Actually from this pic, I don't see where you lost all that much detail. The only stuff you seem to be losing is lighting related. And I think it looks MUCH better in the Carrara version

Cool deal! Ya did it! ;) I like the Carrara render better due to the shadowing etc. It looks to me like the lighting in the Carrara image might need a little tweaking. If you select the Scene in the Properties tray, what your Ambient light set to? You might want to play with the brightness on the Ambient. I turn that light off usually for indoor scenes or drop it down to 5-15 brightness. -and- The shader on the girl. Looks "Flat" in the Carrara image. Flat as in no highlight or shininess. You might want to try giving a little more highlight and shininess to the shader for the girl. She has a little more life in the Poser image. I think thats just due to a "Flat" looking shader in the Carrara image. Just a few thoughts. Looking good, Man! Clint

There needs to be some light coming in from the window. That will create the 'skimmer' light you need to define the womans outline against the floor background. Mark

I've noticed when taking poser scenes or objects into Carrara that I lose all the 'shader' info save for some very basic colors and possibly a texture map. Several of my objects came in with the wrong texture maps. They all lost all of their bump maps and transparency settings (my windows all turned opaque (sp?). The candle completely lost all it's info, even color. I spent several hours fixing this as best as I could figure out. :) The angle in this render unfortunatly makes it seem to still be such but other renders did show the backdrop. It does look flat on her. There's much more 'curve' in there in the preview of the assembly room. In both poser and Carrara the texture map is just a plain blue shape with no detail save for the nipples and pubic region. The first of which seems to have ended up in the wrong place on the Carrara render (it actually is in the right place. I checked in the assembly room set to textured preview. But in the render the curve of the breast and the location of the nipple seem off...). I set ambient light to about 15 to 20 as without it you could not see the top half of the woman unless the candles were so bright as to not look right anymore. The candles are brightness 80 with a 90% drop off and a range of 4 inches (the scene measures 5*5 inches just about. Poser people seem to be very small in other apps... bunch of pixies or something I guess :) ). I'll try experiementing with highlight and shininess. Of course I want to avoid the plastic look as well. :)

Make sure you are using a Conical camera and not the Isometric one. ;) If you tweak up the image some, I would love to see the results. Regards, Clint

The woman's texture map is the second of the default P4 nude woman textures taken into photoshop and color adjusting the overall hue. That's a texture map with no real detail to it. My plan here is to build up a pile of 'stock images' for a fantasy world of mine. And build out a website for it. Of course I have to finish figureing out making morph targets so I can get elf ears that fit the elves of this world. But I'm enjoying the frustrations so far. :)

Morphs - OK go ahead and shoot me know, Please! ;) (grin) Great idea arcady. If you have problems with the morphs pist away. Clint

Problems with the morphs? Only with figuring out symmetry across the sides of the head without doing something that will prevent me from using it on the poser 4 figurette. :) I should post my current attempt at ears when I get home. They got pretty mangled in my last attempt. :) I may sit down for a few days with a piece of paper and copy down the numbers for every single vertix that moved when I used the sphere of attraction on one side... then type those numbers into the other side... then tweak it just a 'little' to look natural. But I'm dreading that task...

Yea - I remember seeing your post about symetry. Good luck - I would love to see the morphs. Clint

Arcady - You seem to have a great sense for what you want in your image. I think that some of the earlier comments in this thread were on-target when they said the loss of detail came more from lighting than anything else. In my day job, I do video production, and lighting is always the biggest concern for getting images that look good. One of the failings of RDS (and presumably Carara) is that it has a default "ambient lighting" feature. This ambient lighting has absolutely no analogue to the real world, since it casts no shadows, comes from nowhere, and adds nothing to the texture. It just keeps images from looking super dark. Well, in the real world, your image would have tons of black in it if the only light sources were the candles. I would consider almost no ambient light and limit the reflectiveness of the room's ceiling. Then, I'd throw in a backlight -- something with a cookie (what we call them in film / video -- I don't remember what they're called in RDS, gels on the light? mabye?) to add some texture and to bring out the woman from the background. Watch any movie or TV show and look for the backlight -- it gives people the highlight that makes them a star.

AzChip - 100% right on. I usually kill Ambient and try to light with "Real World" lighting. I agree - Lighting is a BIG key to realism in renders. Thanks for the post on this. Its great to hear this info from a professional on the subject. :) Clint

Just a thought I had. When I do indoor stuff....I make it Indoor. I create a 6 sided room with the lights and camera placed inside the room. I usually create the room like 15 feet x 15 feet and about 8-10 feet tall. It really helps get that "Indoor" look. Clint

Yeah. I'm working with a 5 sided room at present. 3 walls, a roof and a floor. I left the front open but will probably fill it in as well with a 2d plain. I finally had trouble running Carrara last night or I'd have some revised images up here. Seems I lost the ability to preview in textured mode. I had originally imported the woman as 'one object per group' from poser and this made it very hard to change texturing what with her being some 30 odd objects grouped together. So I restarted the file. Imported her as one object into carrara. Imported the walls as another object, and am building the scene back together. Though I had an odd situation of her coming in scaled to 2459%. She didn't look right till I scaled her to 600%. I have to re-add the candles and knife still. The file's already at 15mb which seems odd for so small a scene. But whatever. I'll likely go for a different candle. I only used the one I'd used as it was 'there' in my poser menus from a previous download and this entire project was only meant to be a test of playing with light coming from an object. :) (If you look at it, it's all 'stock' downloaded/purchased objects.) Anyone know how to set up those 'gels'?

I don't have Carrara, but in RayDream it's really quite easy. There's a tab in the properties window for all lights called "Gel." It gives you a few options like blinds and gradients and also allows you to put a map in (or even a movie for animations). You could create a mottled texture in photoshop or some other image editor (maybe try a sponge filter or something). If you're just trying to make the light look like it's streaming through a tree, make your gel black and white, otherwise, go for some color, too. But to stay photoreal, be careful about too much color on the backlight; it's easy to suddenly look like you're in a 1960's head film. - Chip