Ahh, ok. So i probably should be looking for images around 8000 x 2010 then, and for smaller ones, apply sharpening and dof techniques in photoshop, so i can keep the camera at 75mm. 35mm doesn't seem bad either, but anything below that, everything looks distorted as you mentioned.

Here's another quick test render where i applied a dof effect in photoshop. Took about 5 mins, but shows the potential of this indirect lighting with bagginbills dome. Not to mention, it also saves me ram since i don't have to add any props or scenes. Just replace the default m4 in your mind with any character, and it would be a decent render. I like how you only need one light and the dome does the rest, saves a lot of time with more complicated light setups where you have to render and re-render to get the right lighting and shadowing.

Is there any other tips or recommendations you got for using bagginbills dome?

Is there a place where i can find some decent free HDR or even LDR files for backgrounds and skies? And for LDR files, what image resolution and size should i be looking for?

And one other thing i noticed. Here is a test render with the focal at 30mm. Michael 4 looks good in here, but the background is a bit blurred. So i decreased the focal to 15mm, as shown on the second post. The background looks good here, but michael looks a bit weird at this focal. Is there a way to fix this?

I wonder if it would be better to just use a ground/scene props then to capture the shadows, and the dome on top with a sky planted on it, rather than what was mentioned on bagginbills site. I curious though how he got the shadows to appear on the last few renders here:

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere/environment-sphere-demo-renders

Looks like it was possibly done by rendering shadows separately then using photoshop.

Yeah, i noticed that with GC on, the lights have to be turned down quite a bit. But that grayish dull look sometimes persists and highlight definition on skins also sometimes move too much to one color, making it look very flat. I usually can correct this in photoshop with a softening technique, which brings all the interest back to the picture, but i wonder if maybe i'm overlooking something that i may be doing wrong. I'll look more into scenefixer, as i've been using it to set the values of my bump/specular/transparent maps back to 1, but even then, the dull, grayish look persists. It's a hard choice because there's things i like in GC, and things i like in non GC, and i may not always want to use ezskin2 on a particular figure.

I got another question.

I like using gamma correction in poser. I use the default of 2.20, and i either apply the script correctgamma or use scenefixer to apply 1.0 gamma to the necessary maps, like bump, transparency, etc. When i use ezskin2 on a model, i don't have this problem. However, on certain models where i don't use ezskin2 and this also happens within the scene itself, gamma correction sometimes gives it a dull, washed out appearance, which pretty much forces me to either switch to non-gc if it's terribly bad, or apply fixes in photoshop.  The uploaded image shows exactly what i mean.

Now i understand that it depend on the materials of certain characters, and certain characters aren't designed for GC, or linear as many have put it in here =P But this also occurs in the scenes itself. Is there ways i can avoid that dull, washed out look when using GC?

Just checking before i install this. Is there any problems with SR3.1 that i should be aware of? And any issues with any of the current scripts like Ezskin2, scenefixer, the genesis script, etc?

This is more related to postwork in photoshop CS5, but most artists tend to use a softening technique on their poser renders which almost always makes it look much better than the default render. Here's a few tutorials on those and other basic postwork techniques:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsEC2PN5aNk

http://www.oferz.com/Tutorials/BloomEffect/BloomEffect.html

After all the feedback i got from here and a few other galleries, it looks like i found the best brightness setting to render at for my CRT monitor. I set the brightness at 75%, which is in between what those with bright LCD's and dark LCD's would see. Thanks for all the help and extra tips i got along the way. You guys are awesome =) Now i'm off to read artbee's tutorials that he posted earlier in this thread ^_^

moriador: Yeah, i'm gonna use the lcd monitor at my house. I generally got the range on my crt though that almost replicates what i see on the lcd monitor. I pump my brightness up to around 75-80%. 85-90% is what a very, very bright monitor would show, and 60-75% will give me idea of what people with darker monitors will see. I used to have mine at 50%, which was default so i didn't think it was gonna be a problem, but apparently it was =P

LaurieA: Hmm, i'm gonna have to look into them then. A lot of my friends are telling me the same thing, and the other lcd monitor at my house is a much older one. To me, display wise the CRT looks just as good as the LCD, but takes up like 60% of my desk =P 

moriador: Yeah, my friend's monitor was one of the older ones, and when i was looking at 3d art on it, not only was everything too bright, but there was like a dull gray to the pictures, like the gamma was set too high. This was on default settings. The background of this forum was a very light gray too.

But there definitely was a problem on my end. When i did that werewolf render, at least 95% told me it was washed out, but i wasn't noticing it because my monitor is much darker than most LCD's. The other 5% told me they turned their brightness down a lot because it gave them headaches or hurt the eyes. After all the help here though, and using comparisons on other people's LCD's with my CRT, i think i've gotten pretty close to what i should be seeing, which involved me increasing my brightness from my video card settings by 25-30%. This was particularly problematic in the brightness of colors. Like in picture A i posted. On my monitor it was a dark orange hue on his face that looked really nice. But everyone was telling me it looked tan or light orange. Which still looked nice on the LCD, but wasn't what i intended.

