Hi CK.

Have you tried ray-traced shadows? They're even better. I'm not using the depth-mapped shadows much lately.

 Im trying to do this in Poser7 SR3 and when I try to raise my shadowcam I end up staring at nothing. everything but her heels are cut off. so I have no idea when im actually at her head or not.

Quote -  Im trying to do this in Poser7 SR3 and when I try to raise my shadowcam I end up staring at nothing. everything but her heels are cut off. so I have no idea when im actually at her head or not.

I don't know why that would be the case. It works fine in all versions of Poser. Are you moving the shadow cam using the parameter dials? If you change your preview to the shadow cam, and also select that camera in the parameters, and then move the dials slowly you should have no trouble tracking where the camera is going.

Remember, though that the camera is not in its true initial position until you do at least one render. You don't have to let it finish - just get one started and then cancel it. Then switch to the shadow cam in preview and parameters, and move the dials. As you change the zoom, you'll have to keep tweaking the PanX and PanY dials incrementally.

However, this whole business is kind of not relevent to Poser 7 SR3. All the problems with ray-traced shadows are gone now. I never use depth-mapped shadows anymore. The ray-traced shadows are superior in every way, except one. They are really slow with highly complex trans-mapped hair. But the results are really worth using them. I suggest you get things basically correct in test renders, using depth-mapped shadows. Then - switch to ray-traced shadows and let-er-rip overnight with really good render settings.

Poser 7 is capable of very good realism, but you can't be cheap about compute time. A really good render is worth waiting overnight for.

Well I'm not one to skimp on render time when I want something to look nice. even with RT shadows it was making her nostrils glow. I eventually gave up and used a different morph and the nostril glow stopped. So i think some of it has to do with the morphing.

can ya post a screencap of the bad shadowcam view, vex?
there may be a little-known glitch in regard to moving the shadowcam
in one of the preview modes.  I haven't actually checked to see if anybody
reported it.

 I'll try to replicate it in a little while. I did do the render before trying to move the camera around, and my main issue was that it was clipping everything out but her heels. Kinda how it does if you're to close to her face and you change the focal length, it starts clipping her face and showing you the innards of her head instead. except this time all i saw where heels. not even her toes or calves and up.

Reduce the hither to move the artificial clipping plane closer to the camera.

If you have nostril glow even with RT shadows, it may be you are using a lot of IBL?

With IBL, you have to use ambient occlusion and enable raytracing.

The shadows from a directional light can only neutralize the light coming from that light. A complete shadow will effectively shut off a spot or infinite light, but that won't stop the surface from reflecting your IBL light.

Quite often people use too much IBL because they want to fill in the darkness. But the darkness is usually not the result of insufficient light. It is because you need to gamma correct your image. Once you start gamma correcting, you'll quickly realize you had the lights as much as 3 times too bright, trying to compensate for the dark areas.

my.smithmicro.com/tutorials/1801.html
i think this belong here.
its a similar tutorial. but i noticed a new trick. a very tall object changes teh shadow cam. so if you have a tall box then the shadow cam is higher. and then you can scale it down even more.
now you can do it for a full body shot.

what do you think? 

It is the same thing. In my case the "very tall object" was the figure, and the only part we are looking at is the face.

yeah i know. like i said its good if you want a full body shot.

does this work in poser pro? i now was setting up my shadow cam and the shadows in the new render looked the same. no change.

Shadow cams have no affect on ray-traced shadows, only depth-mapped shadows. Perhaps you're not using depth-mapped?

In any case, if you're interested in detail and in realism, depth-mapped shadows have no place for you. Use ray-traced shadows.

This is for people who have very weak computers and no patience.

Look at the original posting date - February 2006 - that is 3 years ago.

Computers, even if you have an "old" one, are 3 years farther than when I wrote this. That's about 4 to 10 times faster than 2006.

i want to do very very blury shadows. and with raytraced i see a lot of pixels even with the best settings. and its a close up.

but i use ratryced shadows like 80% the time.

OK, well yes it works in Poser Pro. There's nothing new about lighting in Poser X since Poser 6.

thanks bagginsbill.

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