The stuff you have marked is for IDL, so will only have effect if raytracing and IDL are enabled.

AFAIK (and I consider myself to be an absolute beginner)

Intensity - strength of the IDL effect. At 0.5 the IDL will be half as bright as at 1.0. This won't affect your render time.

Bounces - raytrace bounces for IDL. Increasing this will increase render times.

Samples - the number of IDL rays that are simulated. Increasing will increase render times, but if it is too low IDL will get blotchy.

Irradiance Cache - the scope of the IDL approximation. Another quality/speed trade off.

Precalculation Scale - at 1 the IDL precalc will be full size, at 0.5 it will be half the linear size (ie 0.25 the area). This will speed render times but the IDL will be less defined. For test renders I often take this down to 0.25 and still get decent results.

Hope this helps!

It's worth noting that Irradiance sample size (above the area you have outlined) also has an impact on IDL.

First time I'm saying this. Been meaning to write a whole tutorial on it but I have no time. I'm leaving for the airport again in 5 minutes.

Here goes:

Diffuse reflectivity in Poser is out of whack. Our light sources are meaningless units - 100% of what? But we need to get a handle on this. We all know Diffuse_Value is not supposed to be 1 (i.e. it's impossible to reflect all the light that arrives). So we've learned to drop it to .85. But that isn't realistic either. In real life it's closer to .1 or .15.

But - if we start using Diffuse_Value = .1 instead of .8, we're going to have to set our lights 800% brighter just to get the same reflection. 800% is still meaningless, but what happens is it balances with the diffuse indirect light.

So - we have a problem. Indirect light is unbalanced with direct light. We notice this because we see glowing armpits, right? It's been in the forum over and over for weeks. Complaints that IDL causes armpit glow. It's not IDL fault. It's that you have Diffuse_Value set to .85, which is about 8 times more reflective than reality.

So - we could go back through every material and drop the Diffuse_Value again and also go through all the lights and raise them 8x brighter. Or...

(and here's why I'm writing)

Set the IDL intensity to something in the range .1 to .15. Try your renders again. Tell me what you see?

In all my renders, the occluded areas are suddenly looking right.

Gotta go.

Okay - that is interesting BB...

Damn... my dilemma is now, do I cancel this day long render, again, to try that, or wait till it's done.

I bet if I wait till its done there'll be some toe glow still going on in it. He he.

Or, alternatively, you do what I do, and render direct light and IDL separately, and add them together in post. That way you can fiddle with their relative levels to your heart's content until it looks just right without loads of tedious test renders.

Quote - Or, alternatively, you do what I do, and render direct light and IDL separately, and add them together in post. That way you can fiddle with their relative levels to your heart's content until it looks just right without loads of tedious test renders.

Is that a case of doing a render with no IDL enabled, and then a render with IDL only then?

I fear that may extend my rendertimes even more if so...

Although it sounds like a good way to do it, to me, otherwise...

Actually I can make a net rendertime saving.

Before final render I decide what is the most important component - usually direct light but sometimes for outside shots it might be IDL.

I render the least important component in half resolution, with a higher minimum shading rate, possibly with less bounces, less samples...

That component will clearly have lower quality, but in the final combined version I will not see a difference.

If I know it's going to be quieter in the mix then it doesn't need my best microphone.

The best bit is applying different filters to the two components, fiddle with contrast, saturation, diffusion, glow, whatever! 

I originally tried the idea to (successfully) reduce render time (I'm an animator, so a small saving per frame can be of immense value). Then I saw the possibilities as I was comping the passes.

I even got away with a well dodgy IDL pass that was totally blotchy. Blurred the ****er until the blotches were gone, added in to the main pass, and nobody will ever know hahaha!

(and whatever you do, don't forget to add Z-depth to your LQ pass! Dead useful!)

That is interesting bb.

Gonna have to play around some more, but it does explain some of the bizarre fiddles I've been doing to balance out direct light with the EnvSphere lately.

I should add that I didn't recalibrate the shadow catcher on the ground plane, but it would be hard to recalibrate under her chin...

Perhaps reduce the shadow of the sun?

