I don't understand the Construct in Poser 11, what is it exactly good for. I preferred the old ground plane because when I had it on and a background color picked, it would create a surface for ground shadows. Now if I hide the construct there is no surface for ground shadows to be cast on--nor does it have a decent variety of textures to apply to it. It doesn't appear in the list of assets, but it resembles a skydome. I can't delete it from the scene, I can only hide it. sometimes my figures cast shadows on the walls--but since it doesn't show up as an object in the scene you can't turn off cast shadows on it. I'm perplexed, what is the purpose of it--why can't I delete it?

It is like you said. It is like a skydome. You can morph the bottom of it. (Someone has a video of a ground-like texture on the "floor" and used magnets to morph it and it became built-in morphable terrain. Who did that and where did I see that? My new quest.) I find it useful

Hi Tom, the only way I know how to go back to the old plain Ground plane setup is to go into the Scene Library > Poser 11 Environments folder, and select Poser 10 Workspace. That will delete the Construct, and give you back the Ground plane setup.

One word of caution, when you do that it will "add" the 4 lights from the Poser 10 Workspace scene to the 4 lights from the default scene Poser11/PoserPro11 comes with.

What I would do is open the Window > Light Controls window, if you don't already have it opened as part of your UI, and delete each of the lights. This will give you a solid black Preview of your scene, but THEN if you choose the Poser 10 Workspace scene, you'll only have the default lights for that workspace.

Then you can make the new scene your "preference" for when you open P11/PP11, and also every time you start a "New" scene. You can do that by clicking on the Edit menu, and choosing "General Preferences" at the bottom of the list (Ctrl+K). Then make the following selections:

1. On the first "Document" tab, once you have the scene set up the way you want it, click on "Set Preferred Scene" button in the top left section, and click "Launch to preferred scene".

2. On the second "Interface" tab, click "Launch to previous state", also in the top left section on that tab. Then click the OK button at the bottom right of the dialog box, and your preferences should be saved.

Also, at that point you might want to change the color of the Background. I always do that, and the color of the Ground plane, because I don't particularly like the default colors for them.

Or... go to material room, select construct>ground and select shadow catch only, do same for the dome. Then, back to pose room, select the construct, and set display object, wireframe. Follow Miss B's instructions. Now you will have a ground plane that acts like the old one, but extends much further Bill

Hmmmm, that's interesting Bill. I usually just move and/or resize the Ground plane if I need it to cover a larger area. I hadn't thought about using the ground of the Construct. I'm going to have to try that out with the Alternate Construct environment and see how it goes. You've got me curious.

The purpose of the construct is to support Physics Based Rendering (PBR) in Superfly. PBR works best if light rays end up hitting material somewhere. Also the construct is your tool to get ambient light. PBR does not have Image Based Lights, so to get light from the 'sky' you have to emit it from the construct. If you use Firefly you can indeed move the Construct out of the way or make it invisible and use the ground plane in props instead. Set as startup scene if you do not want to repeat the steps every time. You may want to explore it though because it can be useful. For reasons best known to themselves developers put the seam in the uv map directy opposite to the default camera position. Best y-rotate the construct by 180 degrees. See what happens if you put an equirectrangular image for the part of the contruct that is above the horizon. If you want to use normal pictures as background for your scene, configure the Poser camera to reflect the camera settings and position you used to make the picture (correct focal length if you did not use a full frame camera, make viewport aspect ratio meet image), then in the group tool select the area you see of the construct, assign to material 'mypicturearea' and use 'set perspective uv'. Make shader for that material with your image. The Construct will then show your background image.

I have 2 video's on my YouTube channel on how you can use and improve the Construct.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Z1u1j_IA8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQtTmkkAjXc

Also see how I play with the scale of the construct, you can use very high resolution textures (8.192x8.192 in the video's) but you can go 16K or 32K textures to get the most of it, and how I use SubD to create the fine details.

One other note on the construct:

If you have terradome (the first one) and/or extra texture for it, the textures can be used on the construct, giving you a large selection of groud and skydome images.

Bill

tonyvilters posted at 1:29PM Sat, 22 December 2018 - #4342303

I have 2 video's on my YouTube channel on how you can use and improve the Construct.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Z1u1j_IA8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQtTmkkAjXc

Also see how I play with the scale of the construct, you can use very high resolution textures (8.192x8.192 in the video's) but you can go 16K or 32K textures to get the most of it, and how I use SubD to create the fine details.

