JAG opened this issue on Apr 08, 2013 · 113 posts
bagginsbill posted Thu, 11 April 2013 at 10:54 PM
Well, Poser won't do caustics, but I have rarely felt I needed them. Let's be clear, though, that I do not use the loose meaning of caustic as many people use it. The specific meaning of caustic is concentration or dispersion of light due to a curved refractive surface, causing a localized modulation of the light intensity after passing through the refractive medium. Hot spots. Poser is missing, altogether, the ability to transmit light through glass to reach and illuminate other objects. (possibly coloring it) This causes me trouble. I don't care that much about focusing the light - just let it through.
Generally there are four things I run into frequently that Lux does great and Poser does poorly, even in my hands:
Interior lit by exterior daylight, through windows.
Small, hot mesh lights. (e.g. a light bulb filament)
Some specific glass situations (not all are bad in Poser) and I'm not talking about caustics - I'm talking about seeing through the glass and letting light through the glass. A wine glass sitting on a white table cloth will, in Poser, incorrectly render the table cloth as being in shadow of the wine glass. You have to use transparency instead, and that ruins the illusion.
Overall a better, more accurate handling of bounced light so any situation where that is a significant factor in the light - interiors, corners, crevices.
There is also the fact that so often Firefly will do a credible job of bounced lighting, but there are so many artifacts I just can't use the render.
Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)