke.

Agreed. If you only light through a window, the room may well be kinda dark.  But I supplement with a lamp or two, unless I want it dark, which I often do.

I see this in my own home. My living room is very brightly lit in the afternoons with nothing but sunlight because I have a window that faces almost directly west, and my walls are white. Bedroom faces north and is dim all the time.

Primorge>

Unfortunately, I found using IDL with Poser 8 and an older machine to be an exercise in extreme patience. I often had to render in sections and composite in Photoshop.

It wasn't until I upgraded my machine (quad core), my operating system (64 bit), and my software (Poser Pro 2010), that I found it easy to use IDL consistently and without workarounds such as layered rendering or area rendering in sections. But I was also doing print sized resolutions 3k or 4k pixels on one side minimum. You can get away with much more at smaller resolutions.

However, I think if you're very careful with resources, you can do a lot. Textures are usually far bigger than they need to be for all but close ups. So reducing resolutions on most of the textures in a scene can help with any potential memory issues. Also, testing the sort of render settings you need can help with render times. I usually render about 4kx5k pixels, and I simply do not see a difference between min shading rate of 0.1 and 0.4, for instance. So I save quite a bit of render time by setting it at 0.4. If I did ever notice a difference, I'd change the settings. But only if I needed to.

Very little is gained by reducing the MSR below the recomended minimum setting of 0.2.
I draft render at 0.5 and final render at 0.2 when required for a close up.

That said, BB's room looks pretty realistic.

Today we have a very dark afternoon with lots of rainshowers.
It is very dark inside, close to the point of putting the lights on.

With the multiple reflections, the atmosphere, the light coming through the transparency of the window and then through the transparent parts of the flowers, plus the IDL settings needed to reduce the blotchiness on the walls and window frames, this render took half a day for a mere 1200 x 900 pixel resolution. I had to do two versions which I composited: one without the flowers at a higher IDL settings, and one with the flowers but with blotchy walls (I added a patterned texture to them to reduce the effect). I could have rendered it all in one go, but I think my machine would have needed a couple of days to finish.

Now maybe it's heresy to use a spot light for the sun, but if it looks okay to me, I don't see a problem with it.

**ETA: Those are BB's shaders all over the place. The render wouldn't look anything like that without them.

Ok, a day later (i took a long break lol), i did a few experiments with the warorc skin. I'm starting to suspect its just the skin itself that's not very good with specularity, and i'm guessing it's the specular map causing the problems. I did one test where i turned up the intensities of the lights and changed the specular color to pure white, and while this did bring out the highlights, they looked very splotchy/odd, especially in the chest area.

Then i applied ezskin 2 to the warorc skin. What i noticed is that it turned my specular color back to black, and turned down the specularity to 0 :X This hasn't happened with many of my other models i own.

So perhaps the war orc model was not designed with gamma correction in mind, or the specular map is a bit weird compared to most other specular maps. One thing i noticed is that the default war orc skin specular map is plugged into BOTH the specular color and specular strength in the advanced settings, something which i don't see in most of my other models.

Maybe i should just scrap the specular map?

Ghostofmacbeth: Oh wow, aren't you the creator of the war orc model? Yeah that might explain it then. My min shading rate is at .1 when i render at the highest quality. Would you recommend i just scrap the specular map and try using highlights without it? 

Very nice model btw =) The reason i'm persistent on figuring out this problem is because the war orc model imo is probably one of the best orc models out there period. It's just the specularity with gamma correction on that's giving me the problems.

To all those about the IBL vs IDL: Dunno, i like the results of indirect lighting a lot, but diffuse IBL's work very well too. I still use simple spotlights/infinite lights with no raytracing, and with proper postwork in photoshop it still can look just as good if done properly. The best results i seen was combining IDL with IBL/spotlights/infinites/points. It's more of a preference and dependent on what you want to do.

bagginsbill: Yeah, i'm practicing lighting right now and trying out different lighting techniques. I notice that IDL brightens up a scene more in comparison to just using IBL. The drawback i've encountered, is that some areas with IDL were darker unless you turn up the bounces to catch those closed areas (like under a table or body), which leads to a huge increase in render time. However IBL with an HDR file does this with significantly lower render time but with similar results. So far i pretty much like all lighting techniques (probably because the majority of my work is in photoshop). On that realistic render in your second image on the 2nd page, what's your lighting setup? It says you have IDL enabled, but what about other lights and are you using a dome for that or no since it's inside the house?

Primorge: It depends on what you're doing and what kind of comp you're running. I generally do this as a hobby, so most of my images are in the 900-1200 resolution range. I'm running on 32-bit xp with a 3.2 ghz tri-core with 4 gigs of ram (rendering in a separate process to get more use on a 32-bit system) and generally indirect lighting renders very fast. If you use the script though for advanced settings and increase them a lot, you'll have very large render times though.

I was gonna put this in my 2nd post, but i created another one since i think it warrants more attention. This issue persists on both poser pro 2012 SR1 and SR3 from what i can tell. I created a diffuse IBL light and attached an LDR .jpg image to it. I put 2800 in the image resolution to match the file and went about my work. I started noticing that when i went into the material room, it took forever to load and change any setting. After fiddling around, i thought maybe it was due to me running SR3 in a sandbox or using ezskin2. I finally figured out that having a high image resolution in my diffuse IBL significantly increased my material room access times. I lowered it, and this returned everything to normal. I also found out that this was a poser issue. Is there any fix for this other than lowering my resolution until i'm ready to render?