I'm going to suggest experimenting with a very simple scene to try out this new revelation - do look at the material option of reducing the diffuse value & increasing the light, and leave the IDL intensity as is.

I'm getting very interesting results just with an Environment Sphere - shading & contrasts seem just right now. Will post an example in a mo.

Quote - Perhaps reduce the shadow of the sun?

I don't know how to do that.  I suppose I could try the atmosphere node, but doesn't that add a lot of overhead?

I could add an IBL... :tongue2:

Errrr, I think in the light parameters tab, you can turn down shadow for the sun from 1 to say, errrr, 0.8? Just guessing...

Actally for all lights I find a shadow parameter less than the default of 1 to be quite funky. Sometimes you can use it as a kind of "cheap idl".

The first render uses typical settings:

Ball & backdrop - Diff 0.8, (ball has reflection) EnvSphere set to Ambient=1

Second render uses the revelation bb has just dropped on us:

Ball & backdrop - Diff 0.15 (ball has same reflection) EnvSphere 1 set to Ambient=8

What a difference. Even with just the EnvSphere as an emitter, in the first render too much light is reflecting from the diffuse material, interfering with the added reflection.

Actually, forget the second Environment Sphere - you can't seperate the IDL from the reflection (sure this used to work).

For the render above I just lowered the reflection value to account for the blown out reflection coming from the increase in ambience on the EnvSphere. Thought the double EnvSphere would work.

#2 looks way better! Neat idea from BB

Number two does look way better Carodan.

So it was necessary to amp up the Envsphere light x 8 to get this result though?

We could really do with an option for Visible in IDL, to be separate to Visible in Raytracing eh? If that is something that would be logistically possible even... to program into Firefly's behaviour??

DOH!  Learn something new every day.

Here it is with the shadow at 0.8, theshadow catcher recalibrated and the blur radius at 1.5.  It's pretty good under the chin, but there seems to be too much shadow around the lips and eyes...

I think It'd be preferable to be able to seperate the IDL from the reflection pass - can't see why this wouldn't be possible - although if SM were to sort out the imbalance with diffuse reflectivity it wouldn't be an issue.

The above render utilises the second EnvSphere to render out the normal HDR scene. Marries in quite nicely.

So, to get this straight in my head, the visible background scene of rocks and sea there is on the inner / smaller envsphere that has "cast shadows" and "light emitter" unticked...

...and the ambient light from the outer envsphere passes through that?

Quote -
DOH!  Learn something new every day.

Here it is with the shadow at 0.8, theshadow catcher recalibrated and the blur radius at 1.5.  It's pretty good under the chin, but there seems to be too much shadow around the lips and eyes...

Better, but looks like my guess was pretty rubbish.

Looking at the that, I'd now try shadow at 0.6 and blur radius at 5. (Maybe more shadow samples?)

monkeycloud - Yes.

But I made a mistake in my description before - you also have to untick Visible in Raytracing for the inner sphere.

Quote - So I set up a very simple scene with a backdrop and ball prop, surrounded by two bb environment spheres with HDRs attached (note - one sphere supplies ambient light, the second (slightly smaller with shadowcasting and light emmitting disabled) is for reflections.

The first render uses typical settings:

Ball & backdrop - Diff 0.8, (ball has reflection) EnvSphere set to Ambient=1

Second render uses the revelation bb has just dropped on us:

Ball & backdrop - Diff 0.15 (ball has same reflection) EnvSphere 1 set to Ambient=8

 

What a difference. Even with just the EnvSphere as an emitter, in the first render too much light is reflecting from the diffuse material, interfering with the added reflection.

Very interesting!

I'll have to try this, together with my separate passes, and see the difference. 

(Will have to wait though, animation rendering at the moment and gig tomorrow.)

Quote - monkeycloud - Yes.

But I made a mistake in my description before - you also have to untick Visible in Raytracing for the inner sphere.

Thanks Carodan

I think this is what is confusing me then... as I'd have thought, if Visible in Raytracing was unticked, then that inner sphere wouldn't reflect..

...your reflections will come from the outer sphere. Hence the need to take the reflection values down, to avoid blowing those out?

