I have a large scene with multiple colored spotlights to add an outer-spacey feel to it.

Unfortunately, no matter what color they are, Poser12 Firefly renders them white.

They show up great in preview, but not final render.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

This is a bug that was present through the entire run of Poser 12. It went unnoticed until Poser 12 development ended. It has been fixed for Poser 13 but that doesn't help you. There is a work around but it's a bit cumbersome.

The failure was in the way lights store the animation data for the color and intensity of lights. First is to delete the light, recreate it and set the color before you render the scene with that light present.

Next if you have already rendered the scene you can usually "jiggle the right lose wire" by disabling the Animation on the light's shader node in the material room. Select the light and click the little key icon next to the color and intensity icons and remove the check from Animated..

This will cause poser to re-generate the shader nodes for the colors of the light. It won't stay fixed because the animation will pop back on as soon as you render the scene. (Because the way lights colors animate is totally borked in P12.)

So if you change a light's color and it doesn't respond in a render first try toggling off the animated key in mat room. If that doesn't work try deleting an recreating the light.

This only really affects color lights. if the light is a white it doesn't proc the bug. That's probably how it went unnoticed for so long.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for responding. It gives one pause to realize they never provided a patch for this, it's such a basic flaw. Fortunately, I have previous versions which I hope it will work in, but it does makeme reluctant to purchase 13.

It's even worse than I thought; it actually won't work in an earlier version of Poser, even though it loads. I can only conclude it saved the error in the pz3 file.

Boy that sounds bad ! Should really be fixed as poser 12 is still sold, I am glad I skipped that version it never came out of pre release! 

The way it looks if it is an animation issue then setting the animation to 1 frame should fix it ... Or if you add a Node to the color, if it is Firefly you can add a Math --->> Color_Math Node on the light, set the color in there, you probably will not see it in the view but as soon as you render the assigned color should be Rendered

Amost forgot , you need to add the node to the Light Preview Color

I Can't test it in P12 as I do not have it but if this also does not work then P12 is having a big issue.

The only solution that I've seen is to plug a simple color node into the color channel of the light node.  I don't remember if it is the definitive solution to this problem.

this is how it should look like but you will not see the color in the preview , You can save it as Mat file this will avoid that you have to build a new node for every light you then just can go to the Mat room an change the colors

Fascinating...

I wonder if related to why my P_11 WIP, a BIG render, is exasperatingly too bright in Preview, too dark Superfly rendered, plus too blue, too blue, too blue...

( Will investigate after 'Real Life' chores... )

Go through your scene lights, especially those that are supposed to be tinted, and check.  There will appear one light that behaves normally but the others, no matter what you do, will not physically change unless you apply the hack.