So, I was about to type this post asking why I was getting seam lines in the skin and the eyes are rendering white with the Sabby Suzanne for V4.

But, as I was starting to type it, it occurred to me "wait, I'm using Superfly, and this was made for V4, which pre-dates that... I bet it's supposed to use Firefly"...

Sure enough.

So! I guess now my question would be, is it tedious - or even worth it - to convert the shaders to Superfly? I mean, the Firefly render came out fine. Would there be any major improvement?

Honestly, I was surprised it looks this good considering V4 is an older figure.

I attached renders of both, 'cause why not?

Oh! I actually do have a question still! I was so thrown by the rendering quality difference that I forgot the other thing I wanted to ask...

When I'm applying the morphs to V4, only the head is applying. The body and cleavage options aren't changing the shape at all. I'm applying all by double-clicking.

What might be the reason for that?

Thanks!

Figure--> Skinning Method-->Poser Unimesh...then adjust Subdivision ion the Properties tab of the figure to 1. Render. It may come out all black. If it does, you can either:

1. Use EZSkin in Poser 11, save the adjusted figure materials to your library and render in Poser 12
2. If you have SkinEdit for Poser 12, use that to convert the skin.
3. If you understand nodes, you can manually futz in the Material Room to fix proper Superfly shaders onto your figure. There are several threads on the Poser 12 forum that deal with this.

For the seams not to show up on V4 in Superfly, she needs to be changed to Poser Unimesh under Skinning Method. Now without knowing what the Material Room setup looks like for Sabby's character, it is difficult to say whether the textures could be converted easily for Superfly. The body and cleavage options might be dial dependent, look under the Parameters tab and see if there are extra settings that control the amount of body and cleavage morphing.

TwoCatsYelling posted at 4:04PM Sun, 13 June 2021 - #4421207

Oh! I actually do have a question still! I was so thrown by the rendering quality difference that I forgot the other thing I wanted to ask...

When I'm applying the morphs to V4, only the head is applying. The body and cleavage options aren't changing the shape at all. I'm applying all by double-clicking.

What might be the reason for that?

Thanks!

Have you injected V4's morphs? Not the character's morphs, but the figure's. Morphs++ etc.

Great suggestions and questions, all. Thanks!

I don't know if the effort is worth it, since I'm pretty happy with how Firefly renders out the figure. But I might go ahead and make the conversion to unimesh and superfly anyway, just for the learning/practice.

I didn't inject the V4 morphs. I will give that a shot!

Lots to wrap my head around, but I'm enjoying the process. Poser's been a lot of fun to learn so far.

Thanks again

Most marketplace character packs for V4 require Morphs++ or Shapes++(as it's later called) for the included body shape to work. It's a standard. The reason for this is that it ensures that the morphs will work with the clothing products that other artists have made for V4, as those who have made said clothing products have taken steps to include morphs that fit those shapes in the garments. Like I said it's a standard.

So, haven't tried the unimesh process for Superfly, yet. I did try injecting the morphs++. And I looked for additional parameters. No dice on both. So, the body and cleavage just don't seem to want to work. I'm sure there's something to do to fix it. I'm completely new with Poser, though, so it's beyond me!

Edit: Okay, I converted to Unimesh and that fixed the 'seams' thing. I didn't get the eyes to render correctly, though. I don't feel confident enough with Poser yet to muck with materials. So.. I'll return to that sometime later :)

There are free P12 eyes available for Superfly--one click apply. In Free Stuff, I think.

https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/86843/ghostship-eyes-for-poser-12

Converting V4 to unimesh is a one click process; Figure Menu: Skinning Method: Poser Unimesh... Done. You can then also subdivide the figure in the Body Properties tab by turning up the subdivision levels. For rendering purposes I don't see any reason to increase the SubD above 1 with V4.

Converting the mats to Superfly is easy with one of the aforementioned automations. Learning what's happening with the Superfly materials and the proper render settings takes a bit more work.

Hborre will help you with getting the Morphs++ to work. You need to run a .bat file in !Daz folder in Libraries in order for the channels to be prepped.

Trying not to step on any toes lol

Yes, I think EldritchCellar is correct: you need to run the .bat file that initializes the morphs, if you haven't done it already.

You only need to do this once.

@ EldritchCellar: ?

Rhia474 posted at 9:26PM Sun, 13 June 2021 - #4421214

Figure--> Skinning Method-->Poser Unimesh...then adjust Subdivision ion the Properties tab of the figure to 1. Render. It may come out all black. If it does, you can either:

1. Use EZSkin in Poser 11, save the adjusted figure materials to your library and render in Poser 12
2. If you have SkinEdit for Poser 12, use that to convert the skin.
3. If you understand nodes, you can manually futz in the Material Room to fix proper Superfly shaders onto your figure. There are several threads on the Poser 12 forum that deal with this.

I don't have either of those shader utilities, but after looking at the SkinEdit on YT, I'll definitely be picking that up. That is a cool piece of software. Useful, even beyond converting the shaders.

Also thank you for the tip about the free eyes, Rhia! I've snagged 'em and already put them to use.

In the meantime, I did a couple test renders of a WIP character I'm working on (my first with Poser, woot). One with Superfly, one with Firefly. No lighting setup or anything. Everything default. Superfly loses the specularity and SSS, but I can see the skin details a bit better. I think the eyes are actually a bit too wet/shiny looking in the Firefly version by default. Still, the Superfly version doesn't too bad, considering the shaders aren't converted. I also just noticed there's no shadow behind the headband/tiara in the Firefly version. That's interesting.

