Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler

Enjoying the Scene

El Mambo de las Madres

The May freebie was Nighty for La Femme 2. Maybe it was just a mix up and Backyard Living will be the July freebie. 

It's not entirely true that Poser lights can't project an image in SuperFly. Don't get too excited though... It handles coordinates in light shaders very differently than Firefly does.

Firefly light shaders map UV coordinates over the light's area, regardless of the light's type. That made applying textures and shaders to lights fairly intuitive. What you get in the preview is basically what you'd get from the light.

As far as I can tell, lights in SuperFly can only use world-space normal vectors.

That can be used to drive an EnvironmentTexture node and project an image. The downside is that light normals are stuck in world space, which means the texture map is stuck in place regardless of which why the light is pointed. Point a spot light up, it protects the top of the image; point it down and it projects the bottom. The middle of the image will stay in the exact same point on the wall.

The same setup can be used with a point light, only the light orientation has no effect at all. The image can be manually aimed with a vector Mapping node, though that's hardly convenient. And the orientation displayed in the texture node preview isn't what you'll get either. The actual output is flipped and rotated backwards. As for the other types of lights, they only give single normal value and are useless for image projection.

[My apologies for the weird display. I got a new monitor and Poser's UI scaling doesn't seem to work correctly...at all.]

While light shaders and textures in SuperFly are less practical than they were in Firefly, I just wanted to set the record straight in case someone might find the info useful in some way.

One case where I do find Superfly's quirky lights useful is protecting a light or shadow from a specific part of the environment map. Flip the Mapping vertically by setting the second Scale value to -1, then position and aim the light where the light/shadow in the image would be cast from. In my experience, this gives a more defined light/shadow projection than using an environment sphere by itself.

The sun is partially obscured by trees In the environment texture. However, the lighting is too defuse to get a defined shadow. To emphasize the shadows cast by the trees from above, I used the environment texture in the shader above with a spot light. I'd previously done the same effect in Firefly by fiddling with the image scale and offsets to get the shadow of the tree limbs, but I actually found doing it in SuperFly to be easier.

Not exactly easy, just easier.

ashleyb posted at 4:43 PM Wed, 27 December 2023 - #4479665

From what I've learned is that the product dress is no longer on this site or is from another store. The only place it could be is freestuff. I'm currently scouring the Freestuff area for it. I wish I could help more. But we are currently working on a project to categorize products better here on the site. So that you are able to find things like this easier. I will let you know if anything pops up in freestuff. 

From the look of it, it's made from two layers of dynamic cloth, which would have been more difficult to pose than usual.

Looking into this for yah!

I was a bit confused when the shadow catcher didn't work with ezdome. After fussing with it for awhile, I realized that it doesn't work the same way in Superfly "Cycles" as it does with Firefly at all. Instead of rendering as a transparent shadow on the prop surface, it's rendering the shadow over the "background" shader--whatever that happens to be.

While that works when using "background" as the sole background of the rendered image, that has a few issues of its own. The biggest drawback is that the "environment texture" node gets displayed as a regular image in the preview, so you get no sense of camera orientation relative to the background without rendering first. Using a background prop, such as the one with ezdome, doesn't have that problem. The preview will properly show the same orientation and perspective that you'll get in render, no random guessing required. 

That of course leaves me back were I started... I tried to work out if the two can be Frankensteined together, but the orientation between them was completely off. I came across a tutorial, of sorts, in the Poser manual that gave some pointers. It's in the section Other Root Node Types, under "BG Environment". Using a positive value for the rotation offset (0.000000, 1.570000, 0.000000) in the Mapping node does the trick. The only noticeable drawback is that the "shadow catcher" prop leaves a faint black outline.

Updated the shader set I'd used in my original FadedFashion promo. It's a lovely set that just needed a bit of polish to really make it shine.

https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/95316/fadeddesert-hd-shader-for-canyon-2

Sorry for the delays on this. Things have been kinda of chaotic...to say the least. He was originally made by adapting my La Femme girl, Fifi, to LHomme. Unfortunately, that also means he inherited a few of her issues. At the time, LHomme was also transitioning to a standalone figure and some things got lost in the shuffle.

The good news is that I've recently made progress on the issues with La Femme, as you may have noticed from the pics with my freebies. Once I get Félicie's aging morph settled, I'll work on transferring my setup to LHomme. At least that's the plan anyway.

Fifi's morph could do age 9 to 18, where as Félicie is proportioned on Maddie's age. I just need to handle the transition from her age up to 9 and incorporate her changes into the original Fifi morph to complete the age range. Yep, Félicie's new morph will go from around 5 all the way to 18! It's a little complicated... It suffices to say there are good reasons why few have managed anything close to that with Poser figures.

I don't know if I'll get as far with LHomme, age wise, but I had a good start last time.  What I'll learned from Félicie will help considerably. :D There there's still a practical limit on how far I can go though. I couldn't make Félicie much younger without considerable re-rigging to keep the joints from breaking. It's technically possible, but morph controlled joints and all that is beyond me.

As for the timeline, it's...soon. My schedule for Félicie has already slipped and lately I've been banging out freebies in hopes of at least placing in the contest. I'm still stuck on Poser 11 and really need to upgrade for testing and development. The only reason I got as far as 11 was because I won it in a contest.

Finished the second part

https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/95306/fadedfashion-tuttifrutti-denim-leather

Here's my first go at it. :D

https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/95292/fadedfashion-sodapop-denim-leather

jennblake posted at 8:04PM Sat, 03 October 2020 - #4400892

I did a group of these the day after the promotion and will be checking in a bit for any new requests that have come in. Gifting of those items is a manual process, I am working on them.

Thanks Jen!

kfox posted at 2:31PM Sat, 03 October 2020 - #4400886

I still haven't gotten my items - has anybody else?

Me neither. I never got an answer to my question either, so I just guessed.

jennblake posted at 2:03PM Wed, 30 September 2020 - #4400703

I will be processing all of the FREE items for this promotion today. Wanted to wait until the promotion was over and do them all at once. The response was good, so I will be working on those throughout the day today. Thank you all for participating!

I'd submit my request, but I need to know if the value is based on original, sale, or prime price.