I've never been able to play with indoor lighting. Splotchies always invade. This is really cool.

bagginsbill posted at 2:45AM Thu, 03 December 2015 - #4242083

This is the kind of render that should have been displayed during the sneak peek phase.

bagginsbill posted at 5:55AM Thu, 03 December 2015 - #4242083

I've never been able to play with indoor lighting. Splotchies always invade. This is really cool.

Looks great BB

Thanks,Jura

false1 posted at 12:22PM Thu, 03 December 2015 - #4242004

DarthJ posted at 11:12AM Wed, 02 December 2015 - #4241779

Quote :

Well the figure on the right looks like my girlfriend. How'd you get a picture of my girlfriend?!!! Why I oughtta... lol.

Do post a picture of your girlfriend in similar attire to compare.

She jumped back in the shower and pulled the curtain when she noticed my camera. She'll come out eventually though, and I'll be waiting. ;-)

Try cold water.

Path tracers are known for certain limitations. Chief among them is that they have trouble consistently locating paths that reach small sources of intense light.

I ran this render for eight hours and it's a dismal failure. Results like this are why people give advice to use area lights. But - while that is a solution for some situations, it's not a good solution. In this case the light bulb is not at all going to be simulated well by a point light. The advice to use area lights is misguided - it is given and repeated because A) certain people who know some things don't know everything they should about the tools, yet partial knowledge gives them some credibility and B) others who know even less just believe anything said but somebody with more knowledge.

Anyway - here's what you get if you lack material skills.

Now I introduce a shader called "Tricky Glass". Click here to read about it

This is a dual shader that asks the renderer "Why are you here?" If the renderer is asking "To see what you look like" the shader says "Glass". If the renderer is asking "To see if you block (shadow) the path to this light source I'm looking at" the shader says "Transparent". (Or various subtle combinations of other things, but that's the basic idea.)

The result is a beautiful and accurate pattern of light and shadow from a point light in SuperFly, that converges in minutes, not days. Notice how the light is modulated by the glass shade. Some people think you need IES lighting simulators for this. You do not. Point lights and tricky glass can work very well to do realistic light patterns. The tricky glass can even be invisible, and just modulate the light pattern from a point light.

Learn your tools. If you don't know how to get the results that others are asking for and you think you have advice based on what what you imagine to be the truth, consider just saying nothing.

When a scene is modeling a tiny light source, such as a single bulb in a big room, the answer is point light, not area light.

Take particular note of the caustics on the table. To see those, the renderer had to pass the light through SIX Tricky glass surfaces (4 for the vase, 1 for the lamp shade, 1 for the light bulb -- the point light was inside the bulb.)

how would Superfly compare to rendering in the Luxrender plugins?

Honestly, so far I'm not seeing a reason to spend money on upgrading from PP12.

MistyLaraPrincess posted at 9:32AM Thu, 03 December 2015 - #4242183

how would Superfly compare to rendering in the Luxrender plugins?

Honestly, so far I'm not seeing a reason to spend money on upgrading from PP12.

MLP, clearly that totally depends on what you're doing and what tool you use now. Lux is super capable and Reality seems to make using it very easy. So if you're happy with that combination, cool.

I tried Poser and Lux (recently with Reality) and the constant exporting and long render times drove me crazy. Also, hiding the shader guts from me is no fun. I want to make my own gold with the subtle improvements that the offered shaders just don't have. I got so impatient that I never developed the required skills and so I dropped it. I learn by doing thousands of renders a week. With SuperFly, I'm getting that kind of pace that I always had with FireFly - the things I'm learning every day are not tiny improvements in my skills - they're huge. But with Lux I was only make the most minimal progress each day. If I'm not learning skills, I am not having fun. So - that's how it compares to me.

I'm doing indoor lighting now that I never had access to with FireFly, and it's really fun.

i've been puttering in carrara much of 2015.

Sounds like superfly fixed the shadow shmootz? It's a big plus.

Every new poser version needs your glass of milk render.

or the old rdna bathtub.

