In a weird way, it's heartening to read this thread.
At least I know it's not just me who finds it odd - and discouraging - to see DAZ/Genesis products dominating the space on Poser's home turf.
I'd love to jump into Poser, and upgrade to 13, but I don't know if it's worthwhile since it seems this site is more favorable to DAZ than its own product.  And it makes me question how "strong" Poser is overall.

If I'm going to use DAZ products, I'll just stick to their site and their software. I'm using this site 'cause I want to jump more into Poser and dig its depths. I don't want to use DAZ products.

Just would be nice to come here and see Poser as front-and-center as DAZ products are on their site.

Would boost my confidence in putting the time into learning and improving with Poser itself for sure.

So, I went through and found that the tiara was set to self-illuminating. On further inspection, I found that literally everything in the scene was set to self-illuminating, including Victoria 4. Why, I don't know, but I didn't set them that way myself.

Anyways... Disabling that still didn't result in shadows. I did about a dozen different renders, with the light positioned in different locations, with and without IBL, etc. Nothing was working. So I'm wondering if maybe it's just something flawed in how the item was created?

In any case, I won't be using that for close-up renders. It looks like I did a sloppy job of Photoshopping it into the image and forgot to create a drop shadow.

Beyond that, I'm at a loss.

So, question about the IBL in Poser.

I notice there's 3 categories... 'Image Based Lighting' 'IBL Ambient Occlusion' HDRVFX'

So, I'm guessing 'IBL Ambient Occlusion' is just IBL with AO also calculated. Same goes for the HDRFVX options. I'm just wondering if there's a reason to use one or the other in a given situation?

Also, is there a way to show the IBL in the background of the render? Couldn't find anything on that.

Also, I've been in the "afraid to touch anything" phase for a bit, but I'm slowly getting out of it. Decided to play with the lighting and, yeah. Definitely a fan. What an intuitive way to control and position lights.

Thanks!

Rhia474 posted at 7:44AM Mon, 14 June 2021 - #4421273

Delete the default lights. Delete the Construct. Add an environment sphere, add a HDRI on it, add a single infinite light, render.

Working through that list, but it's gonna take some time lol. I have to google how to do half that stuff xD. I'll post a render once I figure it out.

randym77 posted at 7:19AM Mon, 14 June 2021 - #4421262

He joined in 2020. That kind of makes it hard for him to have participated in "much older" threads.

It sounds like he started with DAZ Studio, but is new to Poser.

I think you're confusing him with someone else.

Was it only 2020? I actually thought it was longer lol.

Rhia474 posted at 9:26PM Sun, 13 June 2021 - #4421214

Figure--> Skinning Method-->Poser Unimesh...then adjust Subdivision ion the Properties tab of the figure to 1. Render. It may come out all black. If it does, you can either:

1. Use EZSkin in Poser 11, save the adjusted figure materials to your library and render in Poser 12
2. If you have SkinEdit for Poser 12, use that to convert the skin.
3. If you understand nodes, you can manually futz in the Material Room to fix proper Superfly shaders onto your figure. There are several threads on the Poser 12 forum that deal with this.

I don't have either of those shader utilities, but after looking at the SkinEdit on YT, I'll definitely be picking that up. That is a cool piece of software. Useful, even beyond converting the shaders.

Also thank you for the tip about the free eyes, Rhia! I've snagged 'em and already put them to use.

In the meantime, I did a couple test renders of a WIP character I'm working on (my first with Poser, woot). One with Superfly, one with Firefly. No lighting setup or anything. Everything default. Superfly loses the specularity and SSS, but I can see the skin details a bit better. I think the eyes are actually a bit too wet/shiny looking in the Firefly version by default. Still, the Superfly version doesn't too bad, considering the shaders aren't converted. I also just noticed there's no shadow behind the headband/tiara in the Firefly version. That's interesting.

I'm sure the veterans can look at each and know exactly what's going on and why. I only recognize the superficial stuff at this point. In any case, this is fun :)

So, haven't tried the unimesh process for Superfly, yet. I did try injecting the morphs++. And I looked for additional parameters. No dice on both. So, the body and cleavage just don't seem to want to work. I'm sure there's something to do to fix it. I'm completely new with Poser, though, so it's beyond me!

