Sorry. Wasn't about to go to the trouble to put hair and clothes on them. Always looking for new ways to keep from getting bored with Poser, I started playing with some of my old light sets. For along time I didn't render with shadows because I didn't like what it did to hair, but now I'm interested again. I'm looking to perfect lighting. I'm now starting to realize that very small map sizes on the lights can be a good thing. This one is an outdoor light set. Also working on soft shadows. Anyone else have success? Want to get a research project going? Email is quicker than poping back here. But we can start a thread to. Brainstorming anyone? Anton antonk68@aol.com

I don't have names for these. This one is I think still has a cool quality to it. The spots use a map site set to only 75.

If the top spot is made into an infinate light with a 2000 map size the shadows are of course much more crisp. But all the surrounding lights with small map sizes keep it soft. Anyone have any ideas. The start and end dials are really vaguely explained in the manual.

I like them Anton strong, but not over powering shadows there. Even the last one, darker though it is, nothing is lost on the figures. Often times darker lights put my figures in the shade when I just want it to appear as if they are out at dusk or similar lighting.

How do you get infinate lights to map up to 2000? I can never get mine to go above 1024.

Anton, That last one would be great for moonlight walks, and the first looks like real sunlight. Keep up the research! I think we'd all appreciate some numbers or some sets. Carolly

Xena, You have to double click on the dial and reset the Max value. A value of 2000 will produce sharp crisp shadows. a value of 75 produces very diffused shadows. Seem like 1024 is just plain evil. Moonlight and sunlight was what I was going for. The trouble I am having is capturing soft ground shadows. In the real world shadows sharpness and darkness is also determined by how close the object casting the shadow is from the object catching the shadow. Poser doesn't seem to think this way.

Thanks Anton :) I only ever add the numbers in, never actually double clicked the dial. Ohhhh, more stuff to play with. Isn't lighting fun :) The first one is fantastic for daylight, around midday. The second one looks like an indoors scene, like in a museum where there is a lot of ambient light. The third is just plain terrific for midnite strolls (good thinking hauk s) I guess the sharpness of the ground shadows at nite would also be determined by the phase of the moon nae?

The Shadowmap in poser is divided by the number of figures. For example: Render one individual figure and two figures. And see on the result. I think for 2 figures is 1024 enough. Mazak

LadySilverMage - I find that if I want to change my lighting so that it looks like the characters are in a darker setting, if I backlight them with either a dark green, or a dark blue spot light it helps to keep them from being lost in shadows, I also turn off the "cast shadows" box if I start seeing too many shadows where they probably shouldn't be. I wish I had more to contribute I've been messing around with light settings myself, but Anton's examples are better than what I've come up with so far.

Oh, one other thing... I always adjust the "Shadow" setting from 1 to somewhere between .125 and .4 at the most.. anything past .4 seems to be too dark for my tastes... unless I'm trying to cast a darker shadow onto something...

Waaaaah... Ok, I've been suggesting, less than convincingly it would seem, that folks try manipulating the Shadow Lite Cams rather than scaling the shadow maps. It accomplishes the same thing, and affords much more control, & can save memory and render time. It is the Shadow Lite Cams, as opposed to the lights themselves, that determine the field of view from which the shadow maps are generated. Often, these views cover a field vastly wider than the area included in the actual render. As such, most of the pixels in the shadow maps are wasted -- which is why people try to overcome this by using giant, memory hogging, render bogging, shadow maps. Because these cams can be moved independently of the lights to which they are parented, if you do want to yield softer, more feathered shadow edges, just zoom the Shadow Cam out. If you want harder shadows, zoom the light's Shadow Cam in. It works, & its fast, really! You can do other stuff as well, but I'll settle for this bit for now!

Nance, I just looked at your lighting tutorial thing... http://worldzone.net/art/nance/softlight_tutorial/SoftlightTutorial-Nance00.html In case anyone else wants to look at it. I wish I were at home so that I could try some of that... I already cheat and parent and point my lights to/at props to get them pointing where I want them more easily... I usually use a ball and just make the ball invisible and position it to where I want the lighting to be centered. I'm going to have to try scaling the ball and see what happens.