That means the inner sphere is just providing your backdrop...

...am I right in understanding that?

monkeycloud - yes, that's it.

Problem with the reflections coming from an environment image highly increased in ambience is that the reflections can look off - need to play with this some more.

setting poser directional light shadows <1.0 not recommended: causes opaque objects to transmit directional light.  take a photo of somebody standing in the sun and you'll see the shadows can really be dark in the photo, however with a blue sky they may look bluish to an human observer, which will interpret the scene differently from a camera AFAIK.

yes, monkey - same with hair.  if "visible in raytracing" is unchecked for hair, one can still see the hair in a poser mirror ball, unlike dracula.  however, carodan's two-sphere method (sIBL) may only work with the poser shadow-catcher and/or ground plane or other posersurface.  it may not work with bill's refractive shadowcatcher, which is much better for hdri scenes IMVHO.

Quote - setting poser directional light shadows <1.0 not recommended: causes opaque objects to transmit directional light. 

Yeah, but if it looks right, then there's nothing wrong with it, right?

Quote -  if "visible in raytracing" is unchecked for hair, one can still see the hair in a poser mirror ball, unlike dracula.  

Huh? Since when? I can clearly remember doing a render with VIT unchecked for hair (as somebody had advised me to do to save rendertime) and having a good laugh at a bald V4 reflected in a window.

Here 'tis, Cap'n, with Shadow samples at 100. I didn't recalibrate the groundplane.  The occulded areas on the face still aren't getting enough light...

Quote - Huh? Since when? I can clearly remember doing a render with VIT unchecked for hair (as somebody had advised me to do to save rendertime) and having a good laugh at a bald V4 reflected in a window.

Yeah, I think the hair trick (to help IDL render times and avoid some artifacts, perhaps) is to untick the "Light Emitter" option for the hair, not the "Visible in Raytracing" option?

when I was trying the sIBL technique, I put an hdri on a sphere at 102% size, then used an hi-res jpeg as background on a dome at 100% size (invisible in raytracing), and the result was that everything above the ground plane shadowcatcher looked o.k., but the groundplane showed the lo-res hdri instead of the hi-res jpeg.

It's good to see other people realize how completely shitty IDL is in poser pro.  Sure you can make it work and render nice but at what cost? Weeks & weeks of tweaking?

I should be able to simply drop a directional light, the bbenvsphere, turn on idl, turn on sss and get a kick ass scene.

I've been wondering about that stupid armpit glow.

Sorry I had to vent.

Zanzo - It's all part of the fun. You find a sweet setup & save it for use later with other projects, and then another etc. I've spent just as long in 3ds Max tweaking settings & getting nowhere fast.

Quote - Zanzo - It's all part of the fun. You find a sweet setup & save it for use later with other projects, and then another etc. I've spent just as long in 3ds Max tweaking settings & getting nowhere fast.

I guess you're right.

Look man I actually got some decent results.

IDL intensity set to .5 with the directional light strengths increased:

This thread helped me ten fold. Thanks.

Quote -
Here 'tis, Cap'n, with Shadow samples at 100. I didn't recalibrate the groundplane.  The occulded areas on the face still aren't getting enough light...

Well, you're going to have to increase IDL level a bit after all. Try an IDL only render with intensity=1 and see how much of it you have to add to the latest image in post. That way you'll get a guide to what IDL levels you can get away with in future.

Quote - Look man I actually got some decent results.

That is certainly an awful lot better than earlier!

On the subject of lowering diffuse values and raising lighting intensity, I'm not sure how well the scatter node will work with this technique. I get odd results in simple setups.

Odd in what way?

I get all kinds of IDL artifacts - splotches, discolourations (probably due to the high emitter intensity) - and the skin tends to render very dark.

Tired now. Sleep.

Been thinking about this, and this is just speculation, I haven't tried anything, but...

Might it not be interesting to use the Auxiliary Render Data. I'm not sure, but I think Custom1 delivers diffuse only, and Custom2 delivers specular only. I use the Z-depth option all the time and I don't think it adds anything to the render time.

