I've been trying to find out what is the best way to create a zoomed in sniper scope effect in Poser with no luck.  Any suggestion on how this may work or if it's possible? 

Thanks

if scope has <=1.5 inch eye relief, you can't do render of anything but straight thru scope, which is gonna be circular w/reticle marks. is that what you want?

The exact effect that I want isn't a realistic effect. It's from a first person point of view right before the person takes aim where the target is shown clearly in the scope. It's similar to the image below with the rifle and the scene. But instead of a dark lens which is realistic, a scoped image of the target would show. For example if there was a deer near the tree line, it would show a zoomed in version of the deer that's in the scene but too small to see without the scope.  Hopefully that didn't make things more confusing

I would place a plane over the rear scope lens (or use the scope lens material) and put a render of the target on it overlayed with the reticule.

Hahah. I made an actual telescope in Poser, using lenses and a tube. I put my glass shader on the lenses. It worked, but I couldn't see anything but black unless I put the camera right up against it.

I guess I did it right.

Yeah, Baggins is awesome with lenses unless it happens to be Anamorphic :-P

yes BB, w/riflescope you gotta have eye centred at some exact distance from eyepiece, or you can't see anything.  leave other eye open for target acquisition, due to that.

The only way you would be able to see what the gun was pointing at, at the angle the gun is at, is...

Or any of the adapters to make a normal scope a night vision, or a night vision one a better one, using a smart phone.

Photoshop or Gimp.

Bagginsbill

What creates the "zoom" effect of your 3d lens? Is there a way to get the zoom without the lens effect?  I'm thinking that I may need to think more of the zoom on a digital camera screen than a lens.  That would then make it possible to see the zoom from an angle.  I guess I'll have to play around with some 3D magnifying glasses to see what I can break.

some of panko's weapons which are here in the MP, actually have a real scope texture so you could use that texture somehow, maybe overlay in photoshop.  The reason I know is that I am planning to do a similar render.

Love esther

Good news (and thanks for the puzzle!)

As we said, with real optics, the ability to see the image in the eyepiece is impossible unless you line up the camera.

However, with CG and raytracing, we can invent impossible optics!! Here is a demo.

There are two lenses here: as with a real telescope there is an objective lens and an eyepiece. The objective lens is in the center of this render, and the eyepiece lens is in the right half. The objective lens uses a "real" glass material and has thickness and is biconvex like a real lens. The eyepiece lens is just a single layer of polygons, but curved very slightly convex, and has a special shader on it. (Magic!)

The objective lens is 1.5 inch in diameter. The eyepiece lens is 1 inch. (A modern Poser inch - no arguing about how tall is Vicky please)

The test pawn is far away. In the objective lens it is inverted. The eyepiece inverts again and magnifies!

I will post more as I get closer to a finished piece.

If you have specific dimensions for the scope let me know - the lens distance, size, and curvature are all related and need to be designed together.

Preliminary tube.

With a reticle.

I made it a zoom lens - adjusting the objective lens curvature can be done with a morph, and this alters the magnification.

Awesome !

is great!  typical 3-9X zoom scope: 13 in. long overall, obj. = 1.75 in., ocular = 1.3 in., barrel between lenses 1 in. diam.  has various gizmos sticking out, lenses taper down in truncated cones to barrel.

I revised my dimensions to follow Miss Nancy's suggested values.

Here is the scope from various angles. I put a "coating" on the objective lens so it has that cool dichroic look to it.

At high magnification, there are some serious distortions, particularly at the center. I am trying various geometries to combat it but nothing has come out acceptably yet. The tiniest deviation from perfection causes enormous trouble here. That must be why a high-quality, high-zoom, high-aperture scope is so very expensive.

Poser is notoriously sloppy at math - that doesn't help things.

they may use aspheric lenses in these, e.g. surface is paraboloid of rev.  also achromatic, which may be combo lens. if using displ. or normal map, may be poss. to use 16-bit, assuming those work o.k. w/refr.

Wow! That scope is awesome.  My brain is having a creative overload right now with all of the ideas for scenes and renders centered around that scope. 

I did a ton more work trying different mesh topologies for the lenses. I finally settled on this as a reasonable compromise. It is 6555 polygons.

I still have mysterious distortions around the edge of the lens, so I covered that part with a "retaining ring". Haha.

A test render up close shows lots of little waves. You know what - I'm claiming those are heat waves caused by the atmosphere.

Dang it! I thought I was just about done. I wanted to show how to use different reticles, including illuminated ones. So I duplicated the prop a couple times and changed the reticle images.

When I rendered, the duplicates are distorting the image!!!! WTF, Poser. I hate you. This is why I don't release 90% of what I build - one way or another it's borked and I just don't feel like explaining anything.

A test render up close shows lots of little waves. You know what - I'm claiming those are heat waves caused by the atmosphere.

This still looks good to me. I wonder if there is a limitation of how much the lens can magnify the object before the distortion occurs or if the objects distance from the scope is causing it. Is the distortion the same if the object isn't shiny or reflective? Would a character's skin, hair or clothing have the same effect.  Just throwing some questions out there that may indirectly lead to a solution.

I rearranged some things and got an improvement. I'm still fiddling with geometry and shader to fine tune the outcome. This isn't about physics any more, it's about Poser bugs. I am using Poser Pro 2014 - I wonder how it will behave in other versions. Probably won't work at all.

duplicates not working the same as the original? If it does it to the scopes I wonder what else has the same issues.

"I wonder how it will behave in other versions. Probably won't work at all."

We can just add it to the list existing list of good reasons to use Poser Pro 2014. Hopefully your experience with working with this scope will make it into the next version of Poser.

I have continued to gnaw at this, and I'm now in trouble with my wife. I've spent all day on it. She insists I stop.

I tried many things: spherical lenses, elliptical lenses, flat lenses, displacement, bump, normals - in so many combinations it would make your head spin. Remember there are two lenses, three surfaces. The number of combinations possible is ridiculous.

I have managed to hit upon an arrangement that gives almost no distortion even at great magnification. However, it introduces some new problems I'll have to work out. 

So I'm leaving you with just this progress report. I am going sailing tomorrow so probably I won't do any more until Monday.

I am at such high magnification that aiming the scope is now extremely difficult. I have had to switch from one pawn to a ring of them to help me orient myself, and I had to use point-at to line up. Even then, the numerical errors require tiny adjustments (thousandth of an inch) in the point-at position in order to compensate for Poser's numerical errors.

This render is showing the targets at a distance of 1000 yards. That's right - 1000 yards, 3000 feet, 914.4 meters.

If I showed you the target rendered without the scope, you wouldn't see them at all. They don't even fully occupy one pixel. Even against a plain black background it's extremely hard to make out where they are without the scope.

You might think I'm done then. Nope - now I can't get the scope to show the target (even at lower magnification) unless the camera is almost perfectly lined up with the scope. 

I'll keep at it.

OMG!!  This is so cool!! 

is same prob w/40-100X scope.  almost impossible to acquire target or hold still, heat waves & wind, you name it! misalignment of lenses, bad coating of tube et al.

Bagginsbill

How does the lighting of the environment affect the look of the target in through the scope?  Is the scope able to see the target when the only light in the scene is shining on the target?  I couldn't tell if your last render was an example of this.

Any updates on the scope?