I'm sure the veterans can look at each and know exactly what's going on and why. I only recognize the superficial stuff at this point. In any case, this is fun :)

I'd dial back or get rid of altogether the tear specularity on the Firefly one. Just my opinion, I've always felt that alot of those commercial character packs overdo it with the tear mat. Strange you're not getting any shadows on the jewelry, not even occlusion shadowing (if you're using IDL), I'd check the jewelry properties to see if they are set to cast shadows. Or at least the headband. Still... doesn't make sense from one render to another.

He joined in 2020. That kind of makes it hard for him to have participated in "much older" threads.

It sounds like he started with DAZ Studio, but is new to Poser.

I think you're confusing him with someone else.

For the Firefly render, I am assuming that there is some self glowing going on that is causing no shadows from the tiara. Try a different lighting arrangement, in particular, IDL to see if there is a change. In the Superfly render, there is some shadowing happening from the tiara but the Ambient Occlusion is very subtle, the tiara may be too close to the skin. Again, try another lighting arrangement to see if it corrects the render.

randym77 posted at 7:19AM Mon, 14 June 2021 - #4421262

He joined in 2020. That kind of makes it hard for him to have participated in "much older" threads.

It sounds like he started with DAZ Studio, but is new to Poser.

I think you're confusing him with someone else.

Was it only 2020? I actually thought it was longer lol.

Delete the default lights. Delete the Construct. Add an environment sphere, add a HDRI on it, add a single infinite light, render.

Rhia474 posted at 7:44AM Mon, 14 June 2021 - #4421273

Delete the default lights. Delete the Construct. Add an environment sphere, add a HDRI on it, add a single infinite light, render.

Working through that list, but it's gonna take some time lol. I have to google how to do half that stuff xD. I'll post a render once I figure it out.

There's a script to delete all lights under Scripts->Utility. The construct is the ground. You can get Bagginsbills' envirosphere here:

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere

(It's free.)

There are several sites that offer free HDRI images. Download one, and use it as a texture on the sphere.

Delete lights is selecting the light and pressing delete. Control G will remove the Construct. I will post a free environment sphere once am not at work compy, or someone else will for sure. Free Superfly lights are also available either in free stuff, or Sharecg, by ghostship.

ETA: try this one. https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere

If you want sharp HDRI backgrounds, find image resolutions higher than 4K. Just be careful on resolution images way over 5k, they might slow your system down a bit.

So, question about the IBL in Poser.

I notice there's 3 categories... 'Image Based Lighting' 'IBL Ambient Occlusion' HDRVFX'

So, I'm guessing 'IBL Ambient Occlusion' is just IBL with AO also calculated. Same goes for the HDRFVX options. I'm just wondering if there's a reason to use one or the other in a given situation?

Also, is there a way to show the IBL in the background of the render? Couldn't find anything on that.

Also, I've been in the "afraid to touch anything" phase for a bit, but I'm slowly getting out of it. Decided to play with the lighting and, yeah. Definitely a fan. What an intuitive way to control and position lights.

Thanks!

So, I went through and found that the tiara was set to self-illuminating. On further inspection, I found that literally everything in the scene was set to self-illuminating, including Victoria 4. Why, I don't know, but I didn't set them that way myself.

Anyways... Disabling that still didn't result in shadows. I did about a dozen different renders, with the light positioned in different locations, with and without IBL, etc. Nothing was working. So I'm wondering if maybe it's just something flawed in how the item was created?

In any case, I won't be using that for close-up renders. It looks like I did a sloppy job of Photoshopping it into the image and forgot to create a drop shadow.

Beyond that, I'm at a loss.

IBL became obsolete, or so the general opinion is, with the introduction of IDL is Poser 8. IBL with ambient occlusion is exactly as you said, AO through lighting. Generally it's considered "better" to use material based AO. It's redundant if you use IDL as there's built in AO. All of these things are slowly climbing the ladder of cumulative efforts towards realism... culminating in Superfly which is the current solution. All of the photorealism advocates, it's a thing, are thwarted by the available figures not being up to snuff for actual photorealism... so you see ALOT of great looking interiors and glass with caustics etc but then you see the figure's armpit and... uncanny valley. Or, in relation to Poser content rendering, by and large... alot of images that look like photos of REALLY expensive sex dolls.

Hopefully the figures/models catch up someday, even the biggest VFX companies struggle with the human realism uncanny valley bugbear. Sorry for the op ed.

Probably alot of your specific questions are covered in the manual. Although the present company are certainly knowlegable... but maybe admittedly rusty with Firefly now. If you want to go down an incredibly informative rabbit hole just advanced search any of your Firefly rendering topics with the member name Bagginsbill in the username. Without doubt it's where everyone here learned the stuff.

Actually, I misspoke when I said that IBL with AO was rendered obsolete with IDL... for "realistic" renders that might be the case but it depends on your artistic goals. You can create very powerful occlusion effects with IBL/AO much more so than with IDL, it has more controls to allow for such things whereas with IDL, AO is simply a present attribute without ways to really modulate it.

For instance I'll reach for IBL/AO if I want to do clay style model renders in Poser, it's very useful for that. I used IBL for these old renders of some models I made. You probably wouldn't know these were Poser renders unless it was pointed out...

Here's the thread with how to achieve the effect...

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2890236

This is an informative thread, so please..play nice :)