So there I was hard at work on the allotment, (well, I was sat drinking a beer and watching the others working, does that count?) and I started to really look at the way the shadows were really sharp and dark and wondered if I could create it for my Poser figures. I thought about the times when I've been sat on the beach and the sand was almost burning it was so hot. You can imagine the sort of thing. Well I've had a few goes but I'm not really getting the result I want. Somehow the shadows don't have that hard edge or the sunlight is too yellow. Has anyone done a really decent sunlight? I'm not really very good with Poser even after all this time but its good fun and beats watching repeats of Bangers and Cash on the TV!

The sun may well be yellow but the light we get here is effectively white to our eyes, with a slight blue cast from the sky.

I'm by no means a lighting expert but here's what I'd go for as a starting point:

Single infinite light, maximum brightness, ray traced shadows, shadow blur radius 2 (maximum) colour = white.

Sky dome with a clear summer sky mapped on it, ambient set to 1.

Firefly or Superfly?  There are different approaches for each.

Ah, Firefly, I'm still on P10.

I'm using three lights: (Poser 11, Firefly)

1 IBL 2% - Blue

1 Infinite  30% - Raytraced Shadows - Yellow

1 Infinite 80% - Raytraced Shadows - White

Note that my Gamma Correction is set up to 3,50, NOT 2,20 like others suggest.

It wasn't until I stumbled across this modification by accident, that my lights started to "make sense" to me.

Before that, I was always struggling with way too weak shadows.

I even resorted to using additional shadow catcher floor planes to enhance my ground shadows.

Of course this three-light setup can be easily modified. Turn all lights to white for indoor lightning, for example.

Crank down shadows, soften the shadows, etc.

I'm also intentionally NOT aiming for photorealism, given that there are no remotely photorealistic figures for Poser available, anyway.

Just a "pleasant", "believable" set up that is easy to handle.

If you'd like a copy, just send me a PM.

That looks really nice. As you say, not photoreal, but nice. I like it.

Thank you!

Here is the set up again, with a slightly more realistic background, showing a slightly bit more skin.  :-)

Try The Badlands Lights.

Thank you!

Here is the set up again, with a slightly more realistic background, showing a slightly bit more skin.  :-)

I would suggest not using infinite lights in Poser as they seem to behave slightly weird compared to how you would expect light to work and because you can get a better result simply using a point light in my opinion.

A quick explanation of how light and shadows works  

The darkness and sharpness of a shadow depends on primarily four things.

1. How close the object is to a surface, so a person with their foot on the ground will have a sharper and darker shadow the closer to the foot you get.

2. The size of the light source compared to the object, a small light source will make sharper shadows whereas a larger light source will make them more fuzzy.

3. The angle from light source to an object, this might make an object cast very long shadows or very short ones.

4. The intensity of the light source, the brighter the light source the darker the shadows will appear.

Obviously a lot of these are depended on each other, but as general rules I think its enough. 

The problem with infinite lights, is that you have to fake things to work with it as you would expect light to behave.

Here is an example of a scene with just an infinite light and ray tracing on and a scale of 100%.

If I increase the scale of the light to 5000% nothing changes, it looks exactly the same, which is not what we would expect with a larger light source. Several issues are going on here, first of all the darkness of the shadow looks wrong, sort of like a uniformed shadow of pure black, clearly defining the character outline, but it would be very difficult to get such shadow unless the intensity of the light source is far brighter than what it is in the image.

Secondly the shadow is extremely sharp, which again is not something we see unless the intensity is high or the object is very close to a surface, like near her hand.

The way Poser deals with this, is by increasing "Shadow blur radius", but this value is not based on anything, it is just a random value of what you think it ought to be. Which means that it is not connected to the light source at all.

In this image I increased it to 4.

And even though it is slightly better, it still doesn't look very realistic.

In this example I have changed the light to a point light, set the "Shadow blur radius" back to 0 and set "Attenuation" to inverse square. Intensity and size is 100%

Because I turned on "Attenuation" the image appears very dark. So going to increase intensity to 950%, so we get something that looks like the infinite light.

And will increase the size of the light source to 1500% to simulate a large sun.

So now the shadow will change based on the size of the light source as you would expect. So you don't have to try to fake it using the "shadow blur radius".

Thank you for all the great replies and apologies for not being around to respond. Thanks for the offer JoePublic, I think I'll keep going on my own for now though, I enjoy having a go at things for myself. If I get what I want I'll post an image.

Thanks.

Sorry 3D-Mobster, but that setup doesn't work for me.

I set my gamma correction back to 2.20 (Which, as some experts always insisted, is the physically "correct" value and is what Poser uses as its default)

Used only one point light with the settings you suggested. (Size 1500%, intensity 950%)

This, after a few attempts, is the result:

Don't like it, sorry.

But the biggest issue is that now my preview is completely messed up because the OpenGL can't handle the point light shadows as nicely as it works with infinite lights.

And as I spend 99% of my time staring at my scenes in preview mode, a "nice" preview is very important for me.

Now back to Gamma 3.50 and my infinite lights setup:

Here's the final render:

And here is my preview:

It not only gives me immediate visual feedback for my scene, it IMO is "nice enough", you could probably even use it for a real time animation.

*

I don't doubt that your way is the more physically correct way. Believe me I spent hundreds of hours experimenting with various light setups, trying to follow the "physically correct" Poser gurus.

But in the end I made my peace with the fact that Poser is just a hobbyist app and was never ment to be "physically correct" in the first place.

So instead of forcing it into a certain direction, I just allowed it to show me what it actually can do.

That made my workflow a lot more pleasant.

*

Still, thanks for taking the time and trying to help.

BTW, I think this setup works also reasonably well for indoor scenes:

And here is the preview:

My "need for realism" is limited to having better bending, more realistically sculpted figures. (And props, of course)

I think I treat CGI the same way I treat real world scale modelling.

Everything should be in scale with each other and feature correct details and proportions.

*

But it's still a "virtual model", not an attempt to convince anyone that I recreated reality.

(Although, sometimes you can get lucky, even in Poser)

I think I rather "paint" or "illustrate" with Poser than use it as a virtual camera, if that makes sense.

*

Anyway, we all have differing preferences, so everyone has to find their own workflow that works for him.

:-)

Sorry 3D-Mobster, but that setup doesn't work for me.

I set my gamma correction back to 2.20 (Which, as some experts always insisted, is the physically "correct" value and is what Poser uses as its default)

Used only one point light with the settings you suggested. (Size 1500%, intensity 950%)

This, after a few attempts, is the result:

It seems weird, because you say that you only have one light source but there are two shadows going different directions? It seems like you have the main light on the left and a secondary light on the right?

Im not sure why your preview is getting screwed, could be some driver or Poser issues, I don't know. Also the values I used were not meant as "magic" numbers, you have to adjust them to your scene as it depends on where you placed it etc. But obviously if it screws up your preview that is not going to work :)

Just so you don't confuse what I was saying, the idea behind this has nothing to do with photorealism, even if you were to do cartoons or whatever, lighting should still be correct, because its something that we lash unto when we look at images. 

Its like when you have an image and the character is suppose to stand on the floor, but doesn't cast a shadow on it. It will make it look like its one image placed on top of another and unless that is what one is going after, it will simply look wrong.

From what I can see in your images and since I don't know your setup and hardware, it seems to work for you, so I wouldn't change it, especially if you end up with the issues as you say.

And honestly I think a lot of it, is caused because the lights in Poser are somewhat limited in my opinion.