How do you get gems like diamonds etc to look shiney and well, like they are supposed to inside of Poser?

I have raytracing turned to 4 and when it renders it renders horridly. Dull, no shine and looks nothing like a diamond is supposed to look like.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

A lot of the look of faceted diamonds depends on tons of refraction going on, the general effect is referred to as "caustics", and as far as I know (not very far) that isn't very easy at all to simulate in Poser. A beautiful caustics tutorial:

http://www.lemiere.com/tutorials/tutorials_caustics.htm

My Freebies

Goodness! I feel like I was just in an episode of Star Trek with all that talk about photons, LOL There were words in there that I have to look up, hehe

Is that tutorial for Poser or for some other program?

I think my bride's tiara will be made of pearls! It seems easier :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Well that's what I'm getting at, I don't think it can be done very well in Poser (or at all). What other tools do you have? Vue can do it, Max can do it, Maya can do it...

My Freebies

Caustics are those patterns that light makes as it bunches up from reflections and refractions. The most typical example is when you use a magnifying glass in sunlight to focus the light in a small hot area. Or the curved sliver of light you see reflected from things like metal rings. Light patterns seen at the bottom of a pool of water is another example.

To get them in 3D, you need a renderer that simulates those rays in the form of light photons. Poser (AFAIK) doesn't as yet have this feature so you cant really get the look of diamonds exactly. Most you can do is get a render with nice refractions and reflections and then paint the caustics in photoshop.

If it's not for a closeup, you could put photos of diamant as a texture map on your diamant object. It would do the trick :)

My Store

Attached Link: http://www.3dlapidary.com/HTML/Collections.htm

I have a image-based Poser-ready (P4/P4 Propack) Standard Round Brilliant diamond prop created by Robin Miller (Thank you, Robin!) on my 3D Lapidary site (bottom of this page): http://www.3dlapidary.com/HTML/Collections.htm

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

I want to get Vue but have been waiting for a sale, hehe I have Bryce from when it was free or cheap at Daz last year, but I think it's only a bare basic without the bells and whistles version. I have never installed it because my other computer wouldn't run it. I haven't gotten around to installing it on my new one because I was wanting to get the more current full version.

Seems like it's post work for me, at least for now.

Thanks :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia--

This might help, in particular message 35

www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php

kalonart.com

Carrara5 also does caustics, and quite well, had some success with gems in it, and i prefer it over vue. With the ability to program my own plugins, the software (should) never truely be obsolete for many years, until someone makes a toy that I can't program myself :)

About 2 years ago i worked with poser6 for quite awhile trying to make 3d gem materials tha look realistic. I found that poser6 can fake some effects from caustics, but not fully, and the color of the gem (ruby, emerald, etc) effected the results a bit, diamonds since clear, i couldn't for the life of me make one to my satisfaction.

Ruby filters red light, emerald filters green (using most known colors, but for those who don't know, there are tons more colors, seen blue diamond in titanic? hehe rare but exists =P) but diamond, the most common clear one, filters no light, and each wavelength (color of light) going into it, goes in a slightly different direction, just like a prism.Shine a light through a prism, and you get a rainbow on the wall :) Effect of this is giving diamonds a "living fire" inside, if cut right.

Closest i came to diamonds was to render 1 map of my scene with the usual raytracing needed (ignoring diamond quality), then set all lights to have only their red light, area render with raytrace to MAX, just the diamond area, cut and paste to a paint program, do again for green light, but slightly different refraction on the gem material, and a 3rd with blue light and different refraction. Put the 3 color cuts together should look normal, paste it in the first rendered picture that's you're scene. Tada! Without caustics though, it isn't perfect, you won't get reflected light effects you see from a spoon on a table, but its a little step forward.

Now a Ruby isn't always a perfect red, emeralds not always a perfect green, so the above method can help with that as well, just remember the light values you had set :)

I believe that caustics aren't the main issue - a flat facet will not form them - caustics are created when a curved surface focuses otherwise parallel beams of light onto a point.