I actually played a bit with PP12 renders last weekend. Now I'm 3 versions behind if you count gave dev.

exnem fruit pineapple pulp, should of tried orange dimples. lol.
And Lotus Decadence (rdna) glass, crystal, and liquids. didn't use idl. . .

I have a script that makes ceiling boxes with recessed lighting (cans with point lights in them.) I used it here to make six lights in a 2 by 3 grid pattern six feet apart.

This is the most believable lighting for this kind of space, IMO. An area light looks nice and is easy to set up, but easy isn't best - it's just easy.

Note that point lights are not actually points in SuperFly. They're spheres. I'm going to call them sphere lights from now on, although the UI still says "Point". I scaled these sphere lights to fill the cans and carefully adjusted the yTran of the lights so the tip of the sphere was flush with the can opening.

Look at the reflections on the leather - compare to the first of this series where I used an area light. (Top of this page)

"In this case the light bulb is not at all going to be simulated well by a point light."

I'm trying to understand why. Because of the artificially high intensity close to the source point? Or did you mean... by an area light?

Thanks

IsaoShi posted at 6:19PM Thu, 03 December 2015 - #4242305

"In this case the light bulb is not at all going to be simulated well by a point light."

I'm trying to understand why. Because of the artificially high intensity close to the source point? Or did you mean... by an area light?

Thanks

GAH! Whenever I write about two alternatives in rapid comparison, I mix them up. I need to edit that but I can't - stupid time limit. What is the point of that exactly?

(That's rhetorical. I know the point. I just disagree with the premise and frequency. The number of times I need to correct a mistake far exceeds the number of times some dipwad will hide some insult he wants to rescind.)

Thanks - good catch. I meant area light is not a good tool here.

I was already doing paint like this in FireFly but here's how it looks in SuperFly.

Hello Ted, my sincere compliments sir. Exceptional work.

Both the living room and car are great demo's of what is possible with Poser11 / Poser 11 Pro render engines.

Hi BB

Does poser supports IES or still doesn't ?

But still great interior render,really like them a lot,regarding yours script,are you will be putting this script too for sale ?

Thanks,Jura

I'm liking it so far. This is one done with branching turned off and 50 samples. Maybe could have gone a little less than 50, but this was enough to almost eliminate grain. Not IBL - just a side spot and ambient light. About a 6 minute render with GPU. Not quite as fast as Octane, but very reasonable. WDJ bottles and sky.

bagginsbill posted at 10:30AM Fri, 04 December 2015 - #4242275

I have a script that makes ceiling boxes with recessed lighting (cans with point lights in them.) I used it here to make six lights in a 2 by 3 grid pattern six feet apart.

This is the most believable lighting for this kind of space, IMO. An area light looks nice and is easy to set up, but easy isn't best - it's just easy.

Note that point lights are not actually points in SuperFly. They're spheres. I'm going to call them sphere lights from now on, although the UI still says "Point". I scaled these sphere lights to fill the cans and carefully adjusted the yTran of the lights so the tip of the sphere was flush with the can opening.

Look at the reflections on the leather - compare to the first of this series where I used an area light. (Top of this page)

That looks really sweet BB!

"This is the kind of render that should have been displayed during the sneak peek phase."

Well.. true ... yes but the reality , as I see it, is that the Majority of poser users did not buy poser for Architectural Visualization renders void of human life.

Poser users did not need "Superfly" to find out about the photo based realism of the cycles engine. any Blender gallery from the last two years has showcased Good caustics from glass and realistic metal shaders.

For the price of this upgrade, those who do not wish to move to Daz/Iray would likely find the Palos Reality/LUX combo a better value overall IMHO.

wolf359 posted at 10:47AM Sat, 05 December 2015 - #4242656

"This is the kind of render that should have been displayed during the sneak peek phase."

Well.. true ... yes but the reality , as I see it, is that the Majority of poser users did not buy poser for Architectural Visualization renders void of human life.

Poser users did not need "Superfly" to find out about the photo based realism of the cycles engine. any Blender gallery from the last two years has showcased Good caustics from glass and realistic metal shaders.

For the price of this upgrade, those who do not wish to move to Daz/Iray would likely find the Palos Reality/LUX combo a better value overall IMHO.

