I'm off in an area of Poser that I've never looked at before, and I'm getting a bit lost.

I have two pairs of bowls: Bowls1Left and Bowls1Right, and the same with a 2.

And I've been mucking about with Parameter Dependencies.

Right now, as I modify zRotate on Bowls1Right, zRotate on Bowls1Left smoothly and simultaneously adjusts its zRotate to match. Bowls2 act *almost* the same, except that Bowls1Left does not "smoothly and simultaneously" adjust to match, but, instead, snaps into place when I release the dial.

I am at wit's end trying to figure out what is different. It was hours of reading and futzing to get where I am, ya know? So, when I had Bowls1 working and tried to replicate that with Bowls2, in truth I didn't really know exactly how I got Bowls1 working. Sigh.

Any clues? Tip? Hints? Rude suggestions?

Have you tried burning sage? And remember to ring the bell, read the book and then light the candles in that order.

I didn't really follow what you're trying to do but the behavior sounds like you may have created a recursive loop. IN the olden days that would have just crashed poser. Dependencies can't work both ways the left eye can move the right or the right eye can move the left. If you do it both ways that's a recursive loop and well modern Poser just says no. That short circuit was fixed around Poser 10.

If that's not the case a screen shot of what you're trying to do will help.

I understand what nerd is explaining but that inspires me the following question: using Sasha-16: if you move one eye (up-down, left-right, even the "cross eyes" effect), then the other eye moves accordingly, and vice versa

Burning sage did the trick. Reading the Poser manual a bit didn't hurt either. Ever since the dark ages of IBM 360 mainframes, I have learned by exploring, asking, and reading. In that order. Yeah, I probably had some looping recursion or something along those lines. I was toying with it, ya know? Had no clue what all the levers and dials and knobs did but -- oh my. Bright and shiny.

I still don't know what I did to make some of them snap into place rather than move smoothly, but I think I'm good not knowing. I figured out how to coordinate stuff which is what I started out trying to figure out.

As for Sasha-16, well, yeah, that sounds a bit strange. I don't own Sasha, so I can't explore that mystery, but it does sound quite curious. I wonder how the dials are wired together to get that effect.

Ever since the dark ages of IBM 360 mainframes, I have learned by exploring, asking, and reading.

It has been many years since I programmed with jumper wires and punch cards.........

Ah, yes. I'd quite forgotten. Right. I programmed that 360 with punch cards, natch. And -- we had a machine, maybe about the size of a small food freezer for the garage, as I recall, and we called it The Duplicator, although, in truth, it only duplicated a deck of cards because of the magic programming on the wiring board, which I did *not* know how to do. But I do recall being told that it could do other things. Sort, I think. Renumber maybe. But I defnitely remembered that the magic was in that wiring board.

Burning sage did the trick. Reading the Poser manual a bit didn't hurt either. Ever since the dark ages of IBM 360 mainframes, I have learned by exploring, asking, and reading. In that order. Yeah, I probably had some looping recursion or something along those lines. I was toying with it, ya know? Had no clue what all the levers and dials and knobs did but -- oh my. Bright and shiny.

I still don't know what I did to make some of them snap into place rather than move smoothly, but I think I'm good not knowing. I figured out how to coordinate stuff which is what I started out trying to figure out.

As for Sasha-16, well, yeah, that sounds a bit strange. I don't own Sasha, so I can't explore that mystery, but it does sound quite curious. I wonder how the dials are wired together to get that effect.

(actually, I go back to the IBM 7094 and the IBM 1401, both prior to the 360)

Thank you, Y-Phil. I will have a look! But I will probably put it off for a bit while I finish wiring this monster:

You'll notice that some dials aren't wired yet, and even more are missing under Middle and Right Light. And -- I don't even have an intended use for it. It just caught my attention as a "bet I could" idea. This after finally having a light turn on about dependencies and master parameters (thanks guys!).

I do have a wild guess about Sasha though. My wild guess is that it's done by adding Value Ops to the Value Operations tab in the Edit Dependencies tab.

Boy, do I feel stupid. Well, ignorant. Like a newbie, ya ken?

All this work on wiring together a bunch of parameters via the panel of a Group, and all I needed to do was to take a fresh look at Custom Parameter Palettes. I was heavy into Poser some 20 years ago, and then circumstances happened and I didn't touch it At All for 20 years. But this stuff is way beyond what I worked with back then. Anyway, here's the Custom Parameter Palette I've put together. And they're so easy to setup!! Also discovered that you can edit the pz3 file in notepad (or whatever) and change the name. This one has been renamed to Lighting Palette. The on/off and the intensity multiplier are the only ones that are more complicated than drag/drop of a dial onto the palette.

