Has anyone with a copy of Poser 6 noticed whether point lights are included with this release? It'd be nice not having to fake point lights with a bunch of spots anymore...

Yes, there are real point lights in P6. No more 'spot clusters', unless of course you wanted to use those for some reason.

What exactly is a point light?

I would like to know what they are, too. Are they like the lightwave point lights (I always thought that they are mainly useless.)?

I don't know if they are like Lightwave point lights, but certainly, they aren't useless. ;-)

A point light (also called an omni light or area light in some software) is basically a light which can cast illumination in a 360 degree radius. Unlike spotlights, which cast light only up to 180 degrees directionally, they can cast it in all directions from a center point. Like a lightbulb. They go by different names in different apps sometimes as I indicated above, but they all pretty much do the same thing, and are very useful.

Message edited on: 03/30/2005 21:10

Here's the same scene, rendered with a single point light, and then rendered using the new Ambient Occlusion lighting. Very different looks, but both have strong points.

Thanks for the info, maxxxmodelz! :) That does sound useful.

Here's an image (sorry it's dark, but that was intentional) with the spots parented to a small sphere. There are no other lights in the scene and background shows between the wall cracks, but hey, it was a test render ;-)

Tempus Fugit, while it looks most impressive combined with Image Based Lighting, Ambient Occlusion can be used with any light style. So if you want, you can use Ambient Occlusion in the scene lit by a point light only, too.

Whoooeeee!! That's good news! Here's another question: can the point lights be made visible in the image? Kind of like a glowing ball...

Tempus, AO seems to be doing strange things to the hair. Like it's washed out and poorly resolved, compared to the point light render.

"Whoooeeee!! That's good news! Here's another question: can the point lights be made visible in the image? Kind of like a glowing ball..." Lights are not visible in Poser, and unfortunately it's true for the point light as well. However, you can use the point light to "fake" a glowing ball. Turn up the ball's ambient value all the way, set it to whatever color you want, then place a point light inside and turn off "cast shadows" for the ball and disable shadows for the light.

"Tempus, AO seems to be doing strange things to the hair. Like it's washed out and poorly resolved, compared to the point light render.

If I understand what you're trying to say correctly, I don't think it has as much to do with AO as it does IBL. IBL doesn't give objects any specularity, but P6 does have a "specular only" light option now which you can use to insert extra highlights when using IBL. You can also enable shadows on a 'specular only' light for even more shadow depth. I think that would solve the problem with the hair.

However, many hair textures have their own "specularity" painted or baked into the color texture, and this doesn't really look that good with IBL, because, often times, the specularity that's baked into the texture doesn't match the lighting in the scene. With IBL, it's probably best to use a hair texture with just a color texture and no highlights, and create actual specular highlights from the scene lights and material adjustments. Message edited on: 03/31/2005 01:20

When I used IBL, all of the textures with reflections rendered black, without reflecting anything, so I experimented with some of the settings. Those renders are pretty much right out of the box, so I'm hoping to really lean on it today and learn a lot more about the new lighting. That's the most exciting part of the program for me.