I'm using Poser 4, no ProPack on an old computer with only 128MB of RAM, and have never had a single problem with these light sets. What you're experiencing with the lights are almost certainly not a bug inherent to the lights. I understand that you're frustrated, but you're making false accusations about a very fine product. 1. You might have seen that the ad copy (or maybe it's the readme, can't remember) clearly states that the loading the lights won't remove previously loaded lights. If you have ProPack, you can find Python scripts in FreeStuff here which will remove all lights quickly. Sorry, I don't know who the providers are, but a few searches should turn them up. If you don't have ProPack, try not to load the lights until everything else in your scene is set up. Load the lights last. You might want to individually delete the default lights, easy to find because they'll be labelled "Light 1," "Light 2," and "Light 3." This shouldn't really be necessary IMO, because a mere three lights which are "off" won't eat up much memory. However, it can't hurt. If you've loaded the Complex Lights after having tried other sets with numerous lights, you'll have to delete them manually, if indeed memory is an issue. 2. The freeze-up problem sounds familiar. That's a problem of Poser's, not DAZ'. It's related to RAM so far as I can tell. Try saving your .pz3 before you render. You might also want to use a small app that frees RAM up just before you render. I use MemMax for this, and it seems to help. Save the file, then run a RAM booster, then render. 3. There are any number of reasons why your render is coming out too brightly. Are you rendering with shadows turned on? It looks like maybe you're not. That's the first thing to check. If you are, I don't know... hard to say without more info. All I can say is that while nothing will come out looking exactly like the advertising pictures, my own experience is that the thumbnails included with this product depict the results of each set as accurately as anyone could expect. When I use "Studio 1," the results are very similar to Anton's render that you posted. Finally, if none of this or anyone else's responses here help, try contacting DAZ directly. They're as friendly as can be, and will probably refund your money if you really aren't satisfied with the product. Good luck, and keep trying. I don't mean to be harsh on you, but this isn't a buggy product. I find it to be indespensible.

Hunt down and get Bushi's python "reset lights" script - it's free, but the damned thing is worth a 747's weight in cash sometimes :) PS: What kind of computing hrosepower are we looking at? Sometimes a real heavy light set (esp. in Poser 5 - do you ahve 5 or 4?) will obliterate your machine during a render... /P

Info about my computer: Intel 850E chipset mainboard with Dual Channel support 2.8 Ghz CPU 1 Gbyte RamBus (1.6 ghz/64bits) 2 X 80 Gb Hard Driver 9500 ATI 128MB DDR w/dual monitor I can not complain single bit about my computer nor the render speed. (maybe later in future) Poser 5 with latest sp2 update (V. 5.0.2.268) I will rush to get phyton scripts thank you!! Waldoo

Set your windows virtual memory as high as it will let you. Poser uses virtual mem for its renders. I found that things that would not render in win98 now render in xp

YOu've got a lot of background crap running, how much memory it is using is not really important as WHAT memory it is using. Try disabling about 3,000 of those background programs while working with poser. Even better? Just get rid of them. -WTB

I probably don't know enough about this to even speak to it, but I know Poser 5 has some problems with the lights. I have XP Pro and P5 still freezes up consistently on some light sets and not others. As it happens I get rid of the lights that cause the problem. I don't have the DAZ lights, but do have EII lights. They work fine no matter what :) So do P5's default lights. My guess: P5 is the culprit...not the DAZ product or your 'puter :)

Have you tried putting the figure a bit farther back? Your character looks like it is closer than the others, so it may be a bit too close to the lights. I think I've heard that fixing problems with similar light sets. Cheers!

Any possibility (I don't have the set myself) that the lighting is set up for an adult figure or one with less skin specularity? The globe on the pillar in the first image seems to be reminiscent of the illumination on the child's head. Bill

Seems to be a Poser 5 issue. I experienced this myself with those same lights. I was using Darkworld's V3 textures, oblivion I think the name was. The texture has a reflection map on it, and once rendered, the whole body was nearly white. Rendering in P4, however, turned out the way it should have. I spent a few hours of tweaking and rendering, but couldn't find a good solution. And this isn't the only lightset to do this. Try Shademaster's "Poser Render Upgrade" in freestuff. It does the same thing. So no, it's not a DAZ issue. It's a P5 issue. Just wish there was a solution...

If penny is different from Vic then it won't be compatible in a scene together

Oh-one other thing. If you're finding that a light set is freezing up or crashing P5, load the light set, and re-save it to your library. Delete all the lights, and load your new, re-saved set, and it should be fine.

The crash thing is gone with "Reset lights" phyton script. Only one problem i have is the intensity of light. It's too bright than the advertised Daz3D "Studio1" picture. Waldoo

Now I'm curious.....since I'm a platinum member, I think I'm going to buy those lights and see what it does on my machine. I have Poser 5 SR-1 and XP as well. I took a look at DAZ, thinking they may have posted a comment about this item being compatible with Poser 4 and not guaranteed with Poser 5. On the contrary, in their product review for the Global lights 1, they specifically reference use in Poser 5. Here are two tips they provide for P5: 1. If using the Poser 5 raytracing renderers, select each light and set the Shadows to 'Ray Trace Shadows' in order to get the shadows to render and get rid of the glowing nostril syndrome. Save the updated light set to your library under a new name. 2. If changing lights frequently in Poser 5, not all the lights are replaced and they start to build up, eventually leaving you with a black scene. To fix this, bring up the Python Scripts window, click on one of the blank buttons (has three dots), then load the reset-lights.py file in Runtime:Python:poserScripts. Left-click on the reset-lights.py button and all lights will be deleted and then one light will be added. You already have a "kill lights" script, but you might want to try the first tip if you haven't already.

