I have a handful of scenes that I have been experimenting on with IDL settings. To prep the scene I have been using the 'delete lights' utility and scene fixer to set ambient to zero for everything in the scene, yet can still see everything (although dim and dark, they still glow a bit). I've looked inside the material room but none of them have shaders, ambient is set to zero and the colour is black.

What am I missing here?

Alternate_Diffuse will sometimes do that, see what you have connected there

No, nothing there either. It isn't just a few things in the scene, I can see every item.

Any translucence in any of the materials????

@Anthanasius

The "Light emiter" only reacts if there is any light at all in the scene.
If there is NO light at all? It will contribute nothing.
Better name for that node would have been; "IDL diffusor".

@piesyf
Are you inside BB's self lit sphere? Or inside another environment?

It's a large scene, but on a few items I unchecked light emitter to see if it changed anything, but it didn't. In any case, I'll need it on to do the IDL render anyway. I've checked 'set translucence to zero' in scenefixer as well, but no change. No, no environment. I have done renders with a skydome, but the base scene has only a background image. I removed that as well, but no change.

Quote - In the parameter dial panel, unchek this for all your props and figures

 

Light emitter = VisibleInIDL

Silly question I'm sure, but are you certain you've definitely deleted all your lights?

Did you check manually after you'd used the "delete lights" utility, that they'd all gone?

I take it you're previewing in OpenGL mode at the moment? What happens if you switch to software preview mode?

Just a couple of stabs in the dark from me... in case it helps.

Quote - What am I missing here?

It's all guesswork unless you can post a screenshot or a small render.

Also pick one of the figures or props that's glowing and post a screenshot of its material setting.

It's probably something really simple.

Translucence may be the culprit. It causes glowing, like ambient does. Make sure your skins have no translucence, as vilters has suggested above.

Laurie

If you have set up a reflective surface and the total value of Diffuse and Reflection are more than 100% you'll get a self illuminated surface.

At least, that's what happened in earlier versions of Poser. 

In this case, I'm with cspear, screencap image might be more telling.  Also, state which Poser version you are using for your renders.  IDL is clearly present in P8 through PP2012.  However, the light emitter feature is only present in P9 and PP2012.

OK, using PP 2012. Here's a sequence of images showing what I see...

This is the room as it loads, with the pre IDL lights active...

Same scene from outside. It's a very big scene overall, with lots of objects. Computer handles it just fine. My old laptop handles it fine...

Then I run Scene Fixer with these settings. Note that ambient and translucent values are to be set to zero for the whole scene...

  then I delete the lights... and get this;

I won't post the materials for the several hundred things in the scene (if not thousands), but I did select the couch to show as it seems to be glowing more than other things, and it should be dark by its colour...

Thanks for the replies so far, BTW...

Do you have an environment sphere outside the room by chance? If you do, you may see objects within the room, especially if it's constructed one sided and the normals are facing in. I just can't think of any other reason. You DO have a window there. and some light may be leaking in. The only reason could be that you, or SceneFixer, have missed some material zones with translucence and ambient somewhere within the scene, tho I didn't think that showed up in OpenGL preview.

Laurie

No, no environment dome in that scene.

:idea: 

what if you start with a new file, delete the lights, and then just add the couch?

Hold on...

Are we talking about a finished render here or a preview?  Different animals entirely.

If it's just a preview, who cares?  If the render is correct, no prob. 

the glowing surfaces may have more than one material that still has alt_diff, e.g. the sofa is white but you're showing only a red material zone.  turn off refl_lite_mult, check normals forward, hide backfaces et al.

MistyLaraPrincess; tried that and scene is black. So it isn't the couch. Suggests it's reflecting something. Good suggestion.

SamTherapy; I've been experimenting/trying to learn about IDL. On numerous other threads the advice has been to turn off AO, ambient and translucence and only put them back on for the materials you decide to (emitters and such). Also, to delete all lights and start from scratch. With the lights gone the scene should be black; all threads I have read so far say that if you can see stuff in the preview window it means there is still an emitter somewhere or some other lightsource. That's what I'm trying to clarify. I have had issues lighting this scene but how do I know if the scene is being effected by the 'glowing stuff' if I have no point of comparison? This is an existing scene that had been lit through normal Poser lighting using AO and IBL that I was practicing doing in IDL and it was not behaving as anticipated.In any case I tried a render and some small items are just visible, but the scene is predominantly black. Perhaps any effect is minimal. To paraphrase Bagginsbill, I cannot take 'control' of a render if I don't know what's going on.

MissNancy; you may be right, however as I said there are hundreds if not thousands of material zones in this scene. Not checking them all.

I have noticed that every scene from Greenpots that I have (that come with its own scene file) also glow when you delete the lights. Myabe that's a point of comparison worth exploring, if any of you have a Greenpots product.

Thanks for the replies.

I am mystified.

The couch material screen shot shows "base". That's what the main part is made of? You are showing the material that we see? I am wondering if the base is not what we're looking at in the preview that appears to glow.

I'm with sam here, try doing a render and seeing how it turns out.

don't check thousands of materials, just check all materials for the sofa.  then snarly may have a script for this new problem.

You may have missed it, but I did mention in my last post that I had followed MistyLaraPrincess' suggestion and put the couch in a new scene by itself and turned out the lights. The scene went completely black as expected. It is not a couch material that is glowing, or at least it doesn't glow on its own.

