That seems to do what I need, will try to see if I can make it work. Thanks :)

So how would you get around that? 

I am sure you can do it by mixing nodes like crazy :) But I don't really get the logic behind all these nodes, to be honest. So only use them for very specific tasks.

Thanks I looked through it and tried to copy it, but I don't see any "Colorramp" like the one he is using in Poser? So how would you get around that?

How anyone can make textures in cycles is beyond me :D

But how would I connect it to the colors as well?

I assume they have to go into the "Surface" node of "Cycle root", so there is Black and White there and then somehow the position or gradient node should be used to split the colors based on some value, but I don't see how one would connect it all to work like that? 

Sorry don't get that. 

I have nothing called a "position" node.

Can you show an example of how to link them together? 

Sorry 3D-Mobster, but that setup doesn't work for me.

I set my gamma correction back to 2.20 (Which, as some experts always insisted, is the physically "correct" value and is what Poser uses as its default)

Used only one point light with the settings you suggested. (Size 1500%, intensity 950%)

This, after a few attempts, is the result:

It seems weird, because you say that you only have one light source but there are two shadows going different directions? It seems like you have the main light on the left and a secondary light on the right?

Im not sure why your preview is getting screwed, could be some driver or Poser issues, I don't know. Also the values I used were not meant as "magic" numbers, you have to adjust them to your scene as it depends on where you placed it etc. But obviously if it screws up your preview that is not going to work :)

Just so you don't confuse what I was saying, the idea behind this has nothing to do with photorealism, even if you were to do cartoons or whatever, lighting should still be correct, because its something that we lash unto when we look at images. 

Its like when you have an image and the character is suppose to stand on the floor, but doesn't cast a shadow on it. It will make it look like its one image placed on top of another and unless that is what one is going after, it will simply look wrong.

From what I can see in your images and since I don't know your setup and hardware, it seems to work for you, so I wouldn't change it, especially if you end up with the issues as you say.

And honestly I think a lot of it, is caused because the lights in Poser are somewhat limited in my opinion.  

Thank you!

Here is the set up again, with a slightly more realistic background, showing a slightly bit more skin.  :-)

I would suggest not using infinite lights in Poser as they seem to behave slightly weird compared to how you would expect light to work and because you can get a better result simply using a point light in my opinion.

A quick explanation of how light and shadows works  

The darkness and sharpness of a shadow depends on primarily four things.

1. How close the object is to a surface, so a person with their foot on the ground will have a sharper and darker shadow the closer to the foot you get.

2. The size of the light source compared to the object, a small light source will make sharper shadows whereas a larger light source will make them more fuzzy.

3. The angle from light source to an object, this might make an object cast very long shadows or very short ones.

4. The intensity of the light source, the brighter the light source the darker the shadows will appear.

Obviously a lot of these are depended on each other, but as general rules I think its enough. 

The problem with infinite lights, is that you have to fake things to work with it as you would expect light to behave.

Here is an example of a scene with just an infinite light and ray tracing on and a scale of 100%.

If I increase the scale of the light to 5000% nothing changes, it looks exactly the same, which is not what we would expect with a larger light source. Several issues are going on here, first of all the darkness of the shadow looks wrong, sort of like a uniformed shadow of pure black, clearly defining the character outline, but it would be very difficult to get such shadow unless the intensity of the light source is far brighter than what it is in the image.

Secondly the shadow is extremely sharp, which again is not something we see unless the intensity is high or the object is very close to a surface, like near her hand.

The way Poser deals with this, is by increasing "Shadow blur radius", but this value is not based on anything, it is just a random value of what you think it ought to be. Which means that it is not connected to the light source at all.

In this image I increased it to 4.

And even though it is slightly better, it still doesn't look very realistic.

In this example I have changed the light to a point light, set the "Shadow blur radius" back to 0 and set "Attenuation" to inverse square. Intensity and size is 100%

Because I turned on "Attenuation" the image appears very dark. So going to increase intensity to 950%, so we get something that looks like the infinite light.