What is really important is the total internal reflection (TIR) effect. This is when light that is inside the diamond (which has a very high index of refraction) cannot pass through a facet when hitting it below a certain angle. As a result, instead of leaving the stone, it reflects back into it and usually comes out the front, or at least it does when the gem is cut at the right angles.

If you follow the link that kalon gave you to my thread on the fresnel effect, you'll get close with just using the reflect refract tricks I show there. Those are the kinds of shaders I have on these gems in this render. But the TIR needs some help as Poser won't do it. What I did here was after importing these gems from the lapidary site (listed above) I set up two material zones. The top zone is using my colored glass shader. The bottom zone (for the facets that face downward) is just 100% reflection. If you look at the back of these gems, they look like perfect mirrors which is not accurate. But if you're rendering the front of them, then what you see inside the gem is total reflection of the scene visible through the top of the gem.

Diamonds also show "fire", which is caused by the prism like splitting of light into a rainbow. You can get some of that effect as I did here by setting up a Color Ramp node with some pastel green and red in it and drive that with an Edge_Blend node. I'm showing that in the screen cap above. Thus you see some purple and green in the diamond reflections.

Because 90% of the object is basically reflections, you must set up things in the scene to reflect. Here I'm using a blue sky dome surrounding the entire setup. That's why some of the facets, especially the top of the ruby, look blue. You're seeing the direct reflection of the blue sky.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Forgot to say change my glass shader a teeny bit - use an index of refraction of 2.4 instead of 1.4.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - Diamonds also show "fire", which is caused by the prism like splitting of light into a rainbow. You can get some of that effect as I did here by setting up a Color Ramp node with some pastel green and red in it and drive that with an Edge_Blend node. I'm showing that in the screen cap above. Thus you see some purple and green in the diamond reflections.

Hmm interesting idea, could take a quicker render from that than my way since less raytracing and 1 render instead of 3. But I wonder the difference in end result between the 2, as my way is more of what accually happens, vs a way of "faking it with a painting" so to speak.

yeah, just to agree with the others - caustics are light beams focused by a curved surface, and they're easy in carrara et al. a diamond is polished using diamond grit on a flat wheel, which takes advantage of the diamond's relative hardness in a few planes, and relative softness in all the others. hence a curved, polished diamond is difficult to achieve, and if one is offered, it may be a fake.

I'm trying this again. If this works, I want to save the material settings so I don't have to keep redoing it if I want to use the tiara again.

What's the difference between the "single material" and "material collection"? I'm assuming I pick the single material, but under what circumstances would I want to pick the "material collection"?

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Quote - Forgot to say change my glass shader a teeny bit - use an index of refraction of 2.4 instead of 1.4.

In the screenshot you provided, there is no "refraction" at all, just reflection which is set at 1.0. Is that what I am changing or do I need to connect yet another node somewhere?

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I think I'm doing something wrong.

This is a free tiara from RDNA by Maveris according to the readme. But I no longer see it on their site for download.

Anyway, here are screenshots of what I'm getting, which is nothing like a diamond....though at least it doesn't look like dull flat stuff this time, LOL

Here is the finished render. I rendered it up close so it's esier to see.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the material room set up that I have now for the diamond portion:

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the material zone for both the **diamond_base and the circlet** that I have. This was not what was normally there. I used a chrome car texture and added that fresnal node to it. What was originally there was a gold colour.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia,

Is there anything in the image for the diamonds to reflect?

As for Material vs Material collection - If you were going to save this set up for this jewelry, both metal bits and diamonds you'd save as a material collection. It would probably not work in another piece of jewelry unless the material names were the same. Collections are good for character texture set ups.

kalonart.com

Acadia, You would select material collection if the object you're applying the textures to have multiple material zone. Example would be if you take a cube and give each side a different material zone. In the material room you would apply a texture to each side and then to save the final result you would use the the material collection and then check the boxes for each zone.

Quote - Acadia,

Is there anything in the image for the diamonds to reflect?

As for Material vs Material collection - If you were going to save this set up for this jewelry, both metal bits and diamonds you'd save as a material collection. It would probably not work in another piece of jewelry unless the material names were the same. Collections are good for character texture set ups.

