It is my SECOND render at all so feel free to kick me as you wish. I already have noted some things:

1. I'll change the pose, moving Kei's legs behind the body. It seems more natural and I'll hide the poke-throughs of the suit.

2. The shadows are horrible. I have two lights now: one "sun" outside the right window and a fill light in front but it should not cast shadows. I am SO ignorant about lights!

3. There is no background: I need to find a suitable picture.

4. The wall behind Kei is too naked. I must add some color (maybe a wall paper texture and a poster)

What else? This draft is at "preview" quality because moving the cursor towards the "final" setting is a nightmare in terms of rendering time...

Giorgio

The pose is actually interesting, erotic even the way she's straddling the bed; however it's hard to tell that that's actually a bed she's straddling.  At first I thout that it was some kind of moorish arched tube.  You need to bring the camera back a little, and highlight the bottom bed board's face better.  I think that in the fill light's properties dialogue, you can uncheck the shadows properties, and that shold help some with your deep dark corners.
DPH

Thanks DPH. Actually there was absolutely no intention of creating an erotic pose. Only after rendering the scene I realized it was a bit "strange", so I have decided to move the legs behind the body.

Giorgio

Too bad.  There is nothing wrong with tapping into eroticism when creating your art.  It's what adds spice to our lives.  I would seriously suggest that you create two Pz3's, so that you can pose her either way.  If you think that it's too risque', then you can post one 'clean' version here at Renderosity, and another 'outre' version at say Raunchyminds (actually, at Raunchyminds, that picture would be considered rather tame, but no matter).
Walt Whitman embraced the flesh with his poetry, there is nothing wrong with us doing so with our art.
But ultimately, it's your picture, and the choice is yours.
David P. Hoadley

the render looks fine - as you say, once you've sorted out lights etc.  The pose is OK too - however, some of the clutter on the floor detracts from the main figure - unless you change the POV - mind you, this is great from someone who holds a Masters degree in untidiness, lol - this is what comes of being a Poserholic!

Sheila

Thanks Sheila!

The stuff on the floor is immediately recognizable by someone who has read my novels. The boots are there because I loved the idea of the "casual" superhero... the girl with super-powers who tosses mask and boots on the floor the istant she returns at her home. The backpack is a "main character" of the novels: she always wears it and keeps the suit inside it (and it always menaces to explode because it's over-filled).

Anyway you are right: I  need to focus the attention on the girl, so the first thing is to modify lights.

Giorgio

"I  need to focus the attention on the girl, so the first thing is to modify lights."

Errm, I beg to differ. My Humble Opinion goes:

1. Adjust Point of View. Pull the camera back a bit, and change the angle so it's not looking "square-on" to the figure (in X-direction).
2. Adjust the pose of the neck/head so that she's looking at the newspaper. At present she's looking blankly into space...
3. (at last) Adjust the lights. There's no reason why the fill-in light shouldn't cast shadows, but as it is it seems too close to the figure, and too strong. That shadow is far too black and sharp.
4. Maybe add some ambience to the very dark areas (the floor, the foot-board of the bed, the lamp's column, the furniture on the right, etc..)

BTW, Which version of Poser are you using? Depending on that, better and more precise advice can be offered...

Cheers,
Diolma

the girl is casting an harsh shadow, but the bed's headboard and footboard are casting no shadows. there's a grey thing, the same colour as her left leg, that is sticking up from her left leg, as if she has an extra femur or something. however, I can see you're going to do a good job on it, as you've omitted the usual giant boobs, and you've got a good start on adding props to the scene.

I am still unhappy about the shadows: apart from reducing light intensity, is there another trick to make the shadow more "morbid" and diffuse?

Diolma, you are right: I omitted to say I am using Poser 6. Firefly and raytracing seemed wonderful things at first, but rendering times are so big that I am thinking of switching back to the old renderer and shadow maps. Anyway I need to experiment a bit. The problem is that the house is not modular so it has to load and render all of it for just a room.

Any idea about where I can find some nice wall paper or decorations for that naked wall?

Giorgio

That's a lot better already!

"The problem is that the house is not modular so it has to load and render all of it for just a room."
Actually anything that is out of site is ignored for renders, excpt for stuff that might cause shadows (and possibly reflections if using raytracing).

What type light are you using for the fill-in? To me it looks like you're using a point-light, placed just above the bed and just back (ie closer to the viewer) from the newspaper.

Suggestion:
If so, try using 2 fill-in lights (the render time will increase but not by much).
Create a new point light and place it where a ceiling bulb would be. This is the one that should cast shadows.
Reduce the intensity of the one "on the bed". In fact, whilst setting up the new light, I'd recommend turning the "bed" light off altogether and only turning it back on after you've got the shadow-casting one set up properly..

For adjusting the shadows, use the Properties tab in the Light Parameters dialogue. There you can play around with the "Shadow Blur Radius" (higher values = more blur). (This dialogue is also where you can enable/disable individual lights, without actually deleting them, and/or choose whether the light should be raytraced or depth mapped (=shadow-mapped).
In the other (Parameters) tab of the same dialogue, you can also play around with the shadow's map size. Increasing this will give you better, more accurate shadows, at the expense of memory cost and render time. Also here the shadow dial allows you to control the shadow strength. shadow of 0 = no shadows, shadow of 100 = fully black shadows. I'd suggest setting that to 75 as a start point...

Hope that helps

Cheers,
Diolma

I find myself wondering why you're showing so much of the room. Is the focus supposed to be on the girl or the mess? Both would make a valid artistic statement so I'm not saying that sarcastically at all. If the room is important, one thing you might do to enhance the background is to scoot the chair/desk towards the (viewers) left so that the area in front of the bay window doesn't look so empty. You could also put some other props there on the floor - extra shoes or boxes or something to emphasize the clutter. A rug might be nice, too. She looks a bit too close to the headboard for her legs to be pulled back like that. I find myself expecting to see her feet up on the night stand. You might consider moving the camera up even more and rotating it on it's x-axis so it's looking down towards her more. That'll make it easier to see that it's a bed yet not have the footboard (which also needs to be lit) take up so much screen space.

Published at last! You can find the final version here:

http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1227536&Start=1&Artist=giorgio%5F2004&ByArtist=Yes

Thanks to all for your advices! They have been precious!

Giorgio