Does anybody know how to get buildings in Poser to emit lights like the buildings in this image? These were done in 3D Max. One person had explained to me how its done in DAZ, which was apply it to the material before rendering. crank up the emitter luminosity then apply the mask in PS (simply overlay of the orgional texture) so the emitter strength is zero across the walls and above zero in the windows. I have no idea what any of that even means, I don't even use DAZ. So I was wondering if anyone ever achieve these effects with Poser that or either is there some kind of post work tutorial that can help me do it in Photoshop? I really like those effects for buildings at night...For some reason it seems easier for people to get this effect in DAZ without needing to Post work the effects. I've tried increasing the Ambience to lights in the material room with Emiters turned on and I still don't get those realistic light glow effects that I've seen done in DAZ, maybe Iray have a lot to do with it.

Almost every product sold for DAZ the lights are always well lit whether it's a lamp, headlight on a car, street lights, building lights (like the one I'm asking about) and so on...

They all look exactly like this image. And I've tried all sorts of things to get lights in Poser to look like this, never could. One of my friends says he doesn't even have to use stuff like Point lights just to get a lamp to emit lighting like a real lamp would do, but he uses DAZ. Seems like in Poser you have to use Point lights on certain objects for it to look like it's emitting lights. But that doesn't work for the buildings I'm asking about, because I'm refering to the glow effects where the windows are.

First question always is: what version of poser do you have? If you have P11 or I believe P9-10 as well you can crank up the ambient (white) in the window texture for the buildings to 10-20 (making sure properties has "emit light" ticked. Drawback is you will need a higher render setting and a longer render time to avoid the "fireflies" if you are using Superfly (P11/PP11).

First, what version of Poser are you using? If poser 7 and above, you could use the mat room for the light. Depends tho, on the way the building's materials are set up. Is there a separate glass mat for the windows? If so, you could use the Ambient setting in the material room. It's on Poser Surface. I don't know how to do the random effect but maybe some of the Poser Mat Room experts here can help or you could play around or experiment with it..

ThunderStone posted at 1:56PM Mon, 09 October 2017 - #4315664

First, what version of Poser are you using? If poser 7 and above, you could use the mat room for the light. Depends tho, on the way the building's materials are set up. Is there a separate glass mat for the windows? If so, you could use the Ambient setting in the material room. It's on Poser Surface. I don't know how to do the random effect but maybe some of the Poser Mat Room experts here can help or you could play around or experiment with it..

My bad should of responded to this instead of making a new message. I am using Poser Pro 2012.

Boni posted at 1:57PM Mon, 09 October 2017 - #4315662

First question always is: what version of poser do you have? If you have P11 or I believe P9-10 as well you can crank up the ambient (white) in the window texture for the buildings to 10-20 (making sure properties has "emit light" ticked. Drawback is you will need a higher render setting and a longer render time to avoid the "fireflies" if you are using Superfly (P11/PP11).

If it means I can get those effects? I don't even care about the long render times lol it would be worth it. Plus I am using Poser Pro 2012 so yeah I always leave Emit Lights turned on objects that have lights. I only turn it off on my figures, because it's weird having that ticked on for the figures or other objects that I don't want to have lights emitting off of. I just never really noticed the difference, so I'll try what you just suggested. Thank you.

You will still get longer render times, but with Poser 2012 you will be using the firefly render engine and the anomaly I mentioned won't be apparent. Just remember the trick is cranking up the ambient value. Also, it might help if for windows you added translucence. AND reflection if you want added effects. It may not be exactly like the sample, but I still think you will be pleased with the result.

Boni posted at 2:10PM Mon, 09 October 2017 - #4315668

You will still get longer render times, but with Poser 2012 you will be using the firefly render engine and the anomaly I mentioned won't be apparent. Just remember the trick is cranking up the ambient value. Also, it might help if for windows you added translucence. AND reflection if you want added effects. It may not be exactly like the sample, but I still think you will be pleased with the result.

Well no, the sample is done with 3D Max, a much better renderer than what Firefly can do. DAZ's Iray is on par with Max and Octane though based on what I've seen from people that really know their lighting ability, yet those same artists could never achieve the level of detail or quality with Poser even if they were really good at lighting. I certainly can tell the difference just by looking at their gallery of artwork alone and comparing their old renders to their newer ones which have a greater improvement. If DAZ was user friendly, I'd be using that instead simply because IRay is better than Firefly. I've gotten some fairly decent renders with Firefly, but I am sure I could do even better if I was using Iray.

Iray is a PBR (or close to it) and so is Superfly who's core is Cycles by Blender. If you were to use Poser 11 or Poser Pro 11 you can get similar results as Iray. We have some pretty good lighting gurus who have worked on this and are continuing to explore the possibilities.

One other thing to consider is that 3DMax is a modeler, Poser and Studio aren't. No one just renders in Max. They usually create from the ground up, so unless whoever made the model took programs like Poser and Studio into account, What you want may not even be possible. whether or not Poser is able to light up that model like you have there really depends on the material zone set ups.

Cyberdene posted at 1:26AM Tue, 10 October 2017 - #4315667

Boni posted at 1:57PM Mon, 09 October 2017 - #4315662

First question always is: what version of poser do you have? If you have P11 or I believe P9-10 as well you can crank up the ambient (white) in the window texture for the buildings to 10-20 (making sure properties has "emit light" ticked. Drawback is you will need a higher render setting and a longer render time to avoid the "fireflies" if you are using Superfly (P11/PP11).