It's an image of a bride wearing a tiara. Nothing else in the scene, just her.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I think for things like water, or diamonds you'll need a skydome for the object to reflect.

kalonart.com

Quote - I think for things like water, or diamonds you'll need a skydome for the object to reflect.

Sky domes are way over my head, plus I don't want the figure on a background. I just want to render the bride and save her as a .png with a transparent alpha channel so she can be transposed on any background.

I guess I'll look around for something else to put on her head, or try and come up with something in post work.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Attached Link: http://www.3dlapidary.com/HTML/Renders2.htm#STEP3

Acadia.... check out this page: http://www.3dlapidary.com/HTML/Renders2.htm#STEP3 What Kalon said is truly important. You do *need* something for the diamond to reflect. You can create a scene where nothing shows in the camera's view, except a black (or white) backdrop, but placing 'things' **behind** the camera helps the rendering of the diamond tremendously. While the example I show is done in Bryce, the principles are the same for Poser. In that example, I used flat white panels to increase the 'whiteness' of the diamond's look, but you could throw in some multi-colored pieces to fake the colored fire seen in a diamond. Just make sure everyting *but* the diamond piece is -behind- the camera.

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

Hi Acadia,

Reflections and Refractions can be done in Poser, just like Bryce and Vue. The catch is fedding reflective/refractive materials, with varied reflected/refracted light. Bryce and Vue have built in Sky Domes, so you're getting hits from every wich direction, by default. Poser's outer space is null and void. Without anything else in a Poser scene all you get is a reflect/refract of the actual light points(Bright white,) or the reflection/refraction of empty space(Dark points.)

Ajax has recently offered a great free Sky Dome for Poser. At that thread you can see what kind of refections, and quality of background I've gotten with it. It's only drawback is that, by default the Water plane renders as slow as molasses. I; revamped the Sky Material Zone Texture, applied a Mirror material to the ground, and made each other Material Zone Transparent, for that image, and the background rendered very quickly. Anyone interested in my Sky Dome Material file may e-mail me.

I think once you've added this sky dome to your scene you discover a whole new world within Poser; Reflections(mirror), and Refractions(Water, gems) become totally doable(just make sure youve keep Raytracing on(The manual recommends larger than 3!)

And I definately reccomend bagginsbill's material files!

P.S. - If you search for my name, in the Poser forum, and for either "Reflection" or "Sky Domes," you'll see some other threads I may have explained myself different with, but they mostly all boil down to Ajax's latest freebie!

Angel~

Quote -
And I definately reccomend bagginsbill's material files!

If you are talking about the Matmatic stuff, I don't understand that. It's not like it comes all together in one package for installation. When I was following the thread there was stuff being posted all over the place and I didn't know how to save it or where to save it or anything so I just gave up on it.

If it came in one neatly zipped package that would be different, but I was completely lost and when I posted asking for help, no one replied.

So far as skydomes go, I tried the one from RDNA before and used Dr. Geeps tutorial on skydomes. When I say they are over my head, I truly mean that. I just don't understand how to use them.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia, whoa. I was out of town and couldn't jump back in to reply.

The last bit you said about Matmatic is confusing to me, since Matmatic is HOSTED ON YOUR SITE remember? It's just one zip file. All those other posts you may be referring to are not part of matmatic. They are examples of things I come up with over time and are not part of Matmatic at all.

Anyway back to the diamond. I guess I wasn't clear in my first post. As a result, you made a mishmasm of the chromatic reflection material posted above, and the simple fresnel material in my article. What I was trying to say was this:

Go to the fresnel thread and try either the simple glass shader (fresnel node and nothing else) or try my 5-node version, with and Index of Refraction of 2.4. Either would work, but my version can be used for ruby and other colored gems, whereas the simple fresnel won't look real.
If you're not happy enough with the shine, it is because of lack of total internal reflection. This is less important in ruby and other dark gems, but very very important in diamond and lightly colored gems. To get that look, modify the gem so it has a new material zone on the bottom facets. On those facets, attach either a) a perfect mirror shader (just a reflect node), or b) my chromatic mirror which I showed above.

Again, 90% of the diamond's appearance is actually reflections of the scene behind and above the camera.

