So generally if an older model is not looking right with GC, i should just turn it off?

Also, do those 2 images look washed out or too bright? Or do they look fine on your monitor?

I've only been using poser for a short while, so i got no idea what the "Diffuse Convolution" is. But generally, a higher pixel IBL was lagging up the material room for me. Turning it down to 100 got rid of the lag, even at 500 there was noticeable lag. But i'll be sure to keep it lower now that i learned high pixels is useless ;)

The first image with the blue/gold highlights is done with postwork, with increased contrast and the "bloom effect"

This image here with the white highlights has no postwork.

willyb53 and raven: Ahh ok, found it. Thanks for the info guys ^_^

Snarlygribbly: Ohh, i think this was the problem they were having in the other forum. Now it all makes sense. I guess i'll just avoid those textures that have the same image map in both the diffuse and displacement.

Ahhhh, ok that makes a lot more sense now. When i read the posts in the other forum, i thought they were talking about the 2.20 gamma in the render settings. So let me see if i understand this completely =P I can checkmark the 2.20 gamma correction in the render settings, but i have to make sure that the gamma correction setting for the displacement maps is set to 1.0. And this can be done in the material room manually or with that script right?

What is that script called to change the gamma correction for the displacement maps? And how do i load these displacement maps onto M4? Do i have to manually load the displacement maps for each body part or does Semidieu's script do that automatically for me?

Darkedge: I'm a bit confused now. What are they talking about in post 6, 31, and 32?

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?40908-M4-Displacement-Not-only-for-DAZ-Studio

In post 6, he said he had gamma correction in render settings witched on, and that gave him bad results with the m4 displacement maps.

WandW: Yeah i checked out that thread, but it looks like gamma correction conflicts with it. It says you have to change the gc on the image maps to get it to work. I'm not sure if that's what i want, since i tend to use gc for most of my renders.

LaurieA: Yeah im gonna try that next. I used to ignore ezskin2, but when i finally stopped being lazy and grabbed it, i tried it out on a freak 4 character. It turned a dull boring render into a great one with the press of a button, and that was using default poser lighting. I was amazed how it not only made the skin look so much better, but made it look good under crap lighting! And the render times did not increase much at all. It seems to do well with human skin, but it doesn't show much difference in a lot of the fantasy type characters like this lizard model i got. 

LaurieA: Yeah i tried ezskin 2 on it. The specular map still makes it look not so good. So i'm guessing it's an issue with the models specular maps.

moriador: I'd probably just fix it with photoshop =P

I was gonna put this in my 2nd post, but i created another one since i think it warrants more attention. This issue persists on both poser pro 2012 SR1 and SR3 from what i can tell. I created a diffuse IBL light and attached an LDR .jpg image to it. I put 2800 in the image resolution to match the file and went about my work. I started noticing that when i went into the material room, it took forever to load and change any setting. After fiddling around, i thought maybe it was due to me running SR3 in a sandbox or using ezskin2. I finally figured out that having a high image resolution in my diffuse IBL significantly increased my material room access times. I lowered it, and this returned everything to normal. I also found out that this was a poser issue. Is there any fix for this other than lowering my resolution until i'm ready to render?

Ghostofmacbeth: Oh wow, aren't you the creator of the war orc model? Yeah that might explain it then. My min shading rate is at .1 when i render at the highest quality. Would you recommend i just scrap the specular map and try using highlights without it? 

Very nice model btw =) The reason i'm persistent on figuring out this problem is because the war orc model imo is probably one of the best orc models out there period. It's just the specularity with gamma correction on that's giving me the problems.

To all those about the IBL vs IDL: Dunno, i like the results of indirect lighting a lot, but diffuse IBL's work very well too. I still use simple spotlights/infinite lights with no raytracing, and with proper postwork in photoshop it still can look just as good if done properly. The best results i seen was combining IDL with IBL/spotlights/infinites/points. It's more of a preference and dependent on what you want to do.

bagginsbill: Yeah, i'm practicing lighting right now and trying out different lighting techniques. I notice that IDL brightens up a scene more in comparison to just using IBL. The drawback i've encountered, is that some areas with IDL were darker unless you turn up the bounces to catch those closed areas (like under a table or body), which leads to a huge increase in render time. However IBL with an HDR file does this with significantly lower render time but with similar results. So far i pretty much like all lighting techniques (probably because the majority of my work is in photoshop). On that realistic render in your second image on the 2nd page, what's your lighting setup? It says you have IDL enabled, but what about other lights and are you using a dome for that or no since it's inside the house?

Primorge: It depends on what you're doing and what kind of comp you're running. I generally do this as a hobby, so most of my images are in the 900-1200 resolution range. I'm running on 32-bit xp with a 3.2 ghz tri-core with 4 gigs of ram (rendering in a separate process to get more use on a 32-bit system) and generally indirect lighting renders very fast. If you use the script though for advanced settings and increase them a lot, you'll have very large render times though.

Ok, a day later (i took a long break lol), i did a few experiments with the warorc skin. I'm starting to suspect its just the skin itself that's not very good with specularity, and i'm guessing it's the specular map causing the problems. I did one test where i turned up the intensities of the lights and changed the specular color to pure white, and while this did bring out the highlights, they looked very splotchy/odd, especially in the chest area.

Then i applied ezskin 2 to the warorc skin. What i noticed is that it turned my specular color back to black, and turned down the specularity to 0 :X This hasn't happened with many of my other models i own.

So perhaps the war orc model was not designed with gamma correction in mind, or the specular map is a bit weird compared to most other specular maps. One thing i noticed is that the default war orc skin specular map is plugged into BOTH the specular color and specular strength in the advanced settings, something which i don't see in most of my other models.

Maybe i should just scrap the specular map?

basicwiz: Ohhhh, ok. So as long as there is something to reflect light rays, then indirect lighting will work. And i'm guessing for outside then the dome is used since there usually isn't enough things to reflect lights. Thanks for all your help :)

I'm gonna take a little break and try out a few things with that war orc model. I raised the specularity but it looks a bit blotchy. I'm starting to suspect either the skin itself or the specular maps is causing this.

moriador: Ahh cool. My main problem is that whenever i try to use the sky dome, the sky material is either too small, or i have to drastically reduce the focal length of my main camera, otherwise the sky will look too blurry. Is there a particular sky map either HDR or equirectangular that you recommend i use for my domes? And is there a way around to having to reduce my focal length so low?

basicwiz: Will IDL still work for indoor scenes that are completely inclosed? Or do i have to open one side? And do i still have to use a dome for indoor scenes? And what does setting the lights to inverse square falloff do? Sorry for all these questions. I'm still a bit new to this, and trying to learn as much as i can about lighting.