I do have Reality, but I find it difficult to get decent shaders for it. I can render glass and shiny plastic, but things like wood and Fabric just don't work for me. I like the material editor, it's great to use Poser's pattern generators with Blenders Cycles.

For me, P11 is the much better value.

I've seen crap renders coming out of Iray and crap renders out of Reality, Octane, Cycles and whatever. People post it up and commenters say "that's awesome" when clearly it isn't. If you want photorealism you have to work for it, especially if you use skins, fabrics, lighting etc that wasn't created for that specific render engine. You have to have eyes too, or you won't be able to see the flaws. Skin is very important but so are clothing and other scene elements (unless you specialize in nude renders of figures floating in a void). If one element of the scene comes off as fake, you're dead . . . and falling into the uncanny valley. The glass, leather, metal, etc in the renders trickling out are impressive.

Skin is always the most difficult, the most easily identified when it's flawed. SM would have done well to have provided good skin materials at launch but there should be no doubt at this point that Superfly can created realistic skin with the right setup.

I have turned my attention to people, now that I have a firm grasp of the basics.

Here's the shader. The scatter Radius doesn't display - it is set to .7, .2, .1

Just front-lit.

This is the most believable lighting for this kind of space, IMO. An area light looks nice and is easy to set up, but easy isn't best - it's just easy.

You can't really call it believable if it has all those hard shadows everywhere.

I transferred BB's skin shader to my figure and it would be perfect if it wasn't producing these odd symmetrical salmon-orange patterns. Most visible on her face, but also in other more shadowy places on her body. By process of elimination :

• used Superfly, in Firefly the whole skin just renders black.
• lights : tried area and point lights.
• pixel samples : 10,15 or 20. No difference.

Have yet to try infinite light. I don't see any mistake withing the shader setting that could cause this kind of phenomen just on her face.

Subsurface scattering map using wrong UV coordinates or wrong SSS map?

Is that V4? V4 has an eyebrow mask mesh layer; the scattering may be reacting to the mask over the head as being a thin layer of skin.

The glowy areas beyond the eyebrow mask may be from the hair skull cap.

Hey BB, what figure and skin are you using for that render? It seems to have a very good bump map!

I must definitely try that shader out, thank you. :)

seachnasaigh posted at 4:12PM Mon, 07 December 2015 - #4242969

Is that V4? V4 has an eyebrow mask mesh layer; the scattering may be reacting to the mask over the head as being a thin layer of skin.

The glowy areas beyond the eyebrow mask may be from the hair skull cap.

I have tried this texture with another shader (see previous render) and the problem didn't occur then. What we don't see in BB's shader setup are the texture/bump map settings.

Though the texture was converted from V4 this is Miki2 and the eyebrows are part of the texture.

However your post confirmed an idea and I checked the skull cap of the towelhead-hair. This skull cap happens to be rather extensive, covering almost all her face like an ancient greek helmet. Once removed the orange glow was gone. About the same problem seems to occur with clothing where a transparency map is applied : the invisible part of the clothing shows up as an orange shadow on the skin. So this is a shader ideal for rendering bald naturists. One problem remains : the red around the eyes.. There are no eyesockets so maybe the problem is again a transparency map : the eyelashes.

Frequency posted at 12:39PM Mon, 07 December 2015 - #4242974

Hey BB, what figure and skin are you using for that render? It seems to have a very good bump map!

I must definitely try that shader out, thank you. :)

The figure is James, found as a Poser legacy figure.

I just read over a couple pages of this thread. I see lots of questions to me. You know I don't get ebots, right? Did you guys not read my signature?

Boni - you asked in PM if I'm getting ebots now. No - I am not getting ebots for the forum.

I am getting ebots for gallery uploads by people I did not "follow" - yet the system thinks I'm interested for some reason.

I am once again so irritated by Renderosity that I'm once more going to say it.

YOU SUCK, RENDO PROGRAMMER

No worries, I got the information I wanted!

hborre posted at 11:00PM Mon, 07 December 2015 - #4243018

Frequency posted at 12:39PM Mon, 07 December 2015 - #4242974

Hey BB, what figure and skin are you using for that render? It seems to have a very good bump map!

