Ok so, back before renderosity had changed the forums, I asked this question.  I got great responses and unfortunately, like an idiot, I just planned on going back to the thread when I needed the info again.  It's all gone :(

So people had given me great tips on how to get excellent render quality using IDL.  BBs envirosphere was involved in this.

So having remembered that, I've done everything I can think of to get that high quality render again.  I've even purchased another IDL set from the market that comes with it's own dome.

Problem I'm having is that I can see all of the textures from the dome on the character and the characters clothing.  It looks terrible.  

Basically I am trying to do a simple studio render.  V4, hair and clothing.  Nothing else in the scene.  I'd love to be able to render over my background but thus far haven't been able to figure that out using the domes.  Doesn't matter, I can work around that.  I really do need to get some high quality renders out of it though.  Can anyone assist?

I'm open to all suggestions.  Even dumping the IDL idea if necessary.  

How odd!

Are you using reflections? (Maybe Poser is really confused about what is supposed to be reflecting . . .)  Typically, I'll use an HDRI image on the environment sphere for IDL lighting and if I'm not using reflections, I set Raytrace bounces to 1 or 0. If I'm rendering over a background image, I make the sphere invisible in camera. That way I get the benefit of IDL lighting, but I can't see the image on the sphere.

Does this help?

I'm not sure I know what you mean by "I can see the textures of the dome on the character and clothing". The only thing I can think of is that perhaps one of the lights has an image on it. Have a check and see...that can make the image appear on an object.

Laurie

For Studio type renders, I always use BB's Soft Light Studio (as a matter of fact I set it as my default scene)

It uses IDL as well as two parented lights (I usually parent the main light to the character's face and the rim light to either face, neck or chest depending on desired effect)

It has a box with ambient and a box to bounce light off. And not much more (well and a VSS prop already integrated in the scene)

Aunupaum, Thank you.  I'm not sure why the heck I didn't think about making the sphere invisible in the camera.  Probably assumed it wouldn't work that way.  LOL.  I'm going to use that tip so that I can use my background.

I don't think anything has reflections on it.  I should be keeping notes on what I've checked.  This has been over a week of working on it, getting frustrated and then walking away.  

Laurie, thanks for that tip too.  I may have had an image on one of the lights somehow. At one point I was just clicking through light libraries trying to get something that worked.  Who knows what I messed up.

Trekkie, I love you lol.  I have a whole runtime for your stuff.  :)  Thank you.  I don't use VSS but I will take a look into that Soft Light Studio.   Can't go wrong with BBs stuff.

Dumb question (maybe), I'm using a SS skin shader already.  Can I just delete the VSS prop and get the same results?  I'm currently reading through BBs thread on the studio, but doing test renders at the same time.  

From what I gather so far it does work well inside a room too, so thinking I will keep the dome since I don't really like that, everything but the front of the model is black look.

Still using VSSProp?  Snarly created the EZSkin script which handles applying SSS to skin textures based on BB's nodes.  At this point, you should be upgrading to that for skin textures and use VSS for what it was intended for, applying shaders nodes to many similar objects at once. 

Snarley's scripts are here: http://snarlygribbly.org/3d/forum/index.php