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Quote - I hate to repeat myself, but possibly my first post was missed, and the OP hasn't posted in the DS forum. A very common problem with Poser materials in DS is that they default to the "plastic" lighting model. This will give the skin a shinny plastic look tike in the original render. Sometimes changing this setting to Skin is all that is required. It is wasted time and energy to try and adjust other settings before the proper lighing model is selected.

I actually did mention switching the lighting model in DS to Skin at the beginning of this thread.  That render was what I got using the skin lighting model.   I selected the whole V4 figure and in the Surfaces tab, under "General", I switched to Skin under Lighting Model.

I just posted on the DS forum here

Quote -

Freemarlie - Over at the DAZ Studio forum they can help you out. Feel free to ask away. :)

Thanks ryuslilangel.  I'll do that.

Quote - The first thought is Gamma correction.  It doesn't exist in P6 and unless you modify your shaders to take Gc into account, the comparison is not exact.

How do I do that?

Quote -   Also, your lighting is much more intense than your PoserPro post.  Believe me, as a scientist, to make a valid comparison, everything must be equal and optimized straight across the board to obtain significant results.  I would examine render settings, material settings and shaders, and set lighting equally for all media.

I saved the light setup in Poser Pro, copied and pasted the .ltz file into Poser 6's light directory and loaded the file in P6 before rendering.

Quote - Hopefully it won't come to that, wolf.  Unfortunately, the OP is making an apples-to-oranges comparison without all the variables in place to make it valid.

What about Poser Pro vs Poser 6?    Here is the render from Poser 6 with the same MAT Pose using the same textures.

She looks a bit sweaty.  Why is there a difference here?

Quote - Hi please visit the The Daz forum here and over at the  DAZ
website for more Detailed info on the use of DS mats.
here in the poser forum you might get a useful answer but are more likely get a Chorus wild guesses
& Partisan recitations as to why you should NOT be using DS in the first place etc etc etc .
which inevitably leads to yet another APP WAR".

Cheers

Oops.  I didn't mean to induce an uproar.  I'm new to using DAZ Studio and didn't know where to start learning about it.  I thought I'd try  tossing out a question and see what I get back.

OMG!!  V5 is out?  I don't believe it!

I figured out what the problem is and you guys are right. The light that I changed from spot to infinite has the light probe inadvertently attached to it.  I must have tried to use it as the IBL earlier. I've removed the light probe image from the infinite light but kept it on the IBL and now it looks close to what bagginsbill's got.
 

This render is with a spot light plus IBL+AO which I like much better.

When I changed the spot light to an infinite light with IBL + AO and got this weird result:

WTF?? Here is my light probe I used with the IBL.
 

Thanks, hborre.  That worked, but now the shadows are way too strong.

It took noticably longer to render also, especially when i turn up the blur radius.

Quote - you're using Poser Pro.  do you have gamma correction enabled?  your shadows are not only too dark, they look wrong altogether.  maybe i'm wrong, but it doesn't look like you're using correction.

I had "Use Gamma Value from Render Settings" checked for each texture map.

Quote -   oh, and yeah, IBL is way better than the shadow trick.  it's not nearly as accurate as true GI, but it's still better than making the lights inaccurate.

You're right.  IBL lighting does give a much better result.

I don't think my version of Poser Pro has GI because I can't find the settings for it anywhere.

Thanks for the links.

Quote - It could come from your shader. What does it look like?

I still don't know what a shader is.  I'm quite new to Poser.

Quote - If you're not using global illumination (called Indirect Lighting in Poser 8) and you don't have fill lighting directly illuminating a shadow cast by another light, and the material is not itself emitting a color (ambient) then the shadow will be black.  Solutions are use fill lights, use a really wonky material, or (imo best by far) render with global illumination (Poser 8 and beyond).  Takes time though.

Where in Poser 8 are the GI settings located?  And how do you create a fill light?  Is that the same as an infinite light?

Quote -  Also, your shadows might be turned too high. Under the light parameter tab look for "Shadow". Be default, it is set to "1" which is unnaturally high. Sunlight has a Shadow of .912.  The lower you set it, the dimmer the shadow will appear in a render. Play with that and see what you'll like.

On the second tab of the light is Properties. On it you'll find the blur radius. For Ray-traced shadows it's set at "0) which means hard-edged shadows (Which occur in a hard vacuum!). The higher the blur, the softer the edge is.

Play with those two, and some fill lights and you'll do fine!:laugh:

I've forgot all about changing the light properties.  Thanks for pointing that out.  I've spent too much time in the materials room.  Adjusting the blur radius seems to give the best result.