Daz3D advertised photo as shown in very first photo have P5 hair in it. Theres no instruction for Global Lights 2 to work with P5 or P4. Theres no comment about this item being compatible with Poser 4 and not guaranteed with Poser 5. If it is only for P4 then I've been misled in purchasing it. Daz3D said that the photo is rendered in P4. Poser 5 have P4 renderer engine in it. I followed your first tips and it still won't work. I am still looking for set of lights that looks like Daz3D's photo here or Lightwave renderer. I hope you guys will help me find it.

I think. it may be how tall penny is compared to the rest of the figures. The lights may be higher or lower for your render than the others in this thread. Penny is much smaller than victoria or Aiko. make sure you delete all the lights before loading the preset one. Also .. IT SOUNDS STUPID BUT>>> raise penny to a higher position than she is by default and see if that helps. Can't guarentee it will work. I am in the process of rebuilding my machine at the moment but it might help

I had a similar problem with some lights, not only global lighting, when the model is really smaller or taller than a P4 or Mil adult (for exemple the Mouse), so it may well be your case. :)

Waldo, grab ockhams lightpanel pyhton script & change the shadows to raytraced it will look 100% better, make sure you turn them on as well (the global lights look washed out or too bright without the raytraced shadows)

Post 20:- I think you'll find that isn't Poser 5 hair. It's a DAZ hairpeice for Poser(4). Bombshell or somesuch, IIRC.

ITs the renderer i want!!! I gotta try that!!

Ok, use that light panel python script to change all the lights to raytrace, then switch to FireFly Production. Only have Raytracing and Cast Shadows on. One question-in the material room, is Penny using the skin node? Or is that just straight texture map?

Actually, that skin node version doesn't look slightly better. It looks awful

Yes P5 is odd with the lights. I am puzzled that in the material room show all lights brighten on the texture map. Can you please send me pz3 with whole scene you used for "Depthmap vs. Ray Trace shadows" exprimental. I was thinking about switching figure to penny in the same scene to see if it still get the same result or not.

Please send pz3 file in Email: gcwebber@inreach.com

GraphicFox: the breasts do not stick through the top in ProPack because the clothing items are set up to use Crosstalk ( at least I heard the Bikini was done this way) - it has automatically took over the V3 settings. P5 has Crosstalk fixed and to get the clothing to fit V3's bodyshape you just select V3 - Body and go to Edit - copy. Then select the clothing item's body and go to Edit - paste and the settings will take over. This works fine with the Bikini and it works with the Active Wear as well :-).

the settings I use for final renders are : Firefly Renderer raytracing on ticked cast shadows ticked smooth polygons ticked minimum shading rate 0.5 maximum texture resolution 8192 pixel samples 6 bucket size 100 post filter size 2-3 post filter type gaussian everything else I leave as is or blank it takes a little longer but the reults are for me very nice :)

Waldo-Isn't it against DAZ and CL's EULA to pass along PZ3's? At any rate, it's too large. I'll swap them out and try it. Puntomaus-thanks for that tip. Wasn't something I knew about. Seems odd though, cause I didn't change the body settings at all. Just threw her in, and threw the top on. But I'll give that a shot. c1rcle-I'll try your settings as well. Post filter is something I've never messed around with.

You have to make sure that "Cast Shadows" is checked. The shadows from some lights counter the light coming from other lights somewhat. If "Cast Shadows" is not checked, everything will "glow"

Valandar, look at my post #31. All of those had shadows cast. The left 2 are P5, and the right one is ProPack. There must be some type of P5 lighting bug.

Another observation... There were two bugs regarding light falloff distances in P4 and ProPack. In ProPack, the light falloff distances were set to a maximum value of 1.0 when the file was saved, and any distances saved with greater values were reduced to 1.0 when the file was reloaded. In the second bug, the P4 renderer failed to compensate (ie. in the Viewport Transform) for falloff distances when the camera focal length was set to any value other than the default 38 mm, so illumination appeared different in display mode and renders when light falloffs were used in conjujunction with "non-standard" focal lengths. Even then the lighting falloffs had to be reset for each different camera angle. I don't believe these bugs were ever fixed in P4/PP, and I've never tested them in P5 using either renderer. Someone with the lightset should check to see if falloffs are in fact used. Bill

Sorry For "camera angle", read "focal length" in my last post. Bill

GraphicFoxx: yes it is against Daz to give anyone PZ3 because you had Vickie3 in it. What setting in material room did Vickie have that are different from Penny? (reflection, highlight, etc) Waldoo

Ca I see a shot of your rendered penny here pls