Thanks for the tips. To answer your question, no, I haven't tried IDL yet Laurie. I'm still not quite sure what the color dials (R,G,B) are for, how they affect the lighting, and where they should be set to. I'm really not up on all this terminology and the concepts, so apologies if I appear to not completely understand the why's yet of these settings.This is a lot of info to digest never having really learned much about the lighting, and I've begun to read the chapter in the manual, so I'll give some of these suggested settings a try tomorrow and see how it goes. Hopefully it will all work out ok and I'll post a new render here. :-)

Just a note....I'm rendering some still images for now, but in the end I'm going to be using HDRI, rendering my animations, and sending them my team leader in an effort to try to match scene/lighting settings in his 3D program where he will be importing them to for editing and assembly.  From what I understand so far, HDRI doesn't use any lights at all per say. Still much to learn I guess!

Much appreciate all the help, as always, one day at a time. :-)

MM

You mentioned "their colors", and I did notice at the properties/parameters/dials, the default lights do have colors blended. Just haven't learned how to work with all that yet.

Btw, the lighting properties/parameters screengrabs shown are the "default" settings poser gives me when I open the program, these are not settings I've changed at all.

Medzinatar, that option did seem kinda confusing, even after reading about it in the manual:***

Use External Binary Morph Targets***: Checking this box will enable the use of External Binary Morph Targets (EBMTs) when saving new content, or resaving legacy Poser files. Saving legacy figures to the Poser Library with this option enabled will generate new .pmd EBMT files for those figures, thus allowing you to take advantage of morph target sharing, reduced file sizes, and faster processing speeds for your legacy figures.

I have already used Legacy figures, altered them, re-named, and re-saved them to the library. I've also altered and saved some Kids4 figures. How will unchecking the "Use external binary morph targets" affect the stuff I've already saved, if at all?

Maybe these screenshots will help. Here are two different renders, first one is darker one, second one I tried literally blasting the light's intensity aimed directly at the kid's face, still some grey there even at that.   To me it almost looks like the kid's hair color is "bleeding".

Also the render settings that I used for those area renders, which other than me moving the slider to the right are all default settings as far as I know, haven't changed them since installing poser.  Also I posted the gamma setting in the Texture Mgr window, which I'm guessing is the default as well.

btw, these are still renders, but I'll probably be rendering animations mostly when the time comes to render these characters.

I can't seem to post two or more images in the same post here, have to use a separate reply for each pic.

Thanks again, much appreciate the advice everyone. :-)

MM

I noticed that The Kids 4 skateboarder shorts and Tshirts have quite a few image maps that are 2500x2500, and I'm working on getting rid of all those and customizing my own designs for the same shirts and shorts at 1000x1000 just to save from bogging down my cpu. I'm hoping to use one image node if I can get it to look half decent.

I tried deleting all those nodes and used one image node map at 1000x1000, and plugged it into only the diffuse color and it seemed to work ok, cept I've really not much of an idea if what I'm doing is the correct way, but it worked at least! :-)

Honestly, I didn't try rendering it yet but I will. My PC is so slow that I have to clear time on my schedule ahead of time just to render anything, lol.  :-)  I'll see how an area render goes & post back here again if it doesn't take care of the problem.

Thanks for the advice everyone, much appreciate it. I will also look for the Normals_Forward setting, I assume it's where the nodes are in the Materials room.

I really don't have much knowledge on how to set up my render settings, as I haven't done much rendering since purchasing PP2010. All I know is I'm using the Firefly engine with the slider over to "final quality" for what little rendering I've done.  I did one render last week of just the head of one of the Kids4 characters I created, and the whole render had a sort of grey tone to it, which never happened before, and I haven't changed any lighting or render settings, so I guess I've got my work cut out for me. :-) That's gonna be a whole new thread once I begin rendering all my animations for this project I'm doing.

ATB

MM

Ok, all that's interesting. Guess it doesn't work like a regular 3D modeling software does. I use an older program, Truespace, for modeling, and when you turn on the "collision all", it stops everything from interacting.

hborre, you're right, because with collision on I tried moving the figure up/down, and the part of the screen where the figure is began to get fragmented. My pc is slow as it is, probably best to try and get away with not using it. ..thanks for the tip. I found the Drop To  Floor option and used it earlier today, my Vue program has that, nice feature, saves time.

markschum, that is one of the things I've been trying, usually use front cam, lately I've found myself using the dials more and more.

JunkoH, I'm wondering why there is even a collision option if it's that weak a feature. Btw, how does collision affect animation of a figure?? If it's a walking or running animation, does the figure's foot go below the surface....just curious. Guess you must have to adjust it beforehand to be sure. 

I also noticed you can use collision with clothing, and that seems like a nightmare from what I've read so far, probably will slow things down even more.

I just today began scaling down some texture files from 2500x2500 to 1000x1000.  They were taking too long to load, which means using up lots of memory for nothing. The smaller texture files seem to at least work, nothing has blown up so far! :-) 

Thanks again everyone

MM

Hey fibbits, appreciate the tips, I've had some problems with the conforming stuff, even with clothes.  There are a couple of check boxes in PoserPro2010 in the properties tab of whatever figure/prop I'm conforming. "Include morphs when conforming" ...and..."Include scales when conforming"..

Seems sometimes checking those boxes prior to conforming clothes or hair works better, sometimes it seems to have no effect or make things worse.  Not sure what's up with that yet, still learning every day. :-)

Anyhow I'll get to the hair links more tomorrow as I haven't had much PC time today. Thanks again

MM

TrekkieGrrrl, I know I've rescaled the standard poser figures adult hair to fit Ben before, just didn't know if the Daz hair works the same way. (Btw, that morph tool is confusing as hell to me, even after reading in the manual and trying it out a few times, I still can't get the hang of it, I'll stick with the dials for now until I have more time to spend with it. :-))

I've had a look at a few of the Daz cuts, and there are quite a few that looked really cool....so the adult cuts can be scaled to fit Kids4 even if K4 is not on the fit list at the bottom of the page? 

Also, one of those was "Carrara" hair, will that work in Poser?

Thanks very much for all the help, much appreciated.

MM