Any advice for a frustrated Poser2012 noob?

Whe I look at your scene I understand that the motor does not have a shadow.

Your light, as I can judge from the lantirn and its shadow, is coming from below and from the right hand corner, shining upwards to the left upper corner of your scene.

A light coming out of the ground and shining UPWARDS can not put a shadow of the motor on the ground.

Take a look through your shadowcams and see what your lights  see and where your lights WILL put their shadows.

What I do not understand is why the pig head does not have a shadow. Only the suit casts shadows. Check your settings for that figure.

But : A light coming from below shining upwards can never put a shadow on the ground.

Shadow cams? See you talk about being a noob. Light from the ground was suppose to light the building. Even tried a spot on the road shinning left on the bike. Ok I will continue to struggle. If others do it with such fantastic realistic scenes, I have my goal and will do it.. (no matter how long it takes me lol.)

I also tried each prop, character to have a light emitter. Then turned them all off. Didn't see any change.

Thank you so much for your quick reply

Like that pig--he's a sharp dresser.

If you select your light, youll see all the parameters listed to the right. Make sure your light is above ground--the Y Tran setting. Look under the Properties tab to see if the light is visible or not. 

When I want to check positions of my lights, I ususally use the top camera. If the lights arent INSIDE the building, you should be able to see them. If they are under a roof or something, youll need to make the roof object invisible to see the light.

Another great tip...Sometimes top camera doesn't work as there is a roof or something in the way.  Problem with wine store, it is part of a street of stores. It is one solid prop. Cannot even move the wine barrels inside the store...

Thank you for reply..

The only real problem I see is why the pig's suit gives a shadow, but he does not.

If you put a light from left to right, up to down on the bike to test?
Test with an infinite light, and turn all the other lights off.
Somtimes a shadow gets washed away by other lights.

look through the shadowcam for that infinite light and see what the light sees.
Then agjust the light to your liking.
Then one by one, load the other lights again, and check what lights blow your shadow away.
Also check the Y position of the road. is it above or below the ground plane.
Is the road marked as shadow catching.
Sorry, many questions, I know.
Go step by step,
happy Posering
Tony

The roof is in the way?
Does the roof have a separate material zone?.
The go in the material room and set the roof material at transparancy 1.

If the stores are all one prop, you can make the whole street-stores invisible with one click, so youll just see the characters, cameras and lights. Again, selet the stores, go to the Properties, uncheck Visible. 

Poser is one of those programs that reward experimentation, so your playing around with all these things--tho exasperating and time consuming--is the way to go. It nevere seems to end, for me at least. I learn a batch of new things, and then see a whole landscape of more things to learn, all of them too too complicated...so keep at it!

Another tip for super noob.. Believe it or not I actually tried reading the 'MANUEL'

Bunch of super people here with great advise...

Ok will rework this render. Personally I do like it but not my results...I'll repost it to compare. Can't guarantee it will be soon...My tolerance of failure is -1...

If it is supposed to be an outside daytime scene, use BB's environment sphere and one infinite light at about 40% and turn on IDL...

Edit here's the link to the sphere...

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere

definately 100% what WandW said.  this scene will be given a boost of life using an environment sphere + 1 light instead of your multi-like approximation.  The sphere surrounding the scene will produce light that bounces around the scene lighting things from all angles realisticly, thanks to Indirect Diffuse Lighting (IDL).  You then just need one light, I'd suggest a point light myself with linear falloff.  The single light will create your shadows so it is highly advised to use ray-traced shadows.

If you have a 3D graphics card in your computer thats not ancient, go into the render settings, choose the "preview" tab select OpenGL as the display engine and tick "enable hardware shading" and "enable hardware shadows".

Your preview in Poser will now show a low quality preview of the shadows you will get in realtime making it SUPER easy to setup your one shadow casting lite!

IMO. the lights are too bright.  If the store front is entirely enclosed, there should be no, if little, interior lighting to be seen.  Those should be in shadow.  Considering that you are using PP2012, IDL will solve some of your problems.  As mentioned by others, start with one light, an infinite for your sun and decide where you want to place it in your scene.  Is the scene in broad daylight, bright sunny day @ noon or overcast with very even direct lighting and faint shadows?  Add a sun color; gray for cloudy conditions, yellow for sunshine.  Just place that single light where you find it pleasing in the scene.  This will be your key light with shadows.

