So the sky is at about -300 on the Z axis.

It's a moot point, but that doesn't actually tell us how far away it is. Minus 300 what?

You might try using the Ambient input* for your background image map instead of the PoserSurface diffuse lighting node. A background (particularly the sky) would not normally be lit by your scene lights - it would be self-lit. I'd hazard a guess that removing the diffuse lighting node would also eliminate those artefacts.

(* or the Alternate_Diffuse, as in seachnasaigh's example).

Edit: don't forget to set Diffuse_Value to zero, or the colour to black.

and how do I change preview to Sreed? I'm using Firefly, not the Superfly.

Use the preview context menu (right click on the preview image) to select OpenGL or SreeD. Or the shortcuts:-

OpenGL - Cmd-Opt-O

SreeD - Cmd-Opt-S

Oh great.. yet more of the same irritating noise that's completely irrelevant to a thread that I was following. Is there no way to stop this? Edit: not you bopper :)

I would suggest finding EZSkin3 try cgbytes

A reasonable suggestion and possible solution. But if you want an answer to your question perhaps you could show a screenshot of the skin shader? Without knowing what the shader looks like, it's hard to know how to fix it for SF.

I still use V4.2, and I continue to look for new, interesting, good quality content for her.

By the way, the topic of this Poser forum thread is: "Are people still using V4?". It's not "Is anyone NOT using V4, or Poser? Please explain why not, and what's the matter with those who are". It pisses me off having to read and filter out lots of irrelevant noise. Thank you for your consideration.

[icprncss2]

How much does lack of an atmosphere and the moon's material affect the lighting?

You can see from the image - in spite of the bright sunlight the sky is black, because there is no atmosphere to refract and reflect the sunlight like on Earth. For planets and moons with no atmosphere, the sky is perfectly black both day and night.

But why is the astronaut's shadow on the ground so dark

There is no ambient light from the sky, so nothing to soften the shadows, except perhaps some earthlight, but that's not especially bright.

but the front side of the astronaut, which is equally hidden from the sunlight, is nearly as bright as in a CGI image rendered in "no shadows" mode

The surface of the moon is mostly a fine sand, with lots of diffuse reflection. Surfaces above the ground are strongly illuminated by this reflected light, even when in complete sun shadow.

By the way, the moon moves in 'synchronous rotation' with (or: is 'tidally locked' to) the Earth, meaning that it rotates around its axis in the same time that it takes to orbit around the Earth, and in the same direction - anti-clockwise when viewed from the North. This means that we only ever see the same face of the moon, as I'm sure you already knew (although due to lunar libration it appears to 'wobble' by several degrees N-S and E-W, so that we get to see up to about 59% of its surface over time).

This also means that when viewed from any point on the moon the Earth doesn't move around much in the sky - only a few degrees over time due to lunar libration. It doesn't rise and set like the sun and moon do when viewed from the Earth. Any references to 'Earthrise' or 'Earthset' on the moon are from the viewpoint of an orbiting craft, not from a point on the moon's surface.

Is this an Apollo 11 photo? If so, the Apollo 11 landing site was in the Sea of Tranquility around 24 degrees from the central point of the moon's visible face. This means that the Earth would have been at an altitude of around 66 degrees, not on the horizon.

EDIT: I just read the above post.. so it was Apollo 16, not 11. The Apollo 16 landing site was somewhat closer to the centre of the moon's face, so the Earth would have been at a higher altitude.

[EClark1894]

There are three sources of light in the scene, Not just the one.

Forgive my pedantic nature, but the sun is indeed the only source of light in this scene (ignoring other stars). The rest is reflected light, as you say.

The bright object reflected in his visor, immediately above his own shadow but below the horizon, is an object on the moon surface fully lit by the sun - maybe the other astronaut with a camera, or the giant moon rabbit, or god....

MistyLaraPrincess posted at 3:14PM Sun, 08 May 2016 - #4208598

does a color texture map in the bump channel make bloat?

Long time no reply... But now there's a discussion over in cgBytes linking to this thread. So...

A diffuse colour map fed into the bump channel will create overall outward displacement of the mesh, which can be described as 'bloat'. Whether this becomes obvious to the eye depends on the brightness of the colour map, the value of the bump channel input, and the shape of the base mesh itself, as BB demonstrated above. But as he said, there's no point taking risks when it's so easy to do it right.

For human skin I would say just don't use the diffuse map for bump, ever. The brightness of a decent diffuse colour map simply doesn't represent variations in skin height due to pores, veins, wrinkles, etc. - so it doesn't belong in the bump channel at all. For example, protruding veins are usually darker than the surrounding skin, but plugging this data into the bump channel would render them as depressions.

If you don't have a good, purpose-built bump map for your figure, I would suggest using procedural bump.

DocMatter posted at 11:31PM Thu, 05 May 2016 - #4267967

Whoops! Got the script working. Thanks!

I know what you did wrong... and you know how I know!

I actually use a script instead of the focus guide, which can sometimes be difficult to position correctly. The script tells you the distance between the current camera and any selected actor, so you can set the correct focus distance without using the guide. (Python Scripts window --> Render / IO --> Calc DoF Focal Distance).

Does it show up if you switch it on permanently? (Menu --> Display --> Guides --> Focus Distance Guide)

vitachick posted at 11:38PM Mon, 25 April 2016 - #4266840

undock content library? Thought that was only available in Poser2014.. Do tell how to show as external..Like it much better

It's OT, but... you can dock or undock the Library panel just as you can any other panel in the Poser UI - perhaps this is not what you mean. You can also run the Library in a separate browser window, as I do (on a second screen) - is this what you are asking about? (By the way, I don't have any DSON importer problems when running the Library like this).

I like toast, and it isn't an echo until it has come back to you! But you're right. In case you're unaware, following the DAZ takeover of RDNA, anticipating (rightly or wrongly) the eventual demise of Poser support there, many contributors moved to other forums such as cgbytes.

[shvrdavid]

Lit with envirosphere, no additional lights.

This seems to be some kind of mantra; but if it lights your figure in a way that is at odds with the environment, what is the point of it?

I'm not trying to be mean... I just think that 'envirosphere only' lighting is neither (in principle) something worth aiming for; nor (in practice) something that necessarily gives good results.

Victoria4 Morphs++ (a V4 add-on available from DAZ) includes a number of arm morphs:

The "ArmsUp-Down" and "ArmsFront-Back" morphs adjust the Collar and Shoulder actors simultaneously.

These two morphs move both arms together, but there are also individual morphs for each arm.

Edited to add: the Morphs++ product also includes a V4-V3 backwards compatible CR2 that might be of interest.