That 'ol thing? pushaw... Thanks, but that tute is somewhat bogus, or at least a very, VERY long way around, and I should modify it or take it down. A lot of the stuff I was recommending there to control shadows was merely an indirect and very complicated way of doing what I described up above. By parenting the lights to a prop, and scaling the prop, I was really just doing the same thing as zooming/scaling the the Shadow Cams point of view without changing the positon of the lights. It was written before I realized that it WAS the Shadow Cams I was actually manipulating, and that it could be done without messing with the lights themselves. Though the end results are the same (so the examples might still be worth a look-see) it's really much easier than all that hoopla. (thanks for the kind words though!)

A daylight preset I've been refining.

WOW... what a great thread. i have always been dissatisfied with the lighting effects in poser, which is why i went out to bryce or some other renderer to do production work. you guys have got some very interesting stuff going... certainly worth keeping this thread bookmarked!

MallenLane, I've said it once, or twice, or three times, but these light sets you're coming up with are just incredible... can I live in your head for a while to see how you're doing it? I'll clean up after myself, I promise... and I don't eat much... :)

LoL Cin-

Mallen, Looks great. How many lights are you using? I've been able to work with as few as four spots and 5 infinates, nine total. My system can handle alot more. But I'm trying to see how few I can get away with.

You have to use quite a few of lights to get a global illumination effect. The alternative way to get this kind of rendering, true radiosity, would take longer no matter how many lights used in a faked version. The rendering time on this image was: 3mins 20secs

oh, doh, sorry. for reference that's on a 1ghz pentium3 with 512 megs of ram. But I've never heard anyone complaining of render time on lower end systems.

MallenLane, I know on the light preset you included with the Hatchling Dragon (which has 23 lights... I think) doesn't take THAT long on my computer... it takes longer than most, but not quite that long... and my computer is only a 500Mhz 384MB of ram.

And you will notice Cin- that mallen's Light Set uses moslty shadows at 256!! But the end result is amazing!!! If you want an example, look for my 2 latest pics: "Pin her Up... #1 & #2"! They both use Mallen's Light Set that came with the "Hatchling Dragon"!! Oh! If you are interested in Outdoor lighting, the "3d World kit" includes Awesome sets of lights too!! I'll have pics with those ready soon to show the potential!! Well, Anton!! You always seem to start very intersting threads here!! :-) And Again a Thank You for all your Stuff too!! Oh! And BTW! In the Poser manual, they talk about the "Cam Shadow Lights" a bit... But, it's more Fun to discover stuff on your own just by trying all the Buttons! ;-) Marco

wow...these are great sets...I love the blue one that looks like moonlight alot. And mallenLanes light above this post is very very nice!

Still very much working on the tones of this one.

is the underwater:shallow preset thats gonna come with the hatchling seadragon addon.

Still haven't had time to play with the shadowcams, but I have to take some time this weekend. I like Mallen's shadows. This is the effects I've been going for. I guess I've been stubborn not wanting to go about 10 lights. But whatever it takes, right?

I was messing around with the shadow cams last night, but didn't have too much time to really get in depth, but I did notice some variations... it's kind of funny when you switch to the shadow cam to make adjustments... everything is upside down. :)

Cin- the view from that shadow cam was upside down because it must be parented to a light that has been rotated. Flip the light to view the scene right side up - it shouldn't affect the lighting. (the shadow cams have no rotation controls, just translation)

Yeah, I figured it out... I've been screwing with the shadow cams, getting varying results, some not too bad... this is one of them... I was trying to get a light set that looked like nightime in winter, when the snow reflects more light from the ground than there is light coming from above... I think it came out okay, not great, but at least okay.

oh, yeah, that would be a great addition to a light set CD or package...