Next, add your fill lighting which will either add or not add more shadowing.  This is where a skydome comes into play.  It is an ambient light, it will fill and soften shadows.  It is also diffuse lighting with no specular value.  Other lights associated with light fixtures can provide additional fill lighting which will provide more subtle or distinct shadows.  This up to you.

But add you lights slowly and one at a time.  Position them until you are satisfied with their placement.

Get a Skydome and a texture to match (HDRI preffered)set as emitter,scale to envelop scene and delete one of those distance lights. Enable IDL in render settings.

Reay to give up....:(

Quote - This is scene zoomed out.  Is BB EnvSphere suppose to cover the whole background?

Yes, that's what it should look like, although usually I use the dome for lighting if it's not going to be visible.  To use the sphere in this scene, I'd put a plane primitive under the scene to block the light coming up from below; make it big, like 100 ft or more across, and make sure cast shadows is on in its properties.  It looks like you applied the gradient material to the sphere, which is fine.

Did you add an infinite light and enable raytraced shadows, and turn on raytracing in your render settings?

Thinks this looks better..

Point out my errors once again...Said I wud give up. lol..This scene is haunting me in my dreams

This is a quick setup I did with the PP2012 Raleigh Tavern with one infinite light at 35% and a point light in the foyer at 5%

To set up Renders in PP2012, I use the included D3D script, found under scripts>Partners>Dimension 3D>Render Firefly, which shows everthing and allows you to save various settings.  Make sure Enable Indirect Light and Enable Raytracing and Use Irradiance Cache are checked, and that raytracing and shadows are enabled on all of your lights. 

Load the dome, apply the gradient material in its folder in tha material folder, make sure that cast shadows is checked in the properties of your Ground plane, delete (or set intensity to zero)all of your lights except one infinite at 35%, which will be the Sun, so it should be coming down from the right (based on the shadows of your first render)...

Edit; if you have reflective surfaces, set raytrace bounces higher than 1...

If the interior is lit there might be an ambient channel in the material room active for the model.  I would check that feature; it can cause no shadowing because it is self illuminating.

Ok what happened now?

You ticked Only next to Shadows, that's a no-no.

That is you shadow killer.

Still not happy with results.. Still working on the scene... I haven't given up just giving my brain  break..(thinking of starting from scratch)

Thank you for your help and advise...

BTW, what is the structure model you are attempting to render?

Victorian Street (Daz) The wine cellar only as main prop....

Sorry. Rechecked and part of LeVillage Bistrot'

http://www.daz3d.com/le-village-bundle

I believe I have these separately.  It might be worth loading this one into a runtime and check out what is going on.

I started the scene over....Already looks better...Have to import my characters etc..

I had purchased the LeVillage Bundle way back when. Saved to ext HD and reinstalled

Advise....What needs to be done. Now going close to 1 month working on this farking scene..

From my viewpoint, the textures are perfectly fine for rendering.  As recommended, build up the lighting individually until you get the effect that pleases you, but don't forget view the lighting in a realistic manner.

Your shadows are taking a beating with the light intensity.  Where is your infinite light in relation to the scene?  And where are the other lights placed?

I think that is a vast improvement.  Yes, over 3 hours is to be expected on a full render.  If you change anything, I suggest lowering some settings and do area rendering instead.  It will cut down time.  Or reduce your resolution using D3D Firefly renderer, that will take the load off full rendering until you are pleased with the results.  I like the results so far.

I wouldn't worry too much about the tire.  Remember it is in motion and the shadows are soft throughout the scene.  The Photoshop backlighting will darking it as it naturally should.

Ok. honest opinion. Ok to add my name and post at Rendo forum? No further work needed?  If it does need it I'll try again.,..

Thank you so much for your time and help...!!!

If you are good with it, go ahead and post.  Your effords have paid off.

Here's a thread on fast IDL renders with settings from BB for speeding things up; scroll down a bit for the settings he used and why...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3572082

Ok going to post it at my Rendo gallery.  Now.....Going to start a new render and torture myself for another month...

Only way to learn is help/trial/error..no matter how long it takes..

Once again Thank You!!