Thanks.  I'll try the envirosphere.  I haven't gotten back to reality yet, it renders so agonizingly slow.  And I have a pretty good computer too - i7 quad core with 16 GB RAM.

Reality.  I took a bit of a break from Poser, but back at it.  Trying again with Firefly and experimenting with Reality/Lux.

In 2014 and earlier...  Did you mean a version like 2012, or it can't do it at all?

Those examples look good, but aren't merchant resources...  What I was getting at was there were things that made them not so suited (gamma can't fix too many sun spots, or too much pink saturation). 

I haven't bought any with the pink saturation, perhaps that's not as hard as I think to remove.  But the issue I saw was that it isn't consistent, like the limbs have more saturation than the torso, so removing the satration isn't so bad, but getting it to match may be.

Thanks

Gotcha.  Thanks.  The pic illustrates it well.  Would some be more accurate for certain ethnicities over the other, or is the difference strictly for personal preference?

Dang!  I wanted to do it, but I just saw the email a day late (13th).  Didn't try it as money is tight now at the holidays.  I would have if I knew it would have worked.  Bummer.  :sad:

Quote - Short answer : NO.

Long answer:
IDL is the light we see in real life. It is what makes it possible for us to see things. If there would be no IDL in real life, the world would be like in space; Black or white.

IDL is not a switch you can click ON or OFF.

IDL "adds" light, diffused by the objects in the scene to the scene.

If you load a scene that was made with NO IDL and you click IDL to ON, you will have a way to bright scene. =>  You have to compensate older scenes by reducing the number of lights or reducing the intensity of the lights.

For outdoor scenes:
Always use BB's sphere (with a picture on it) and a single Infinite light set at intensity 65%. That is ALL you will ever need for an outside scene. There is only ONE sun out there (and that is our single Infinite light). All the other light comes from the IDL and the sphere.

For indoor scenes:
"Be" light, 'think" light. Where is the actual light source? Or where are the actual light sources? And work with reduced intensity's on the light bulbs.

Last: Do yourself a favor.
When you choose In Direct Light (as you should to simulate real world conditions) Stay away from Image Based Lights. That is the old school style to fake IDL.

Using the real IDL and IBL combined, you are using the fake PLUS the real thing.
See where I am going? Too bright. Unless you compensate.

You have the "real thing" now: In Direct Light.

Combining IBL and IDL should only be used for special effects and artistic purposes.

 

Thanks.  I'm still learning Poser (do we ever stop learning?) and recall you and others mentioning that IBL was the old school way.

And what you mentioned is exactly what I'm doing - I'm basing my lighting off of where light should be coming from, and tweaking from there. 

For example, what I just purchased was TruForm's loft apartment.  For daytime with the very large windows, most light would be daylight through those windows, with only fill lighting from other lights.  So the fill lights get a low intensity, then IDL to take care of the rest.  And the tweaking to get it 'right'...

Quote - I did some mildly scientific measurements and have settled on .65 as being about right, but it's a rendering engine and you can manipulate things basically to avoid postwork and get a look you want - in which case absolute slavish physics/realism is not entirely justified.

Thanks BagginsBill!

Life stuff kept me away for a bit and I forgot about this thread until now.  It sounds similar to PP2012, IIRC you recommended the same or .6.

At full value, I did notice glowing areas like the glowing pits you mentioned, or (very) pink teeth were still here in 2014.  :sad:

Quote - > Quote - Not to mention MAJOR improvements to the morph brushes... new shrink and expand commands that make toiuching up fits a dream.

 

Goodness, yes. When I got pokethrough in the past and couldn't make a bodypart invisible to deal with it, it was fiddling with the morphs or pose because the morph brush took to long to do a good job. Now, it takes a few seconds the vast majority of the time.

Quoting Keith to emphasize how great the new morphing brushes are.  I've tried many of the fitting tools, often they'll jack up the meshes and I spend more time trying to fix that.  Fitting clothing that was driving me nuts in 2012, and I could spend a lot of time for a good fit.  Now, with the loosen/tighten to target I can fix up clothing fits in a few minutes.  Only regret was that I didn't upgrade sooner.

I didn't realize there was a "Copy Morphs From" command as well.  I'll have to try that.  Just the other day I noticed that a clothing item I bought lacked the morphs for character.  So far, my luck with the fitting room hasn't been that great.

Quote - An admirable effort, but the hype is almost over.

When will "new" creators start to understand ; "End User friendly"? "Error free"?

When will they understand that to beat the existing? The "new" has to be better?

When will they understand that polygon flow has to follow body muscle topology? => Probably the most important factor.

When will they learn that more (polygons) is not a subsitute to quality? => Probably the second most important factor.

That you have to make the figure "popular" bofore you can start to make money. => Management mistake.

If you want to make money but "forget" to make your figure popular first, forget end user friendly, and forget error free, you are : "Just the next one".

Nothing more, nothing less. => Management error.

A "hype" like this has a life span of 3 months.

We are getting close to the end.

Hope it was worth it.

For me, Dawn has been a slightly negative impact.  I've seen a few products that I liked but were Dawn only.  Fortunately for me, it appears most vendors seem to be more focused on V4.

Dawn has been a very meh release.  As Vilters points out, the polygon flow following muscle topology is a biggie.

IMHO, they've missed a few major things to be the revolutionary model they hyped it to be.

1 - Bending issues.  She's better than stock V4, but inferior to V4 with many of the fixes out for her. 

2 - Morphs.  Stock Dawn is attractive, but some of her character morphs are downright ugly.  It seems that the facial morphs support for her must not be that great.  Also a bit too manly.  There are many supermodel-attractive V4 characters out there, but no Dawn characters that even come close.

The market can come out with all the Dawn clothing & content that they want, but if those two primary issues aren't addressed, there's no point in me looking at it.

OK, I'm pretty sure I hit the wrong button and didn't render in background that time before.  Would be nice if they gave you the elapsed time rendering in the background as well.

Oops, I forgot to mention that. I do use the D3D render firefly script.  But it has only done it once. I don't recall it ever doing it for pp2012.

Check out this good thread on render settings, especially the posts from vilters.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=4109021&ebot_calc_page#message_4109021

Quote - Ugh! I dumped my render and sent it to the Queue Manager 13 hours ago. I just got back from work and it's only 18.7% done.

This is RIDICULOUS!

Ugh.  I hear ya.  I have a scene that is taking FOREVER to render for some reason too, and it doesn't make sense.  It rendered with normal times, then add 1 object, which I've used before and it is going slowwwww.  It's also not using much RAM despite having plenty available.

And after re-installing PP2014, my Queue Manager isn't working.  Emailed support, and re-installed in the recommended order.  That didn't work and I haven't gotten around to fixing it.

If you can afford a second computer (or if what you have is good enough to be your secondary, spring for new) you can offload jobs to the second/third what ever computer(s).