I played around last night some more and I did notice that if you stick with no textures and just use material nodes that the shadow maps were rendering at about 1 second per shadow map. I was getting great results there. When I put in a texture map, of course the 10-20 second shadow map calc times came back. Pretty weighty rendering times await for really serious renderings. If you just do stills, then this is the best technique I've seen yet. Also ockham's delete lights Python script (I think it's ockham's anyway) really cuts down time in experimenting with the Lightgen plugin output. I found that setting total light output to .6 helped me get less bright renders. Note that these light sets appear to be much brighter than they are until you actually render them. Machineclaw thanks! I'm off to the websites as soon as I get home. Oh, I made up a trick for dealing with the error message in HDRI shop. As Paoli mentioned, it can be a guessing game for when the light set file is done. I broke down and browsed the file output to the desktop and moved the program window over a bit so I can see when its done. Lightgen makes two temp files on the desktop and then a lightset file when its done. As soon as you see the file there you can close out of HDRShop.

Oh, just another question, is there any place to go to get either light probe source pics, or the panoramic derivatives? I assume a pic already made into panoramic format can be loaded into HRDIshop and then run the plugin to get the light set information. I have about five panoramic images I got free from a UK computer mag a long time ago. Are there more somewhere? Any Links? Thanks again stewer!

Hey stewer this is just great! Spent last night sorting thru all this stuff, and managed to get it to work. Thanks for your sharing this great technique! Just a question, this process produces lights for my scene (and does a great job with blindingly short render times). I did not use the probelight node for anything. Am I supposed to use the probelight node for something?

3- mellygrl 2- BekaVal 1- randym77

I think the face room is the most ignored tool of Poser 5. I have been able to create amazing characters with it. The new heads are lipsinc ready. Try boosting the caricature dial and moving points on the head. Use different symmetry setting as you do this to shape the head as desired. (I could use some more Don morphs myself, tho). I was able to morph Judy this way into a caricature of Arnold S. Also a version of the old lady "Mrs. Avery" of Eddie Murpy's P.J's fame from poor old Judy's mesh. These are such departures from the original shape of the head I was frankly stunned at Poser 5's ability to easily create brand new fully custom characters. All of DAZ figures (while very high in quality) can not compete at all with Poser 5's face room. My opinion is that CL is really onto something with Don and Judy's system of set up. Could we use more morphs, probably so. If you want characters that look like people DAZ figures rock. If you want something more original, experiment with the face room (but make sure you've got sr3 installed.)

I agree with you 100%. I think this has to do with joint blend zone limitations. Anywhere you have to have a lot of bending to do you get less than perfect things happening. Someday computers will be better and we can have full morphs for every possible pose that don't deform in any way other than natural.

Well I went to B&N yesterday and asked if I they could order 64# for me. They said no. They said they don't do that for mags. I said can you tell me when it will be here? they said no. I was about to get mad, but I went to the rack and Lo! It was there! So I bought it! Good news! The deal thru the mag includes option to upgrade to 3.0 for 239 dollars! Instead of 399 dollars! Whoo Hoo! And the offer is good until October 31. It's ten bucks more if you want them to send you the CD though. Although SE does a lot, I'm sure the forces, super emitters, blockers, and most important: multiple layers are going to be worth the money. Also, there were a bunch more emitters on there, and video tutorials for getting started and making your own emitters!

Where's Indiana Bones?

I'm glad of this post. I went to B&N and got issue 63# I'm in Ohio. It came with a timed demo of PI 3.0. Man this is sweet! This sort of finishes of my set of cheap 3d tools. I'm going to reserve issue 64# on lunch hour today! (By the way, I installed the Demo and got right to work without tuts, book or whatever. Just load in movie, draw splines, and render. All too easy...)

Uh... Half day off going around talking... we buy lots of stuff from the marketplace and need to back it up. WE gots to have way to back it up! I have been waiting for this news to break big, cause for us, it's money on those disks. I am betting lots of small companies are relying on all those .25 cent disks for backing up stuff clients paid money for. Poser Forum issue today, class action suit tommorrow. However, hows come music cd's havent failed? Is it just because of a different burn method than home users? Mankind was hoping this little disk would store info for ages...

I like Poser 5 alot. I dumped 4 the day 5 came out. (or rather mailing time after the day it came out.) I must admit that there was alot of frustration with it. Now however I am glad to have it and am very happy with it. So, that being said, I will cut to it. Add a modeler. Add particle effects. Add physics/dynamics. Add liquid. Add way to bake hair, cloth, physics, and liquid dynamics to take away overhead. Add a graphic GUI to the depth of field feature for animation. Add a sky/cloud generator and a ground/terrain/cyclorama feature. Add path oriented animation for anything in the scene. Make the walkpaths 3D capable. Add footprint driven walk options. Add object snap. Add JCM squish to the figures for correct distortions for extreme poses. Add collision based morphs for footprints, furniture deformation, etc. Add all of the back bones/vertebrae to the figures. Add lots of new characters. Or, add unimesh capability. Add a morph room. Add a direct to DVD animation capabiity that automatically fits standard broadcast formats. Oh yeah, since I'm "wishing" here make it make me lose the weight I've gained sitting in front of Poser! But seriously, I know I'm asking for Maya/Max with lots of content, but some things might be possible and if Poser has the intended life span that the nice people from CL are saying it will have is true, then we have to tell them what we want it to do, and trust that the bugs can be worked out. I think that the advances gained even with some unfortunate side effects are worth the cost for growth. The program has a community, not a users group. The money I spent on Poser, all versions, is really small compared to how much I spent on stuff for the program. I'm really ready to cut CL some slack, and think long term for Poser 6.

Remember what you have learned, help you it can. Begun this bad hair day has...