If it means I can get those effects? I don't even care about the long render times lol it would be worth it. Plus I am using Poser Pro 2012 so yeah I always leave Emit Lights turned on objects that have lights. I only turn it off on my figures, because it's weird having that ticked on for the figures or other objects that I don't want to have lights emitting off of. I just never really noticed the difference, so I'll try what you just suggested. Thank you.

The light emitter tick-box actually means "participates in reflected light bounce calculations", but SM needed a short label for the UI. Don't un-tick it for dolls. Occasionally it saves render time to un-tick it for transmapped hair - at a cost in lighting accuracy.

As for render engines, consider P11 or P11Pro for the Superfly render engine; Superfly is an adaptation of Blender's Cycles Physics-based renderer. It is easy to make things mesh lights in Superfly: Superfly materials for Dystopia

If you are using someone else's model and don't have the ability to cobble up some parts yourself, then you could resort to increasing the windows' color saturation and giving them high ambient. Saturating the color delays the "white-out" caused by using high ambient. When rendering, engage indirect lighting, and use 67% or so for both the irradiance cache and the indirect light quality. Use at least 4 raytrace bounces. The problem is that the apparent brightness will be high, but the lightcasting will be weak - apparent brightness and lightcasting response are mismatched; that's why I don't simply jack up the ambient.

If you can use a modeler program a little, then select the windows, and duplicate them (retaining UV mapping and material zones). Move the new window polys outward slightly, so that they cover the original windows (not share the same space). These new window polys will be your emitters. Import the new emitters into Poser, and parent them to the building model. Set the emitter properties to not cast shadows. Set the emitter properties to be not visible in camera. Apply the same material from the original windows to the emitters, but jack up the ambient (maybe 15?).

Don't use translucence in Poser Pro 2012 for lighting effects. In fact, don't use it for anything, ever. ISTR BB said it's broken. Dunno if it's been redone for Superfly but it's certainly no use for Firefly. Besides which, I can't for the life of me think why you'd use translucence for a glow effect anyhow.

Just crank up your ambient lights to 2 or more and use IDL. You'll also need some kind of texture map to determine which windows are on or off. A simple black/white will do it, where the glow is white and the non-glow is black. Shades of grey will give different levels of light, too. AFAICR, Dystopia has such things included.

This is a Firefly IDL render, with the window's material set to ambient = 1

The apparent brightness of the window is correct, but it isn't casting enough light proportionate to that apparent brightness.

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Then I set the window ambient to 8:

Now the window casts light, but the hyper-ambient burns out the window image.

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Now, I use an unseen IDL emitter. The window is set to ambient = 1, so its apparent brightness is correct, and the emitter (ambient value of 7) produces the stronger lightcasting proportional to the window's apparent brightness.

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This is the properties settings for the window's emitter; un-tick the two highlighted boxes:

Firefly render settings:

This emitter trick isn't needed if you use Superfly; I can just set the material of the window itself to cast light in whatever strength I want.

What you could do or try, if its possible in the scene you are using, is to render the image two times. First you render it normally with no lights in the windows. The second one you apply a 100% black material to all non lighting windows and turn off all lights in the scene. To the windows you apply a 100% white ambient light, that way you should be able to get a mask. Then you load both the images into PS or Gimp or whatever you prefer and use the mask to select the windows and then a apply the light here, with some glow (blur) and so on I think you can make it work. Maybe do it in several layers so you can have different intensity for the lights so it looks more like the image above.

seachnasaigh posted at 8:09AM Wed, 11 October 2017 - #4315710

This is a Firefly IDL render, with the window's material set to ambient = 1

The apparent brightness of the window is correct, but it isn't casting enough light proportionate to that apparent brightness.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Then I set the window ambient to 8:

Now the window casts light, but the hyper-ambient burns out the window image.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Now, I use an unseen IDL emitter. The window is set to ambient = 1, so its apparent brightness is correct, and the emitter (ambient value of 7) produces the stronger lightcasting proportional to the window's apparent brightness.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

This is the properties settings for the window's emitter; un-tick the two highlighted boxes:

Firefly render settings:

This emitter trick isn't needed if you use Superfly; I can just set the material of the window itself to cast light in whatever strength I want.

Damn you use indirect lighting at 80? lol that would take forever to render.

Cyberdene posted at 8:31AM Wed, 11 October 2017 - #4315770

Damn you use indirect lighting at 80? lol that would take forever to render.

My machines each have two HyperThreaded hex-core Xeon processors.

You could use 30 & 30 (irradiance caching & indirect light quality), with 3 raytrace bounces, and see if that's good enough.

Thanks Sam, I stand corrected ... I never had Poser Pro 2012.

It occurs to me that 3D-Mobster is addressing one element of "glow", while I was addressing another. Using glow/blur with PhotoShop would give you that soft fuzzy glow aura. Using an unseen IDL emitter will give you the lightcasting which illuminates the buildings' surroundings.

I did some quick/rough modeling to make a building with windows, and another model which is just stacked blocks of concrete (no light-producing areas). The windowed building model has an IDL emitter. This Firefly IDL render shows how the windowed buildings illuminate their surroundings. Note the sides of the buildings facing away from the group: those areas are very dark.

@Cyberdene: This Firefly IDL render took eighteen minutes on Urania; she has 24 threads clocked at 2.8GHz.

A new background "filler" building for the neighborhood around Tink's Cafe':

That's a Firefly render; I'll also make a Superfly version. The jumbotrons are animated.