You do not have to use a sky dome if you want a transparent background - I just suggest a dome because it is the easiest thing in the world to set up, as you can see it from every direction. I use a sky dome so often I made it part of my default Poser scene. File-New = skydome and ground.

Anyway, you don't want one, fine. But you have to have some strongly contrasting stuff to reflect in your gem. Try placing giant white squares or balls all around the gem scene, just outside the view of the camera, but in view of the gem. If the gem is facing the camera, you can probably just put a couple big one-sided squares behind the camera. But make sure they are WHITE, meaning even if the light doesn't hit them right, they must GLOW!

Don't get frustrated!

I don't have my Poser gem stuff here at home - when I get to work on Monday I'll post complete materials so you don't have to guess what I mean or try to copy mat room screen shots.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Forgot to say - do not use Fresnel with reflection. Fresnel is both reflection and refraction built into one node with a specific implicit rule that we can't change.

You can use it alone for realistic clear things, but not with the reflect or refract nodes because then you're fighting the fresnel node and doubling up, and not for colored things because the fresnel node doesn't do reflection color correctly,

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Attached Link: Maxwell Render

The only render engine I know of that can **accurately** render diamonds (including light dispersion) is Maxwell Render by Next Limit Technologies. Worth taking a look in their gallery,

Quote -

The last bit you said about Matmatic is confusing to me, since Matmatic is HOSTED ON YOUR SITE remember? It's just one zip file. All those other posts you may be referring to are not part of matmatic. They are examples of things I come up with over time and are not part of Matmatic at all.

Really? I didn't know that. Yes! That was the part that was confusing me! I thought it was all a-la-carte so to speak.

Is there a better tutorial about how to use skydomes somewhere? I tried Dr. Geeps but I don't understand it. There is just too much going on in the image and I find it overwhelming.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Well, I installed Matmatic and now I'm even more confused.

I created my very own thread at RDNA in the Node Cult Forum because I don't understand matmatic at all.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia

Is it the numbers on the RDNA Skydome that are confusing?

Let me jump in here and tell you what I'm doing, and if I'm using it incorrectly, someone else will come along and correct me and we'll both learn something. :))

If you've downloaded Skydome3 from RDNA, unzip with use folder names activated.
The domes will appear in a folder within your Figures library, while the sample sky mats will unload in your Pose library.

Load the figure dome from the Figure Library. I believe you're using Poser 6 so the numbers don't really matter. The numbers are there because the skydome was created to be usable in Poser 4 which didn't have a materials room (at least not as we know it now) and couldn't tile textures. I generally use Dome 09 Tile. If the sky looks too stretched I adjust the scale in the Material Room by dropping down both the U_scale and V_scale in equal increments for example changing both to .5.

BTW if you're collecting the other textures that RDNA has available for the Skydome, be sure to get the Skydome 3 textures, they're tileable. The original Skydome could not tile it's own textures.

Essentially it just sits there, you don't really have to do any more to it. And while it may look like it's in the way, there's quite a bit of space before it. Should you run out of space and have things poking through the dome, just scale it larger. This may mean you need to readjust your U and V scale again.

I suppose if it really bothers you, you could make it invisible until your second to last render. Just check for poke through, and check your reflections before the final render.

I hope this helps, but I didn't know which part was confusing you...

Edit to add: I know this won't help you with your diamond project since you don't want any background at all. It's just for future reference ;-)

kalonart.com

Quote - The only render engine I know of that can accurately render diamonds (including light dispersion) is Maxwell Render by Next Limit Technologies. Worth taking a look in their gallery,

accually many render engines can do gems, i mainly use carrara5, and does it quite well. the tools in most of the 3d apps contain the tools to do most everything, it's just a matter of simplicity. Poser i am sure would be capable of doing caustics if someone was bored enough to sit in mat room for 3 months and figure out the 1000+ nodes in the right order :) carrara5 however has that built in already, but does not take into account the "prism" effect when determining colors. it does however have the tools needed to program a plugin to do it, and much more simply. so the question is not of capability, but rather simplicity and value of doing it.

