One of the problems with the default Poser 4 light set is it tends to make figures look a bit muddy. I want to approximate the type of lighting found in a photographers studio - one that fills in strong shadows and make colors look bright and vibrant.

Can anyone suggest a ready made Light Set that will achieve this look WITHOUT adding so many lights that the rendering to slow to a crawl. I only have a 800MHZ cpu, so I don't want to add to many fill lights.

Attached Link: http://arcana.daz3d.com/tutorials/sr/sr01/index.html

Have you looked at this tutorial by Sydd Raven? It is more do it yourself but it takes three lights and the result seems like what you are looking for.

Too many lights wash Poser's render engine out, so your cpu is not a concern. Try to keep the Intercardinal and Cardinal directions and Global Illumination in mind when you set your lights up. It is also very helpfull to use only Shades(From black to gray to white) in your lights. These, in Poser , allow for the actual color of textures and object to show through. = )

I was just thinking, since I am using the DAZ Highlight/Contour maps for V3, I probably do not need to be as concerned with light placement. Many of the desired lighting effects are already incorporated into the maps. I just need a way to light the figures brightly and evenly.

A light set that simulates a bright overcast day would probably be ideal. That way I would not have to keep repositioning the lights every time I make a change in the placement of one of the figures.

Try setting up 3 omni lights (ie. not spotlights), and set the color of all 3 to RGB 255/240/230. This gives a warm skin tone to your figures. Set the map size to 1024 for all 3. Set light 1 in a frontal position, slightly higher than the face and about 20 degrees to the right, at 100% or 110% intensity. It should be at about 1 1/2 body lengths from the figure. Set shadow size to around 0.500 - 0.700. Set the other 2 to about 60/70% intensity, with shadow size at 0.300 - 0.500 and position light 2 at hip height, slightly to the left and at the same distance as light 1. Light 3 should be on the far left, at about twice the distance of the other 2. This is not overcast lighting, but is quite soft and can be pretty versatile if you adjust the different intensities. Should take you all of 5 minutes to do. mac

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=5821

Blackhearted's light set has awesome 'globalized' set ups that makes the figures look great. The Soft White and Dead On are my favorite.

Here are a couple of images from my gallery that use the Dead On lighting -
Image 1
Image 2

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but it's the light set I'm happiest with at the moment.

Attached Link: http://www.ronstuff.com/downloads/RS-ModelingLights.zip

Here is a light set that I created to accomplish exactly what classic is requesting. I spent more than 10 years as a professional lighting designer for film and television, and wanted something similar to basic studio lighting for Poser (well, as close as Poser can come to it). I designed the set as a TOOL for texture makers and modelers to use while creating their products, because it renders fast, AND realistically. It is NOT mood lighting or atmosphere lighting (which you can find all around the place here). It is SIMPLE lighting with all the basic elements, and it is CALIBRATED to render whites as white with their highlights as bright as possible without burning (and therefore ALL colors are rendered faithfully). The set is designed to illuminate the scene from the FRONT - if you have rotated the camera toward the side or rear, the light will fall off. Of course you can rotate the light set to illuminate from any side. Download the set at the link above - give it a try and let me know what you think. The lights work with ALL versions of Poser and includes .rsrs and .pngs. Happy rendering, Ron

Daz did a freebie of thier complex globals, which I subsequently bought to full pack of, but even so, it's not particullarly quick, (unless you have a quick machine :) So I'd probably still go for the Blackhearted set, which even has a GI set for fast rendereing, as well as a far more complex one with about 30 odd lights. Comes highly reccomended. Though you may still be able to find a "light dome" by Zrincx in free stuff if you want something for nothin' :) later jb

Thanks Ronstuff, I'll be trying this! Baz

Thanks Ronstuff they're really nice. I appreciate them.

Looks good, ronstuff. I work as a fashion photographer, so lighting is important to me. To tell the truth, I'd never use the set-up I described above in my work, since I very rarely use soft light. I prefer lighting that adds something to the picture. My favorite lighting is basically a copy of late afternoon sunlight, low, warm and direct. Or 3 lights in a tight triangle, with the camera smack in the middle, kind of like a ringlight effect. Of course, poser is a different story, unfortunately. You can't replicate a lot of things in it. Anyway, at the risk of repeating myself, I still think the 3 ESSENTIAL elements of poser lighting are map size, shadow and color. Master those and you're well on the way. mac

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1014107

Everybody here is welcome to the post I began at the attached link. As you can see Ockham and I have started a whole series of Globally Illuminated Light sets and Pythons to control them. I spent a couple weeks putting all these set's together and have hammered out a contract with ockham for a copyright purchase of his pythons, but I keep coming back around to the fundemental problem of Poser choking on more than a small handful of lights in a set. You can notice this in the images I posted there. As you scroll down they become more and more brushed, and each took more and more time to get through photoshop. Where, as you can see for this picture, done after that thread, just 4 infinite lights and 1 spot go a very long way with M2's M2HeadM texture.

The images in that post were done with all of M2 materials set to middle gray, and with middle gray mats. No reflection maps were added. I realize some reflection maps may help there, but if its a case of needing new materials for each light set ,then I prefer to develop mats that would work for figures that are actually textured as well as the gray demo models.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to clear this washing effect I'm refering to, I'd really appreciate it. The really sad part is that many lights ALWAYS washes textures out, even when each light is set to a very very low level, like exactly what would be reflected form a very few more intense lights!

= )