The on/off ones have a range of 0 to 1 with a min of zero and a max of one and a sensitivity of one and Force Limits checked, turning it into the logical equivalent of a checkbox. Then the intensity of My Light has a Value Operation added which multiplies its value by the value of the on/off dial with a scaling factor of one. This allows for the light to be turned on or off without affecting any of the other values impacting intensity, so, effectively, the intensity settings are remembered across on/off actions. I thought this was clever, but I'm imagining that everyone already knew all about this. My wife tells me I was the last person on the planet to see Lion King, so, you know, I have a record of being behind the curve occassionally.

Still haven't installed Sasha, but I'm definitely getting glimpses of ways to accomplish the eye thing.

The Lighting Palette:

The assumption is that this only works in Firefly rendering.  Superfly does not support IBL.

I did not explain this well. It's about using Custom Parameter Palettes to group controls and, to my chagrin, is pretty much covered in the manual. 

First create a CPP (WIndow>Custom Parameter Palette>New) and get: 

Now select, say, the spotlight in my scene 

Drag the Spotlight's Intensity dial and drop it onto the CPP 

Repeats as wished to add other dials. In my case I added a bunch of dials from several lights.

The CPP stays open and visible regardless of what is currently selected. And, as I did it, it puts all my wanted light dials in one place, always available.

Adding On/Off and Intensity Multiplier dials is a touch trickier and requires first creating the dial on, say, one of the lights, configuring it, and then dragging *that* dial over to the CPP.

That's it. Has nothing to do with IBL, which, btw, works fine with Superfly. I use IBL frequently to temporarily light up a scene so I can see things better for posing, and then I do occassionally forget to turn it off again before rendering.

Rendered with IBL off 

Rendered with IBL on 

Both using Superfly

You seem to misunderstand the basis of an IBL.  That type of lighting is diffuse-image-based, which utilizes a 360-degree light probe to illuminate the scene.  In Superfly, the diffuse channel is ignored so that light will illuminate but will not simulate an environmentally lit scene like an HDRI.

Ah, what I misunderstood was that you meant using IBL, well, as an IBL. As Just A Stupid Light, it works. As an IBL, not so much. Agreed. And, yes, I did understand that. I do occassionally find it useful as Just A Stupid Light, definitely for lighting a preview, and even, very rarely, as a light in the final render. Otherwise I don't use IBL as an IBL, probably because I always use Superfly.

And hopefully though I've explained that my post about using CPP to control my lights is not particularly related to the issue of IBL. Ya don't want IBL, don't drop the dials onto the CPP.

I would suggest that you download this light set from Ghostship2.  It contains a set of preview work lights that do not render in Superfly.

Studio Lights for Poser 12 and Poser 11 (renderosity.com)

I prefer using a Blackbody node in my lighting for more realistic rendering but this set has a good variety of lights to work with.

Downloaded. Thank you very much! Those preview work lights sound great!

I'm not familiar with the notion of a Blackbody node. Is that something in the studio lighting that I just downloaded? Or is it something else?

One of the things I am is a retired studio owner and portrait photograher. Lights, cameras, softboxes, all that stuff. And I'm very much a lighting nut. So if Blackbody nodes give you a more realistic rendering, then I defnitely want to hear more!

Okay!! Wow! The "Does Not Render" set of lights is very cool. And there's a bit I don't understand. Shadows off makes sense, and diffused and specular set to black sounds intuitive, but what does it do where Color, set to white, is connected to a Simple Color node of black? It seems like that's got to be where the Major Magic happens and I obviously do not understand the consequences of that connection. Somehow that makes it shine white in preview and black when rendered?

Back to Blackbody node. Are we talking physics? Are you creating a blackbody by, hmm, maybe setting intensity negative? Something else? And how does it help? Wanna play with it and see for myself!

All light emits a specific color wavelength based on temperature in Kelvin degrees.  The Blackbody node provides that temperature range.  For example, candlelight emits a Kelvin temperature of approximately 1500 degrees or a warm color.  Increasing the range to 10,000 degrees or greater provides a bluish tint to the lighting, compatible with a cloudless, blue sky.  In Superfly rendering, the Blackbody node gives you the most realistic, true-to-life lighting especially where PBR is concerned.  In Firefly, you would need to change the color chip to simulate such lighting, unlike in Superfly.  If you animate the Blackbody Node temperature value, you can control it in the Pose Room on the Parameter/Properties panel without entering the Material Room.  Do an internet search and you will find many sites explaining the process and examples.

Wow again! Absolutely Fantastic! For one thing, I had no idea that I could animate a value like that and have it show up on the main parameter;/properties panel. (Which I then promptly dropped onto my opening scene's Custom Parameter Palette!)

Oddly enough, back in my previous Poser experience some 20 years ago, I never played with learning anything at all about the material room. Mostly I built things. This is amazing stuff to me and I love it.