Winterclaw, you may have missed this also, but I said in my last post that I DID try a render with the lights off to see what I can see. I also said that I am having issues figuring out lighting for this space as the light does not travel anywhere near as far as it would in real life (and yes, there is no attenuation on the infinite 'sun') so showing a normal IDL render is not helping. I restate; if I can't tell what's going on, how can I develop a reproducable process for lighting? I'm not looking for a one size fits all method, but a knowable and predictable process for problem solving.

The only other things in view that 'glow' are the TV screen and the inner curtain. Both were checked. The TV screen had an alt specular value that I turned off but it made no difference.

I did also mention that every Greenpots scene I've opened behaves the same way. I just did that again with the Greenpots Livingroom scene and noticed that items aren't 'glowing' they are just not black. They are all the same shade and disappear into each other (but highlight in outline when the material room's eyedropper passes over them). If any of you have any Greenpots products like the school set or the house set you may be able to replicate it. For all I know this is just a quirk of my graphics card and has no impact at all... if it doesn't happen for any of you then that becomes more likely and I can stop fussing about it.

I noticed this same thing (perhaps) in the scene I just did.

Well, same symptoms, I think.

One prop (a Poser primitive groundplane) has a faint glow, with the single Point light in the scene switched off.

This prop has the "BloodPuddle" shader from BB's freebies site applied.

If I change this shader to be, for example, BBGlossy2, the preview is pitch black.

With the BloodPuddle shader applied, there is the faint glow, from this material.

Renders fine though... and, notably the BloodPuddle shader also displays pitch black (with the light off) when I preview in SreeD mode.

It's just the openGL preview mode that displays the "issue".

without lights it was completely dark.

dunno if it's relavent, the poser ground plane is covered by the model

OK, after a break for work and study, decided to start the whole scene from scrath with IDL. Results are much nicer, nothing glows at all with the lights out, so just maybe the python script isn't getting to everything (alternately, it says it has finished before it really has?). Anyway, getting much nicer lighting effects except for some hair products. I've checked other threads about this and have tried playing with gamma on the hair, transparency, even reduced the number of bounces, and although I get some variation the basic problem doesn't change. What am I missing?

 As a reminder, this is Poser Pro 2012. The materials for the hair are included as well.

Uncheck Reflection_Lite_Mult.

Quote - Uncheck Reflection_Lite_Mult.

Since nothing is plugged into reflect_color, that has no importance - nothing will be different.

OK, now I'm really confused. I lifted the entire figure and rendered it separately in a environment sphere with a single infinite light. Only change I made was to set the transparency maps to Gamma 1.0 and the hair is in direct light (in the above image it is all lit by bounced light) and it works fine...

so really have no clue why this is happening... exactly the same settings in the scene give the harsh streaks.

I'd almost want to suggest reinstalling poser at this point...

Depends if what's happening is affecting your final renders.

NO, do not re-install, it will not change anything.
I see a blender node in the hair specular.
That might be giving you the trouble. => Specular

I have a hair of my own creation. (Dynamic)
The hair is beautifull, but ONLY in certain light conditions.

When I change the light, that same fantastic hair I love so much, turns out horrible in the most UGLY way.
I know it is a specular problem with my hair but have not bothered to check-correct yet.

I position the light to get a good render.
 

Quote - Only change I made was to set the transparency maps to Gamma 1.0 and the hair is in direct light (in the above image it is all lit by bounced light) and it works fine...

Doesn't that answer your question? If setting the gamma of the transparency map was the only thing thing you changed and then it doesn't happen any more, then, well, that is your fix.

No it doesn't answer the question. The figure on its own under direct light works as advertised (gamma set to 1 on transparencies), but in the room scene with the same settings I get the harsh smearing. It is not working in that situation. I cannot change the lights as the entire scene is illuminated appropriately for all other components, and lighting the hair directly would indicate back light that is not there, so his head would look wrong.

I don't understand what the blender node is doing; I did try disabling it but it made no difference in the render. I'm not sure if I could rearrange the existing nodes to a more basic arrangement without the blender node.

OK, had a crack at removing the blender node and simplifying the other nodes and got this;

which is a huge improvement, if somewhat transparent. This still has the transmaps at a gamma of 2.2. If I change them to 1 it gets a little better, but you can still see his skull through the hair. After that I tried ajdusting the transparency setting in the various material zones and with a trans setting of 0.2 got this;

so as you can see the hair is much less transparent but all the marks are back. I should also mention that the hair has 2 overlapping material zones, a scalp mat and a hair mat, both with trans maps.

My uneducated guess (question) is... could the light be bouncing between the transmaps and showing up like this? I think I can get a generally acceptable result now, but lacking density. I'd like to improve it further if I can, though. Besides, more knowledge!

Sharing the image map between diffuse_color and bump complicates the arrangement.  All bump and displacement maps provide data and should be kept at a gamma setting = 1 unless you are not using the default gamma = 2.2 in your render settings.  I would generate a new bump map for the texture or add a math node between image and bump channel.  However, that connection will only convert to grayscale and not address the gamma issue.

Cheers for that hborre... I set up new texture maps for the bump by geyscaling the image map and giving it a separate node. Didn't change the render, though. Still getting the streaks.

I resorted (for the moment) to doing two renders, one with the best results (almost no streaks) and one with the transparency levels reduced to get a less transparent hair, and blending the two in postwork. Total render time for both renders and postwork comes to 90 minutes or so, so not a major pain. Hopefully I'll eventually figure how to get this stuff to behave nice in IDL.