And will increase the size of the light source to 1500% to simulate a large sun.

So now the shadow will change based on the size of the light source as you would expect. So you don't have to try to fake it using the "shadow blur radius".

Well done everyone involved in this contest, making animations is not easy :D

Here is one more that is useful

Cinematic Color in Storytelling

As you can see in the picture, the farther away from the glass,

How do you make glass that has a blurring effect?

I'm using Poser 11.

Thank you for your answers.

I would suggest that you watch this 10 min video, as it will give you a good understanding of how each map works and what each setting is used for when it comes to PBR or Superfly. It applies to all normal materials. And its actually very easy, but it is some very useful knowledge to have in the back of your head whenever you work with materials and will help you be able to sort of analyze them and know what you are after and what you need to change to get the effect you are after.

PBR - Quick explanation

primorge posted at 6:19PM Wed, 15 September 2021 - #4427523

Thank you. And thanks for the link to the external denoiser.

Sure no problem. :)

TwiztidKidd posted at 5:22PM Wed, 15 September 2021 - #4427512

You have to process everything at a higher resolution (4k+ ) and you will be able to get rid of the noise without losing detail and have a crisp clear render. Start rendering the scene at 2,400 pixels wide at least... then enhance it to 4,800 pixels wide... now remove the noise and blur then rescale it back to 2,400 .... if you must lol

"Sure – but bigger render size means longer render time (double size, double time). That's what you avoid with a denoizer.

But let stop discussing this – maybe the OP has other interesting things to publish."

But as Adp001 say you still have to render more. With the denoiser you can render fairly noise images and still get something fairly good out of it. But since the program works externally, you could probably combine both method and might give you a good or even better result, worth testing :)

Personally I have to say that it does a good job in removing noise, obviously it would be nice if there were some setting for how aggressive it is.

adp001 posted at 5:19PM Wed, 15 September 2021 - #4427510

But all denoisers worth mentioning are publicly available (Intel's at Github as open source, NVidia provides its own SDK which is also basically freely available). The advantage of Intel's denoiser (and probably the reason why Bondware doesn't use NVidia) is that - unlike NVidia's software - it can be used with CPU only.

Using the one I posted allow you to do it on any image. From the Daz forum it seems that the Nvidia one normally requires you to have a Nvidia graphic card, but this one allow anyone to use it. Whether that is true or not I don't know, since I have an nvidia card.

hborre posted at 2:46PM Wed, 15 September 2021 - #4427503

How does this denoiser compare with the built-in app in Poser?

I don't know.

This one is based on this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-5NVNgT70U&ab_channel=NvidiaGameWorks

SamTherapy posted at 3:25PM Thu, 09 September 2021 - #4427050

@ Cryogen - you are right, of course, but the hobbyist market won't support that level of expenditure. It is, however, why I stopped making skins because they're a lot of work for little reward... if you do 'em right. I never used a pre made base and built up my skins from individual photos, which is very time consuming. At the end, you're competing against thousands of others, many of which were done quickly using base textures. They don't sell for long, either, so the end result is, lots of time and effort for next to nothing back.

Models, however, seem to have a higher perceived value, regardless of the effort involved. Now, I do put a lot of time and effort into my models - even the free ones - and in return, they stick around for longer. At the moment, there's only one on sale but I hope to get more out there soon. Anyhow, the level of effort is about the same, or similar, but the rewards tend to be more long term.

All that said, if I started charging hundreds - or even thousands - I'd probably sell the square root of fuck all. I'd rather get people buying my stuff than window shopping.

Its obvious a benefit if you can make objects, especially if they are PBR so you can sell the product for a long time, because PBR is not going away and my guess is that, it will only improve, so something you make now will also be good in 4-5 years, if it looks fine now. Where Firefly or these non PBR objects will die. I don't think they will be able to keep up.