I was typing my post at the same time as you were typing your second one there!

I am happy enough to accept your point of view, but I was/am speaking as a lighting designer, and this whole thread started as a lighting question. Under those parameters, the difference between silhouette and shadow are easily defined.

Defininition 3) above is closest to what I would call a real world silhouette, as in made in real life with real 3d objects.

So, it could be the outline of a ship at sea against the brightness of the sky behind it, or really any other situation whereby a figure or object is placed in front of a backround that is substantially brighter than itself.

I would knock out a quick render to illustrate, but I am about to jump on a plane and head off to do a gig and will be away from Poser for three weeks.

Ditto in reference to the striping on the poser square, but you try lighting it directly and rendering it and you'll soon a situation where it'll look ghastly! :)

Looks like Neb is on the way to getting want he is after.

I still maintain that this is strictly a shadow, and not a silhouette, but its all good.

As for the Poser square, it drives me nuts with that striping effect, and more recently I found the cube did something similar as well in one project I was doing.

CaptainJack

Your experiment brough back memories of the Dark Sucker Theory.

http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/science/darksucker.html

:)

Providing backlighting only to a figure can indeed make a silhouette, but you will get some highlights on the curves of the body etc, and of course any hair or clothes. You might want that, for the moulding and shaping it performs.

However, if you want the hard almost 2D effect, then you will have to provide a background, strongly light that, and leave the figure dark.

Experiment with relative distance of the background to the figure, and where you place the lights. Spolights will be best as they throw the light only one way.

So, from back to front:

A background, some lights for the background only, the figure, and then the camera.

As for the "real world way" to do a silhouette, well the above is it. The idea of having a sheet between the camera and the figure is not silhouette, it is shadow.

Trust me, in the "real world" I am a lighting designer... ;)

Volumetric lighting is what you need for that air-haze, smoky/foggy atmosphere look. With volumetrics that will give you those dark shadows in the haze where the figure "cuts" the light.

You do need a background prop behind the lights and figures though for volumetric to work. See my Tickets Please render for an example where I let that background go dark so it did not show.

If you just want a silhouette that's another thing, sorry I don't watch Bond movies so cannot relate to your example! :)

Hi all,

I found exactly the same bug in Poser 7 here, ie do a quick test render and try to save as a jpg.

First, they have changed the dialog box so you get to choose the quality in a separate box now, and they don't bother telling you which is the good and bad end (not that I need telling but all the same... :) )

Also, no matter what setting you choose, all jpgs are indeed coming out at low quality. A TIFF looks fine though.

What I did then was to go back to Poser 6 just to make sure I was not just getting something wrong. I opened the last scene I had done in 6, and before I actualy did a render, I clicked on the render tab, and there was my Poser 7 pic!

I did the render, made sure I was right about being able to change quality, and then when I dragged the slider over, my new P7 pic was still there in the render stack!

How, I have no idea, I accepted default folders for everything, I have versions 5, 6 and 7 on this machine, and 5 & 6 never interacted at all.

Anyway, this was late last night, so I gave up trying to figure it out and I am pleased to see this thread to bounce it around.

I might be able to use the Ghastly one as to be honest it is just a joke kinda thing and if it does not look too accurate it is not going to matter. I dont have the older Vicky but I will play around a bit and see if this is feasible. Many thanks.

I saw the upgrade option at Daz but I did not join PC till the beginning of this year, and the skeleton was not in the bonus pack. I didn't really get into Poser properly until tail end of 2004. So, sounds like all those options would work, so I better think a little more before spending my cash. Many thanks...

That is probably right, in so far as the base of Dystopia appears to have thickness. I was really hoping to use that viewpoint, would there be a workaround I can use? Can I mess with Dystopia in order to fix it for this picture? On another note, richardson mentions shadowcams. I have never really used those at all, and trying to find them in the Poser manual was not a success in the short time I had. Is there something online about those? Many thanks...

I had indeed made sure the GROUND was invisible, and I certainly thought the camera was not sunk into geometry. If I move the camera slightly, the failed area does indeed move around. I find that if I render it with the Poser 4 engine it renders as expected, but not with Firefly.

Well, hither had defaulted to 0.048.. and thinking about it, I bet I was just picking at ideas to mention that. No, I had not looked through my shadowcams but I did just now.. nothing looks wrong. I don't think that edge is a shadow anyway. Wag away.. I am grateful for the help. :)

OK... Actually I found to select it from the Main one ( ie the one on the left of the two ) made it work... Got it now.. ~S~

The "Save previous render" thing is causing me grief. I find the one I want, and when I click the "tear-off" icon it brings up the latest render... ugh...