JohnDoe641: What's up fellow competitive gamer =) I also used to tournament, but in fighting games. Got some tournament wins on games like tekken tag 1 and marvel vs capcom 2 =P But back in those days everything was on CRT and arcade, so input lag wasn't a big issue like on HDTV's. I still play occasionally and know exactly what you mean though. Input lag can really mess up your game where timing is important. I'll have to check out that LCD monitor. But i'm probably gonna ride this CRT out till it dies, since it's still in great condition and i pretty much got it close to what LCD's are seeing (at least i hope i did =P) The viewing angle and input lag are probably the biggest factors on what type of LCD i'll get (i also play some pc games). You know of any other cheaper LCD's or monitors with great viewing angles and no noticeable input lag?

DustRider: Yeah its cool. I pretty much got enough info to set my monitor at the proper brightness settings. I guess i should just loosen up a bit and accept that not everyone is gonna see what i intend. But for me, the problem was worse since my monitor was too dark. I wasn't seeing faulty things in my renders, like a bad background that wasn't showing or a washed up character. 

randym77: That's one thing that bugs me too. Too much contrast and it ends up looking too dark or saturated. Too little and it's dull and washed out. I think checking your render after you postwork it at darker and lighter brightness, then taking a middle ground is the safest bet. If you're doing it as a hobby though, nothing serious, then i think it doesn't matter as much. But it can be annoying for those who sell prints or do it professionally, and need the perfect settings.

Thanks for the help and tips guys. Yeah, most of the pictures are from either old renders or very fast test renders, which is why most of them are missing shadows, etc. But i needed them as brightness tests to see where i need to set the level of brightness on my monitor to match those of lcd's, which seem to be much brighter. I need to see what you guys are seeing before i can do any lighting fixes =P

My video card comes with a brightness/contrast control. My monitor is default at 100% brightness/contrast, which is still darker than most modern day lcd's, and after calibration it says to reduce it to 90%. So i'm using the sliders that come with my video card. I have those set at 75-80% brightness and the contrast set at 50%, and this seems to reproduce exactly what i see on a friends lcd, and is in line with all your comments. Like if you said it had too much contrast, i saw that now, or if an image was washed out, i could see it, whereas i couldn't before. Is this brightness/contrast setting good enough? Keep in mind i'm doing this mostly as a hobby, not going for professional looks or perfection. I just want to produce decent images. But at this setting, it's slightly darker than the brightest lcd's, but lighter than darker monitors. I needed to find a middle ground so the renders will look decent for those with bright monitors and dark ones.

vilters: I was testing out bagginbills enviroment dome before. I set an HDR image in the dome, and one infinite light, and it comes out nice, but it doesn't get a shadow on the ground, because the background is the full image. Is there a way i can use a scene of props with a ground/maybe some walls, trees, etc along with bagginbills dome without the HDR picture itself taking the whole background? And do i always have to decrease the Focal length of the camera to make the image clearer? I'm still new to using his dome.

JoePublic: Yeah! I'm also noticing that. A lot of 3d renders these days are very dark, but i think that's because some modern LCD's are extremely bright at default. My brothers LCD is defaulted so bright that the background of this forum is a light-gray, and half of the pictures look like their gamma is too high. From what you told me, it looks like you got a darker monitor, since C and G were too dark and E looked fine. This is really useful because i need to find a brightness in between those with darker monitors, and those with very bright ones, so it looks decent for everyone. Thanks for the tips!

Keep them coming guys. I'm getting a pretty good idea of where i need to set my brightness.

lesbentley: Thank you. I see the exact same things with my brightness increased by 20%. So far it looks like increasing my brightness by 20%-30% will bring my monitor in line with everyone elses. 

On D, does he look more red or more whitish to you? He's supposed to be a red demon orc with a bit of white added, but not too much white.

Miss Nancy: Yeah, i know there's about 100 reasons to have an lcd over a crt =P But when gaming or watching a movie,  i tend to lean back on my chair a lot looking upwards, and on an lcd, when you look at an angle it looks really bad. 

Thanks for the info. Most of these were very old portions of renders i did when i was completely new, or fast test renders. I'm just using them to check where my brightness needs to be at. 

aRtBee: Thanks! From what you told me, it looks like i have to increase my brightess by around 30%, and everything you said is what i'm seeing now. Except for D. Did you mean to say far too white? Because he gets a bit whiter when i increase my brightness.

DreamlandModels: I'll check it out, thanks.

Keep the responses coming guys, especially those of you with darker monitors. I need to find a good middle ground to where renders will look good on both light and dark monitors. Some of them had intentionally bad lighting or adjustments, so i can tell if i'm seeing the same things as everyone else.