Thank you. Very much.

Still don't understand how the Preview Lighting Only works. Can you explain how connecting white Color to a black Simple Color works? There's obviously something very basic here that I don't understand.

Examples of Blackbody lighting on an infinite light source, 50% intensity.

Simple Node arrangement below.

On the Preview lights, if you study them closely, each light is designated as an infinite light, but in the Material Room, the light node has extra channels that the actual infinite light does not have.  Those lights are actually Point lights redesignated into Infinite lights.  When you connect a color node to the light, it ignores that connection in preview but activates it in the render.  In this particular case, rendering black will show no lighting.

This Superfly render is a combination of a spotlight and prop ball, both emitting blackbody colors.  I set the spotlight to a temperature of 5500 degrees Kelvin and the ball to a temperature of 3100 degrees Kelvin.  Since this was set up in P11, the final render turned out grainy because of the prop emission.  It also took longer which I terminated midway.  This exact scene renders faster and cleaner in P13.

I must ponder your explanation. It sounds like it explains everything about my question, but I must ponder it until grokking occurs. May have to wait until I take a shower, if ya ken.

Meanwhile, being able to get dials from the material room to the poser room parameters/properties panel by turning on animation is Very Incredible and I am majorly jazzed.

*Most* of my background, btw, is not that of retired photographer, although there is that and I was good, but instead primarily that of a retired programmer, going back some 56+ years, and while mostly Python is "Just Another Structured Language", I also only ran into it about a year before I retired and then only briefly, so there are "corners" where my Python Knowledge Map says "Here There Be Dragons", and particularly as regards using it with Poser. And I'm thinking you know a great deal about those corners.

I hate Python's indentation method of doing structure. Bleh! Give me C# any day. Or C++. Or C. Or Delphi. Et al, down to and including Algol W -- and NONE OF THEM DO IT THIS WAY.

Just saw your latest post with the spotlight and prop ball. Nice.

As a photographer, mostly I had no control over lighting temperature, although I had to be aware of it. But strobes and hot lights and natural lights never came with a temperature adjustment. Having control of it is awesome!

The big question is how did you learn all this? I've seen nothing this detailed in the Poser Manual, although I admit to not reading it but trying to look things up as needed. Is there somewhere I can read about all this material room stuff and lighting stuff and weird and unusual nodes stuff? Or do I just have to google and dig?

Got it. I had no idea that the connection would be ignored in preview and honored in renders. Very cool thing to know.

Thank you again. I've learned more in the last two days than I've learned in the last two weeks. Or something like that. Maybe three. But what a ride. I shall have to go make images! Annnnnnd -- finish conquering the world in my current game of Civ 6. Priorties.

The big question is how did you learn all this? I've seen nothing this detailed in the Poser Manual, although I admit to not reading it but trying to look things up as needed. Is there somewhere I can read about all this material room stuff and lighting stuff and weird and unusual nodes stuff? Or do I just have to google and dig?

During a time, there was RuntimeDNA, a fantastic source to learn. And nowadays, there's the Renderosity forums. So don't hesitate to ask  Another source of knowledge is Poser13's online documentation. For Poser11, you should find its 1100+ pages-long PDF file (in its corresponding content folder)

Thank you! The online documentation looks incredible. I think I have some reading to do, and certainly I think you have pointed me to *exactly* the sort of technical information I wanted and didn't know existed. 

Things have changed in the 20 years I was gone.

Hmm. <slaps forehead> Same as what I get with Help>Poser manual, only I for some reason this time, for some reason unremembered, I looked at the index table, not the table of contents, and saw all sorts of things I wouldn't know how to drill down to using the table of contents. Curious. Possibly enlightening. 

Oh and I forgot to write this: if you need some further help with Cycles: Blender's official doc may help, even though we don't have the full implementation.

Thank you for the tip about Cycles and Blender. I know zero about Cycles! Hborre pointed me to the blackbody node. And I'm using it. And I understand the concept of blackbody, but otherwise -- no clue about Cycles. Just copying what I find or someone shows me, which is how I got started with Fortran, ages ago, and assembly language for a 360 slightly later. Sooner or later I manage to figure it out! But a little reading does seem to help from time to time.

Well, I have learned a bit since my first newbie plunge... And I think I have a clue about how Sasha does the eye thing. Still haven't managed to get Sasha operationally installed. Got something wrong on that. However --

Two balls 

Both with these added dials. Only Left/Right has been wired in at this time. 

If I change left/right on ball 1 to 45, I get 

If I then change left/right on ball 2 to -90 (and adjust the camera angle a bit so you can see), I get 

Rotate one with left/right dial, the other rotates with it. Should work equally well on up/down AND crosseyed but I don't think I need to show that. You guys are all way beyond me and I think the wiring is probably obvious.