Quote - ... it's that speculars should be WHITE.

Editing 500 purchased shaders that only work with the light sets they were sold.... Linear workflow is about predictable results, in a wide variety of circumstances.

Traditional non-linear hackery is about predictable results USING ONLY WHAT YOU BOUGHT, usually TOGETHER.

The idea that lights are sold with a character is absurd - if you see such a thing, you're into lala land and will not find that set useful...

One word: Bravo!

snips for added emphasis

 You can do a lot with a bit of fakery, eg this renders in about 20 sec... yes it is firefly and no, there are no cutaway walls. The only source of light is that door on the right.

Quote -  You can do a lot with a bit of fakery, eg this renders in about 20 sec... yes it is firefly and no, there are no cutaway walls. The only source of light is that door on the right.

 

Low quality settings and low resolutions render very fast. No disputing that.

This is a very small image. There are a lot of artifacts (blotchiness) in the corners and on top of the couch/chair thingie. At higher resolutions, those corners would look kinda moldy. Render time increases dramatically when you want to reduce/eliminate those artifacts.

Of course, if you don't have white walls, it's not nearly as noticeable. :) And real white rooms are rarely perfectly clean.

piccolo, are you using Pro 2012? If you are you should be able to use EZSkin no problem. I'm sure others have told you this. It will add SSS and fix your specularity problems with the Orc's skin.

Laurie

LaurieA: Yeah i tried ezskin 2 on it. The specular map still makes it look not so good. So i'm guessing it's an issue with the models specular maps.

moriador: I'd probably just fix it with photoshop =P

Fair enough, this is about 90 sec... still low rez ? Too many artifacts ? (Click for large version:)

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. IDL feels like something I should use simply because it's a novelty within poser for me. Guess I'll just have to experiment and find a set up that I'm comfortable with... I'm totally not adverse to Photoshop postwork, It's a given: if you have the tools, use them. The primary reason IDL is attractive to me is using it for AO clay style renders, in which case I understand that IDL is actually a more "true" solution. Speaking of, I just bought Semidieu's Advanced Render Settings 2 so I'll have some more bells and whistles in in terms of Render passes and such. In the end I'm not so much interested in Photorealism within poser (which seems to be the aim of many of the renders I see here) as I am in a sort of CG style expressionism.

I'm kind of curious about ghonma's set-up, as illustrated above...

Absolutely beautiful renders as always, BB and Moriador! (I see you're using RobotMonster's battered books props in yours, M... Thumbs up on that.)

Quote - LaurieA: Yeah i tried ezskin 2 on it. The specular map still makes it look not so good. So i'm guessing it's an issue with the models specular maps.

 

moriador: I'd probably just fix it with photoshop =P

Then don't use the specular maps ;). Just let ezskin handle the spec.

Laurie

LaurieA: Yeah im gonna try that next. I used to ignore ezskin2, but when i finally stopped being lazy and grabbed it, i tried it out on a freak 4 character. It turned a dull boring render into a great one with the press of a button, and that was using default poser lighting. I was amazed how it not only made the skin look so much better, but made it look good under crap lighting! And the render times did not increase much at all. It seems to do well with human skin, but it doesn't show much difference in a lot of the fantasy type characters like this lizard model i got. 

Quote - Ghostofmacbeth: Oh wow, aren't you the creator of the war orc model? Yeah that might explain it then. My min shading rate is at .1 when i render at the highest quality. Would you recommend i just scrap the specular map and try using highlights without it? 

Very nice model btw =) The reason i'm persistent on figuring out this problem is because the war orc model imo is probably one of the best orc models out there period. It's just the specularity with gamma correction on that's giving me the problems.

Yep, that is me. I like the spec map and I tried to do it the right way but you might give it a shot. I attempted it tonight but I didn't like the results.

Glad you like the model. I am on a bit of a deadline so my time is not much but I will try to get back to looking at a solution on Friday. I haven't messed that much with GC so I have to explore it a bit more, myself.

Quote - Fair enough, this is about 90 sec... still low rez ? Too many artifacts ? (Click for large version:)

 

Much better indeed.

I do most of my stuff at print resolutions: 3.5k to 5k pixels on one side, so I'm going to notice even some of the smallest issues. They may not show up on actual paper, though. It'd be an interesting -- albeit expensive -- thing to test.

For a web sized render, though, that's a nice render speed. :)

Love Robotmonster's books!

Quote - > Quote - LaurieA: Yeah i tried ezskin 2 on it. The specular map still makes it look not so good. So i'm guessing it's an issue with the models specular maps.

 

moriador: I'd probably just fix it with photoshop =P

Then don't use the specular maps ;). Just let ezskin handle the spec.

Laurie

Laurie's right. Just use the procedural specular in EZSkin2 and see how that works.

I fix a lot of things in Photoshop, but my workflow has become much more efficient since I started to pay attention to fixing those things in Poser that are relatively easy to fix.

Quote - Now maybe it's heresy to use a spot light for the sun, but if it looks okay to me, I don't see a problem with it.

Great tone and colour.  But the non-parallel shadows on the wall make it obvious you used a spot rather than infinite light.  Not sure what the advantage is.