AHA! It was you Tony! The second video.

So I'm not getting it, I'll have to watch the video--do I need the construct to get better Superfly rendering. I know you can't use IBLs with it--but you can if you use the Firefly rendering engine. Don't want to see the Construct in my images. I would like shadows on the ground plane but not the dome. If you try to change the background and foreground colors with the construct, the figures look like they are floating in air and there are no shadows. It's very confusing. I do have Terradome. I hadn't figured out how to delete the construct, because as I said previously I haven't been able to find it on the list of objects in the scene.

"I'm perplexed, what is the purpose of it--why can't I delete it?"

Actually you can. With Dimension3D's free Python script 'Delete'. You find it here: http://d3d.sesseler.de/index.php?software=poserpython

You get the shadows for Superfly only with EZDome (Build 65 !!!) - you can use the "catcher" (as it is called) without the dome, but you need the dome to load the catcher!

Since Snarly couldn't continue the project and his website has only build 54 someone at SM forum uploaded it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p8kei4tmdy5u4kn/ezdome_065.zip?dl=0

So Superfly renders will cast shadows as long as the construct is in place? So I can place my scene in the construct, like a room and I'll get shadows.

Thank you @dlfurman for the videos. I wish someone would create more outdoor environments for Poser. I dabbled with Vue and Carrara to try to accomplish this. So if I want to use the actual Terradome with Poser 11, would I have to hide the Construct first by turning off guides?

Why hide the construct when you can easily change it to the old Ground version.

Libraries : Scene : Poser 11 Environments.

Tomsde posted at 8:16AM Sun, 23 December 2018 - #4342372

Thank you @dlfurman for the videos. I wish someone would create more outdoor environments for Poser. I dabbled with Vue and Carrara to try to accomplish this. So if I want to use the actual Terradome with Poser 11, would I have to hide the Construct first by turning off guides?

Actually those are Tony Vilter's videos. I just remebered seeing them :)

I can delete The Construct if I have other props or figures in the scene. I can also select not to show it by getting into the menu -Display | Guides | Ground Plane (uncheck this). Or makeit not show via the Hirarchy menu. Or go to Material Room, select the Construct, select Background (that is the material for the skydome), and make that invisible. leave the Ground material visible. That's your "ground plane" in a circular shape.

The reason I like using The Construct is because with Cycles Surfaces and a suitable Cycles shader tree, I can use only the illumination from the skydome and ground, and light up the scene in a natrual manner. I don't need to use any post lights.

Can you explain how this is used as a light source? Does it become an OBL then? How do you adjust the light emission and us it similar to IBLs then?

Tomsde posted at 11:09PM Sun, 23 December 2018 - #4342399

Can you explain how this is used as a light source? Does it become an OBL then? How do you adjust the light emission and us it similar to IBLs then?

You have to use Cycles Root node and the Cycles syntax of node construction. You can add an emission node to the network. You can add your own images, or use the procedurally-generated ones (Environment or Sky Texture) under the Texture node. Then render using Superfly renderer and your graphics accelerator card GPU.

The only problem I have with a pure Cycles workflow is that no lights are needed in the scene, so your preview scene is dark unless you use Hidden Line or Lit Wireframe Display options for your working preview. Add a classic light to help you set up your scene in preview mode, then switch it off before you render with the SuperFly renderer.

The other way is to use only the Background Node Material. This also lights up your scene without additional lights. I have documented my setup graphically as a reference here:

https://www.deviantart.com/ibr-remote/art/Poser-Background-Node-Cycles-Style-777077356

infinty10 (or anyone else), if you want a scene light that doesn't render then set up a light with this material. It will light the scene but will not render.

raven posted at 12:42AM Mon, 24 December 2018 - #4342412

infinty10 (or anyone else), if you want a scene light that doesn't render then set up a light with this material. It will light the scene but will not render.

Interesting !! Noted, thanks.

( I deleted my last comment containing a question because it made no sense ! haha !)

P11 construct material sampler, with a few ground textures and lightcasting skies

More construct skies, at 8192 pixel resolution

Note: The lightcaster skies are set up for the Superfly render engine; connect the sky image map directly to the ambient socket if you want to use Firefly.

P.S. Fire sprite texture for Pauline, also Cortana effect