Ok, finally got to terms with the dials... Took me a while to understand what each one does. At first I came up with those values, and liked it that way so I left them like that (and that's a terrible mistake). The effect has to be checked under different lighting schemes!! Thanks everyone for your advice... Ghostofmacbeth did you get good results? I don't think this shader is intended to make things glow but... maybe you got something out of it? And stewer, thanks for making things so easy. You are of great help. BTW, my settings at the moment are Ka:0 Kd:1 Ks:1.2 Thickness:0,5 Eta:1.5 But I'm still working on it... Thanks again!! Ike.

I used a map to simulate the reflection...it shows up pretty well, but seems like being in the glow channel disables any other channel... am I right? The effect in shininess, or highlight is barely visible, its really annoying cause the reflection is there, but the surface is not shiny! Just looks like a matte surface with a reflection...??? I've been trying different things, but little success for now...

OUCH!!... Just when I posted, i went to vizualads.com and found the way to do it... jeeez, no reflection.. just glow! That's great. Sorry everyone! Ike.

Leonardis, it actually explains it (not too clearly...) when you're about to create the morphs in the wizard, stating that the FBMs have to be morphed separately... that's what you use the queue for... instead of just ticking them in the list, press right click and "add to the queue"... that way the prog will handle them separately.... or so i believe....! Ike.

You're not the only one with troubles with the Tailor. I've had the same "Influence volumes..." message lots of times, and I've been about to kick my computer a few times just because of this proggie. The lack of information, as you say is total, in some issues. It's frustrating to see that even with a wizard (that i tend to use) you can manage to do anything... grrrrrr.....!! Let's see, I've had the same error at times, when loading certain pieces of clothing, not the actual body. Yes, it's a real pain too see that you just can't tailor that certain piece of clothing, but the only workaround i've seen is.... to use a diferent cloth... that skirt, shirt, or dress... just won't fit... (at least i don't know how to fit it!) I do have the Daz Morphs, so that might give you some clues... anyway sometimes i've worked with other morphs that wrked well, so I'd say it's not restricted to DAZ's... Mmmm... I'll run the program again to see what else can i find for you....

LOL Mark! Don't worry about it, as we say here in Spain "it's better late than never!". So now i know, soft shadowsare the problem. And maybe you have too much stuff to read Mark! Relax your eyes! you're too kind and too helpful to us the ignorants!! :D So, about soft shadows,... isn't that option too hidden under the menus and tabs?!?! I always turn it on and then forget about it...i can't stand harsh shadows, i always use softboxes in my photos!! Does the light radius affect too much render times? Oh, and my photons have never moved! It's at 5000 by default and never touched it.. bless my 3d-ignorance :D Thanks everyone, as always, I'll keep trying...!! Ike.

Wow sailor, I'm impressed to see I'm not the only one with looong renders. I thought everyone else had their pictures rendered much faster....!! But I mean, even if poser renders have muuuch less quality, they usually take no longer than 10 minutes! I know that certain features that don't show up much in a better render take a long time to be calculated, but... i don't know.. I'm not using too high quality settings... just soft shadows in the only 2 spot lights... However, i'll have to check if its a memory swapping problem... can I change the HD from where CS takes the virtual memory?..I've got two HDs... will that help? Thx! BTW what do you think of the render??

Still no luck whatsoever! I rescaled all the textures, and checked the transparencies, removed the bumps and applied Mark's "bump to shininess/highlight" trick, but my render is still too slow... I improved a bit, but that's just it, "a bit"... grrrrr.... After fiddling this much I discovered a nice effect, from appliying the bump map to the reflection channel and setting it very low (5%) you get some great looking shininess on the skin! I've been trying to get this natural "oily skin" effect for a looong time, and seems like I'm on the way. At least i learned something new. :D I'll keep working on this scene, thank a lot for your help, keep it up!! Ike.

I'm worried about the hair... the render just gets stuck when it reaches this area... It's the Akina Hair for Poser, anyone has had any problems with it?

Mmmm... yeah, you're right, It's quite obvious that I don't need such a hi res in textures... But if I downscale, am i not losing much detail? Polycount, 22 objects, 320000 facets...(??)

I run a PC with WinXP Pro, a P4 at 2.0Ghz, 1gig of DDR Ram, an Nvidia Gforce4 Mx 440, and... two 80gig Hds (with too little free space.. :S)

I use CS3 updated to 3.0.4, and the scene I'm working on lately has, a few (low polycount) 3DS models of furniture, a Poser imported figure, with hair and clothing (trans maps, bumps and all...). Some textures (skin and some clothes) are quite big (around 4000x4000) including their bump maps. There are just 2 spot lights (with soft shadows on), and the render settings are as follows:

Full Raytrace:Off
Shadows, Reflection, Refraction, Bump, Transparency, Light thru Trans: All ON
Antialising: Fast
Object Acc: 4px
Shadow Acc: 4px
Filter Sharpness:100%
Max Ray Depth:8
Skylight: Off
Indirect light: On 100%
Photon Count: 5000
Light Quality: Preview
Accuracy: 16px

The rest is OFF

Basically is a FullBody portrait indoors. Any more info? Hope that's enough! :D

Thx. **After waiting for hours in front of the PC for renders to finish, I had to forget the idea of using GI or anything fancier... that's why the settings are SOOO basic.

Message edited on: 11/15/2004 12:36

Great render! well done! What kind of lighting did you use..? give us some clues! BTW xantor, photographically speaking... using a wide angle for portraits is one of the NEVER_EVER_do's, simply because it distorts the image and the perspective. A longer lens (as you said) flattens the features making it look a bit more appealing... well, anyway... rules are there to be broken... (but you gotta know them first!).

I'm the newbie here! And I'm not gonna let anybody take that title off me! I'm a newbie and I'm proud of it... :D