It may be useful to take the diffuse only file, and subtract a bit of that from the master render. Perhaps you'd get the effect of reducing the diffuse value, but with the scatter node still working normally.

I've never tried this, so I don't know what the score will be with reflections. But when I render my next scene I'll give it a go. As I said, I don't think it adds anything to render time as Firefly is just spitting out some subtotals it has calculated anyway before summing for the master render.

Dang it! I get addicted to this sort of tweaking! Here I was just about to FINALLY spend some time with tinkering with SSS in Vue 11- and you guys had to bring this up! Now I will be compelled to go back to tinkering with PoserPro2012 again. :-)

Aside-I've long wished for some connection of light intensity in 3D to real world values.With some standard materials with albedo ratings for calibration.

"Set Light 1 to 10,000 Lux at 5500 degrees K at 2 Meters...."

Quote - Takes some tweeking but I like it. This is IDL intensity set to .5. I've got a HDR image on the Envsphere that is 2.0 intensity and my main light is at 88%.

How did you set the intensity of the envsphere?

Man is there some kind of tutorial out there that goes over the basics of IDL for poser pro? There are so many little things which makes working IDL not worth it. I've wasted 3 days just experimenting when all I want to do is actually get some work done.

I can't find any tutorial that explains how to use IDL in a fast, efficient way for an indoor scene.

If there had been such a tutorial, it might very well now need to be rewritten ;-)

As I understand it the "intensity" of the envsphere can be adjusted via the "Value" property of the HSV node, in BB's default shader for it.

I've customised my copy of the envsphere, so that that Value property, of the HSV node, in the envsphere shader, is animatable (i.e. by clicking the little key next to the property in the mat room node)... making a dial appear in the Prop dials, which I've just named "Intensity".

The thing is most of this stuff is additional... add-on technique / knowledge / utility... to the actual Poser program, at present... the envsphere, EZSkin, etc...

But also, everyone is aiming for slightly, or completely, different results. So each person's workflow will likely differ slightly... no matter what.

Quote - If there had been such a tutorial, it might very well now need to be rewritten ;-)

As I understand it the "intensity" of the envsphere can be adjusted via the "Value" property of the HSV node, in BB's default shader for it.

Thanks man, this works great. I'm wondering if it's better to increase the strength of a directional light or increase this intensity property. 

Quote - I've customised my copy of the envsphere, so that that Value property, of the HSV node, in the envsphere shader, is animatable (i.e. by clicking the little key next to the property in the mat room node)... making a dial appear in the Prop dials, which I've just named "Intensity".

Pretty sharp man.

Quote - The thing is most of this stuff is additional... add-on technique / knowledge / utility... to the actual Poser program, at present... the envsphere, EZSkin, etc... But also, everyone is aiming for slightly, or completely, different results. So each person's workflow will likely differ slightly... no matter what.

I'm currently trying to come up with a poor man's solution for IDL. The absolute bare minimum so no matter what scene you have, you have core rules to follow for rapid content development.

What I think would be really useful is an advanced render script, presenting a GUI screen like the D3D one, but that allowed adjustment of the envsphere intensity, intensity of each light and maybe also the diffuse (adjusting this globally across all materials).

I guess at launch it could parse all the diffuse values and present some data, like max, min, mean etc of diffuse values... that sort of thing.

Maybe as well as the diffuse, speculars and sss scale?

Just thinking out loud...

...but I'm sure there is probably some way this could be figured into a pre-render adjustment / render settings script... if someone had the inclination to do so...

...possibly with some of the "balancing" equations (ideal diffuse relative to lighting, relative to IDL intensity, etc) figured into it as heuristics / suggested optimum values?

I think idl intensity depend of the scene. Indoor and outdoor lightning are completly different.

You cant set the same settings in all of your scenes. Each need adjustements.

Look here ( middle of post ) http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2860491

These settings look really good viewving the renders.

Now appli this to your scene.

Make art button dont exist ;)

I wanted to say, blotchies seem minimized with 8X. Lowering 8X to 1.5 really started the artifacts. This is nothing but a few tests so far.

and IDL intensity was at .15