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Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2025 Jan 11 12:18 am)
Subject: General portrait tips for the Portrait Challenge
Sure. ;) Luckily for me, I didn't have to do much on the hairline. Neftis' Classic Hair 2 has a very nice hairline. I smudged some of the skin up into the hair using a very small brush (1-3 pixels) on a separate layer using the all layers option to add a bit more to what was already there. However, I did do some work on the actual hair, using dodge, burn, and smudge, as well as the addition of some crossing strands to make it look a bit less polished. No major postwork on the lips--that's Spectre3's lovely Christy texture, which already has some lip highlighting. All I did was sharpen it to bring out some more of the texture detail. For image reduction, I follow these steps: 1) Sharpen the ENTIRE image, usually at 50% and .5, or sometimes 1 if the image will be reduced a LOT 2) Crop and reduce 3) Sharpen AGAIN, usually at 50% and .5 or even .2 4) Fix jaggies from sharpening That's all. ;)
Excellent tips Kiera. I was going to put up a few tips of my own, but I think you've about covered everything. :-) Here's another little tip for the eyes (to rid the cross- eyed look). When I first set up the model (Vicki in particular) I usually set her left eye at up/down -3 and side to side at 3. Right eye up/down -3 and side to side at -3. Then lock the actor so when you go to pose her they don't move again. Later when you have her posed, unlock them and move them in the direction you want being careful to keep the spacing on the side to side position the same...example, left eye -6 and right eye 0. Here is the link to Travelers site for the noglownostril props: http://www.morphworld30.com
My idea of rebooting is kicking somebody in the butt twice!
Great tips Kiera. One thing I've noticed, you can really enhance a scene by rendering it outside of Poser. I've just rencently started using Bryce for all my renders and it's such a great difference. For example, with some specularity and a good bump map you can get the lips to look wonderfully moist and soft :) - hard to accomplish in Poser. Papu
Great tips. I must say the eyes are very important, trying to get them to look right. I must have spent a good hour to get them fairly close in my render and I'm still not happy. I had to adjust one about 10 sideways, I think it depends on the pose and direction the eys face. I used Travelers noglownostrils, but still had to do postwork to take the lines out, but they do make a big differece and help speed up the proccese. I hope to see more pics entered than just the few earlybirds. Take a look if you haven't yet to give you some ideals on what to do/not do. Happy Rendering. Tashar 59
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(sorry this is late, I had to deal with some personal issues that arose. ;)Although many people enjoy the challenge of creating pure Poser renders, I personally find that postwork enhances my Poser art significantly. So these tips and tricks will mostly involve postwork, but some of this will involve Poser information and some general portraiture tips.
SETTING UP THE PORTRAIT
--Focal Length--
It is important to use a reasonable camera focal length when setting up a portrait shot. For this portrait I used 88MM, but any value between 55 and 90 should be sufficient for a headshot. The key is to avoid the fisheyed look found in Poser's default camera length of 25mm to 35mm.
--Camera Angle--
There is more to camera angle than technical considerations. You have to consider the pose, the direction the subject is looking at, the facial expression, the mood.. Generally I try to shoot from just a bit above or just a bit below dead center to add a bit more interest to the piece. However, the angle is quite central to the composition, so play around with the camera until you are happy with the angle. Then you can save that angle as a camera pose dot to make sure you don't lose it.
--Lighting--
I am not an expert in lighting, but I know enough to say that lighting for portraiture is a key element to the overall composition. If you are facile with Photoshop you can fix many lighting problems in postwork using Image | Adjust | Curves, Filter | Render | Lighting effects, and plain old dodge and burn with soft airbrushes. So work hard on your lighting to create mood, show off the texture in it's best light, but don't be afraid to render with less than perfect lighting. Don't forget that you can alter perceived skin tone problems using colored lighting--for example, you can counter an overly yellow skin tone with strong pinks, etc.
--Expression--
For portraiture it is important to have your subject doing something with his or her face. A neutral pose rarely telegraphs emotion or mood. Even a hint of a smile can say thousands of things. Experiment with expressions, and don't forget that REAL smiles usually involve some wrinkling at the corner of the eyes and lines in the cheeks. Use ALL the dials to your advantage, don't just twist the Smile dial. ;)
--Eyes--
Regardless of whether the subject is looking at the camera or not, it is vital that you line up the eyes appropriately to avoid a cross-eyed or wall-eyed look. 80% of the time the Poser dials don't do it for me. I often have to tweak the entire iris one pixel to the left or right to truly match up the eyes, and even then, I can fail at perfect alignment. Vicki definitely leans towards cross-eyed, and eye highlights can exagerrate this effect, so nudge your eyes appropriately. Sometimes covering one of YOUR eyes and nudging each eye to be looking directly at you helps.
--Background--
Although solid color backgrounds can be quite striking alone, I often use the infinity cove to add backgrounds to the portrait. This way, any spotlight or lighting/shadow effects will also be picked up in the portrait, and can enhance depth and mood. I often render twice when using this prop: once with the prop to get the full composition, and once without to get a good alpha mask of the subject for postwork purposes. Choose a color that compliments the lighting or skin tones of the model, either on the opposite end of the spectrum are a supporting hue. For example, in this portrait I used brown tones to match the skin and hair and add warmth.
POSTWORK
This portrait contains quite a bit of postwork. I will show you what, how, and why. I use photoshop. Before I begin anything, I select out the subject using the alpha mask stored when Poser exports to TIFF format and duplicate it to keep the foreground and background separate.
--DEPTH OF FIELD--
In this case, to achieve a depth of field look, I switched to layer mask mode and swept a very soft airbrush over the neck area. Then I switched back to normal mode, inverted the selection, and blurred the selection by about 2 pixels. I did this to draw attention away from the unimportant neck area and toward the face, which is the major element of the piece. Also, it is a good way to hide the fact that body textures are generally lower resolution than face textures.
--BACKGROUND--
The background had some light spots, but they were concentrated on one side of the portrait. I felt it looked uneven, so I went through and carefully dodged and burned with a soft airbrush to get a more even, yet still variable background. To focus the viewer on the face, I kept the texture of the background uncomplciated--a small but of gaussian noise to add some texture but not detract.
--HUE ADJUSTMENT--
I did some minor hue adjustment to correct for a yellow tone to the skin.
--SHARPENING--
When Poser anti-aliases a render, the net effect is a slight blur to the texture. If you compare a texture map to the actual render, you often find detail in the map that is invisible in the render. But you can still tease out this detail by using a low level sharpen effect. I use unsharp mask, because it is less likely to oversharpen and you can control the amount of sharpening. It's under the Filter | Sharpen menu. I generall sharpen at 50% and .5, but will sometimes increase the sharpen effect to 1 before reduction, then sharpen again after image reduction. However, all this sharpening can cause jagged edges, so...
--FIXING JAGGIES AFTER SHARPENING--
I take a small brush, 1 or 3 pixels, and zoom WAY in, sometimes as much as 500%, and carefully smooth the jagged outlines of the subject.
--CLONING--
Sometimes Poser renders with flaws or shadows that shouldn't be there, and other problems. I identify these, make a new layer, and select the clone tool. I check off the "use all layers" option in the options palette, and do my cloning on a separate layer. That way it is easy to erase overcloning. You can do this with a smudge tool also.
That's about it. In this portrait I am not quite happy with the iris placement in the eyes and I should have matched the hair better to the eyebrows. Those are the major flaws that bother me, but I am sure others can find more. Good luck with your portraits. =)