Hi everyone!
Today for the first time, while I was organizing a scene, I couldn't see the color preview anymore. Up to a certain point I could see it perfectly. I managed to render as I wanted, but every time I open this specific document I still see it like this.
Did I do something wrong? and I didn't notice?
Thanks for the advice.

Lights?

I agree. It looks like a lights issue. Usually when I see something like this, the lights were setup in a later frame but the scene is loading to the first. If I move to the end, the lights are fine and the scene looks right.

My overall assessment indicates that the lights are off, and the snowy ground and background emit an ambient glow that is not apparent at full render. Please verify if any lights are present throughout the scene and whether they are activated.  

Actually the view is of the last frame (the one I rendered). The problem is the lights: they are rendered but I can't see them in the scene. The lights window, an IBL and the Sun, appear black. It never happened to me and so I don't know how to change this state...

That's showing no lights, or lights the lights are all off and at zero position.

RedPhantom, But the render came out like this......

I'm afraid of touching something I shouldn't: I would like to keep the file to be able to use the scene for other things....

RAGraphicDesign posted at 7:19 AM Thu, 14 November 2024 - #4491331

If you click on "Light Controls", you should see a list of lights, example:

That being said, if you set your light's material this way (diffuse and specular color):

 

it should light the scene only in the preview, not at render time, which can be either useful or confusing

RAGraphicDesign posted at 7:19 AM Thu, 14 November 2024 - #4491331

RedPhantom, But the render came out like this......

I'm afraid of touching something I shouldn't: I would like to keep the file to be able to use the scene for other things....

Overwriting the original file is safe provided you do not resave your scene. Initially, verify the presence of lights in the scene at render time. If lights are present, examine the Properties for each to ensure they are active, as indicated by an 'On' checkbox, signifying the emission of rays. Next, confirm that the light intensities are set above zero.  Lastly, if there are no lights, add one to monitor its effect.

As mentioned earlier, if you're using a dome, scene illumination can come from the ground and background. This can be verified in the Material Room. When using Firefly rendering, navigate to the Material Room and examine the Ambient settings on the PoserSurface node. If the value exceeds 1, then the background is contributing to the scene lighting.

I have an EnvShere that I use with the lights of vincebagna. The lighting in question is given by an IBL and the Sun. The render was done in SuperFly. I checked again - referring to a previous version of the file - and I moved the intensity values ​​of IBL and sun. Even the colors of the lights in the small window had to be changed anyway.....It remains a mystery how they were reset....

Thanks to all:)

IBL fails to render in Superfly. As previously noted, the Envsphere prop and the snow emit ambient light; without it, the scene would be entirely dark. This can be confirmed in the Material Room.

If you use a sky dome it must be the light emitter. The much easier way is to use one of the IBL pre-built scenes that come with Poser 13.

Load the "Wide Street" scene from the included content. The scene looks like it's just a simple light dome. It's way more.

This scene is built so the dome is visible in preview. So, you can see what you're doing with the dome and pose the scene relative to the environment.

When it renders is uses some Stupid Poser Tricks (tm) to hide the visible environment sphere the render is using Cycles native environment. (which isn't normally visible) The orientation of the preview dome and the HDRI environment are linked. You shouldn't really be able to tell it switched.

If you want to use a different IBL just use the same HDRI on both the light and the dome. You can do this in one act from the Texture Manager by "Replacing All ... In scene"

How the magic works ... You absolutely don't need to know how this works to use it. But if you want to build your own here's the secrets ...

The first stupid trick is that the Environment Preview only shows in Preview. It doesn't render.

The environment preview is only there for composing the scene. It's orientation is linked to the BG Environment node in the material room. That make the Cycles native HDRI environment line up with the Preview. Just to make it more interesting the BG Environment Rotation is in Radians.

The orientation of the preview IBL light is setup the same way. Just like the Preview Background the Preview IBL doesn't render. It's just there so you're not stumbling around in the dark. Just for nerdly fun this one is UVS to Degrees. Ewwww math!

So every thing you can see in that scene in preview, none of it renders. Not the light or the environment sphere. They're just there so you can see what you're doing. All that actually renders is the BG Environment node. It creates the light and the environment.,

BUT WHYYYYYYY!

The cycles BG Environment simple isn't capable of not casting shadows. Took me a while to wrap my head around that too. But it's not a "light" so it doesn't have shadows. It's a diffuse emitter and stuff that's occluded simply can not receive light.

So at the end of this we get to the point. If you use an environment sphere Image Base Lights will not shine through it. Period, Full stop. Ain't happenin'. The "environment must go into the Cycles BG Environment node. The "dome" must the hidden when rendered. Also absolutely none of this apples to FireFly. It's not a physical based render. That means it's allowed to break the laws of physics.

This is a nice presentation, but the OP is running P11.  It may be beyond his understanding of how it is done in P13.

The only thing missing from P11 would be an environment sphere mapped to match the "Equirectangular" mapping of the Cycles BG Environment. The preview sphere is mapped with an equirectangular projection (AKA Mercator projection). But, none of this is really necessary for anything except the preview. The complexity in the template scenes is all for the sake of previewing the HDRI.

The setup below is for P11. There's no magic preview sphere but it will render the same.

For a SuperFly render in P11 just plug the HDRI from the environment dome into the BG Environment node and connect that to the Background root node. Same setup as post above except you don't need the dependencies. You do need the Mapping and TextureCoordinate nodes to make the environment display correctly..

Hide the dome in the scene. Then set the background shader up like shown below. The Rotation input on the mapping node will control the rotation of the background. Remember it's in radians. A value of 0.0, 1.57, 0.0 will rotate the background 90deg. The background will not be visible in the preview. Now you probably see (or really don't see) why I made that template scene for this.

You may want to add a plane at ground level setup as a shadow catcher. The OP scene doesn't look like it would actually need that though.