I must definitely try that shader out, thank you. :)

The figure is James, found as a Poser legacy figure.

Gosh I'd like to see this figure re-rigged and tidied up to current tech. He really is a beauty until you try to pose the poor bugger

Yeah really... I am impressed by the quality of the texture, is that the default?

I have never worked with the older Poser figures, but went straight to V4 and M4. What are the problems with posing with James?

bagginsbill posted at 9:44AM Tue, 08 December 2015 - #4243038

I just read over a couple pages of this thread. I see lots of questions to me. You know I don't get ebots, right? Did you guys not read my signature?

Boni - you asked in PM if I'm getting ebots now. No - I am not getting ebots for the forum.

I am getting ebots for gallery uploads by people I did not "follow" - yet the system thinks I'm interested for some reason.

I am once again so irritated by Renderosity that I'm once more going to say it.

YOU SUCK, RENDO PROGRAMMER

Rendo has a PROGRAMMER !!!!!!!!!!!

Regarding Ebots: I am getting ebots for threads I have been posting in. It is probably because of this check mark, which seems to work:

On the other hand, I have tried 'Subscribing' to a thread where I didn't post, but then I don't seem to get ebots, even though people have been posting in the thread. So one thing seems to be working while the other isn't.

Guess what - the "Notify me when someone replies" is on in every one of my damn posts. Every one.

So - NO THAT IS NOT WHY THE PROGRAMMER IS NOT AN IDIOT

First one is Firefly. Second one is Superfly. Both with medium low quality render settings.

No idea how to control specular and colour for hair room hair in Superfly. Nothing seems to work for me.

Miki 2 with BB's skin shader, with a minor modification. After dis- and reconnecting every other node I set the scatter radius to 2.1.1 and gone were the red eyesockets. Don't ask me for an explanation. The problem of the salmon coloured shadows left by transparent parts remains unsolved.

She's gonna blow! Lol.

A " double entendre " ?

Probably. He he. Good thing there's that towel. Lol.

bagginsbill posted at 9:39AM Fri, 11 December 2015 - #4243038

I just read over a couple pages of this thread. I see lots of questions to me. You know I don't get ebots, right? Did you guys not read my signature?

Boni - you asked in PM if I'm getting ebots now. No - I am not getting ebots for the forum.

I am getting ebots for gallery uploads by people I did not "follow" - yet the system thinks I'm interested for some reason.

I am once again so irritated by Renderosity that I'm once more going to say it.

YOU SUCK, RENDO PROGRAMMER

i complained about the gallery spammages in Community forum. >.<

meatSim posted at 9:42AM Fri, 11 December 2015 - #4243098

hborre posted at 11:00PM Mon, 07 December 2015 - #4243018

Frequency posted at 12:39PM Mon, 07 December 2015 - #4242974

Hey BB, what figure and skin are you using for that render? It seems to have a very good bump map!

I must definitely try that shader out, thank you. :)

The figure is James, found as a Poser legacy figure.

Gosh I'd like to see this figure re-rigged and tidied up to current tech. He really is a beauty until you try to pose the poor bugger

if they offered him as a merchant resource.
or paid someone to do it. based on what i remember of his mesh, i'd charge them an advance ... about 5-grand-usa to take on the job.

Revenge!

Victoria 4, she may be old but still bends. This is an old firefly render I may a long time ago as a joke, converted to cycles superfly : all materials except for the stool are cyclesmaterials.

This is Greenpot's School Gym, rendered in SuperFly after changing the materials. Most surfaces use the PhysicalSurface-Root as a base. I used the provided textures, changed the colors a little and added some procedural bump at some surfaces. Took some time rendering since the lights aren't perfect, but I like what I see.

V4 WM, Syyd's Titania Texture Set, 3000 samples per pixel, GPU render. No lights, lit with BB's Environment Sphere and an HDR texture.

Here's my best so far. Wish Superfly didn't have SSS bugs, but I think this is not too bad.