Edit: Okay, I converted to Unimesh and that fixed the 'seams' thing. I didn't get the eyes to render correctly, though. I don't feel confident enough with Poser yet to muck with materials. So.. I'll return to that sometime later :)

Great suggestions and questions, all. Thanks!

I don't know if the effort is worth it, since I'm pretty happy with how Firefly renders out the figure. But I might go ahead and make the conversion to unimesh and superfly anyway, just for the learning/practice.

I didn't inject the V4 morphs. I will give that a shot!

Lots to wrap my head around, but I'm enjoying the process. Poser's been a lot of fun to learn so far.

Thanks again

Oh! I actually do have a question still! I was so thrown by the rendering quality difference that I forgot the other thing I wanted to ask...

When I'm applying the morphs to V4, only the head is applying. The body and cleavage options aren't changing the shape at all. I'm applying all by double-clicking.

What might be the reason for that?

Thanks!

Yeah!

I did install 2.04, and yeah, it was different alright.

Interestingly, 2.03 - the version included with the book - isn't in the downloads on blender.org.

Nice! I'll be sure to follow Hivewire's products, too, then. I was going through all of the content included with Poser12 and saw theirs included.

So, Victoria/Michael 4, LaFemme and LaHomme and Dawn and Dusk seems to give lots of options to work with. And it's easier to keep track of, for me anyway. Keeping track of DAZ's figures and compatibility got really confusing for me. I'm still very much learning, but Poser's layout is clicking with me better than DS as well. At least so far. Both big reasons I'm switching to Poser.

randym77 posted at 6:26AM Thu, 03 June 2021 - #4420388

V4 is a Poser thing. ?

DAZ originally made content for Poser. Their figures were widely used by Poser users - much more than the figures that come with Poser.

Eventually, DAZ created DAZ Studio, so they wouldn't be dependent on Poser. (TBH, there was some doubt about Poser's survival at times.) They were fairly compatible at first, but now the programs have diverged so much they're not that compatible any more.

A lot of Poser users still use V4, because it's not easy to get DAZ's newer figures into Poser. Poser has its own newer figures, like La Femme, but after all these years, there's a TON of content for V4, it's relatively cheap compared to newer stuff, and so a lot of people still use V4.

There's also mods like Sasha-16, which adds weight maps to V4 and improves her posing.

Ahhh okay. I thought V4 was made by the folks who originally made Poser and Genesis is where DAZ came in. Okay! Timeline fixed :p.

Yeah, there's a ton of great stuff for V4, which is why I've decided to focus on that. LaFemme looks good, but not as much support. And I know the more recent Genesis figures aren't compatible. Maybe there's something that can make them work, I don't know Poser's compatibility with different figures, yet.

I've seen Dawn and Dusk, too. I think those are somewhat newer? Or am I wrong?

In any case, that gives me a strong starting point.

Thanks!

Ahhh okay.

For some reason I thought Victoria 4 was a Poser thing.

Okay! I guess I'll work through installing them manually, then.

Thanks for the info!

I've given Hexagon a go several times, too. Similar reason to Silo. More focused on modeling, cleaner interface, etc. But I had problems with stability. Too many random CTDs during very basic, typical use.

I thought maybe Daz was going to be really going heavy to start developing it again when they updated it to 64 bit, etc. But that seems to have stalled off again. They haven't touched Carrara in who-knows-how-long, either.

I don't understand why companies buy these programs just to sit on them and let them rot.

Anyway, I'm wondering if I can just customize my own setup of Blender to focus on Modeling, UV and Materials. With the tabbed workspaces, it shouldn't be difficult.

Lobo3433 posted at 10:24AM Fri, 26 February 2021 - #4413849

I think the UV tools in Silo drove me crazy they just weren't intuitive I mean no one likes doing UVs but in Blender UV mapping made sense and the tools just seemed more natural again nothing against Silo for the price it is not a bad modeler especially for beginners but once I really devoted the time to Blender going back is just a waste of time it is like hexagon which is the first modeler I cut my teeth on was great but once development stopped there were to many bugs trying to use it on Windows 7 and up

I think I'm just gonna stick it out with Blender.

I love the focused nature of Silo, and it's very clean, but it's kind of wonky to work with. I chalk that up to not being as familiar with it in part. But I don't like the "feel" of some of its tools.

So, yeah.. I think Blender is going to be the better way to go for me. Tons more resources for it, too.