I have the free dome from RDNA, not sure if that is #3 or not. I will try what you suggest though.

I think I also understand matmatic now. I thought it was something like Wardrobe Wizard and actually did something when you clicked the button. I didn't realize that it was a behind the scenes type thing and that whatever it did it generated into files I had to access in the material room library. slaps self hehe

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Attached Link: Indigo Renderer

**anxcon**: I agree many engines can make a worthy attempt at rendering gems but as I said only a spectral renderer like Maxwell can **accurately** disperse the light by using real world Index Of Refraction data.

The free Indigo renderer would get close too.

Acadia - The RDNA Sky Dome did'nt work for me either. And, from what I remember, Dr. Geeps tutorial is as much geered toward making a sky dome as anything else.. WIth Ajax's freebie all you need to do is load the Sky Dome Figure. The ground plane is automatically positioned properly, and the dome huge! Just e-mail for my material file, and apply that Collection, before you try to render the water plane...

And OK Matamtic is a little difficult, at first, but it just takes asking the kind Mr. Bagginsbill for his help. When I did he was more than willing to explain how to use it, personally. The beauty of Matmatic is that it is a language for creating Material files, more so than just the material files.

bagginsbill - Hello, I hav'nt forgotten my promise to write you a beginners tutorial! Its been a couple months, but lets see if I can rememebr off the top of my head.

1.) DL MatmaticBeta1

2. ) Create two Materials Library folders named; MMdownloads(For Freebies), and MMWIP(For personally written scripts)

) Open the Matmatic userconfig.txt and add:

"scan :Runtime:libraries:materials:MMDownloads*"

and

"scan :Runtime:libraries:materials:MMWIP*"

3.) Search RDNA and Renderosity for "Matmatic" threads, and the subsequent scripts:

Matmatic Announcement and discussion: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=228105

Matmatic Download: http://loftydesigns.net/Beta/Beta/MatmaticBeta1.zip

Parmatic: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=226110

Parmatic SR3 Issues: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=234750

Threads where I've used these for special effects:

Deep Ocean Water: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=226110

Incidence SSS on Jessi: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=229578 (although I think I did that one wrong)

Algroithmic Eye Makeup: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=229726

Reptile Scales: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=228528

Goldfish Scales: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=233907

Procedural Bruises: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2760455

Furry Jessi: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2760455

Polka Dots: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2774035

Monster skins: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2773712

Plaid: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=244503

Bricks: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=240354

Stars and nebulae: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=240500

Mixing nodes tutorial: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=237743

4.) Upon finding an interesting script, add a similarly named directory, within the MMDownloads folder.

5.) Save that script, into it's folder, with the extension .mm1.txt at the end of the script file.

6.) Run compile.py, and all of the folders that had Matamtic scrips in them will now also have Matmatic Materials!

7.) Examine the material file, and copy the script into the MMWIP fodler. Make some changes to the script, and run the compile.py again, for more/new material files!

It just took Renderosity 12 hours to tell me there have been additions to this thread since my last ebot.

I just spent all that time explaining how to use matmatic, and now, after I have, I see Acadia already knows?

Just an idea - an alternative but more time consuming method would be to have a texture map for the diamond - spectral effects could then be painted into a texture map for the diamond. I'm just making a Poser ready one now and will post a download link later.

Quote - It just took Renderosity 12 hours to tell me there have been additions to this thread since my last ebot.

I just spent all that time explaining how to use matmatic, and now, after I have, I see Acadia already knows?

Thanks :) Your time wasn't a complete waste. I didn't know about many of the links you posted, so I will go and have a look at them and save any scripts that are there. Thank you :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I managed to find the Tiara at RDNA in the free stuff. It's called 13Days Past - Ballerina Tieras

If anyone wants to give this a try, the item is found in the free stuff. Search for "Tiera"

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I've split all the faces to prevent shading errors in Poser and just UV mapped the diamond model. Will set it up as a Poser prop in a while and post the download link.

Quote - I believe that caustics aren't the main issue - a flat facet will not form them - caustics are created when a curved surface focuses otherwise parallel beams of light onto a point.

The individual shape of facets don't matter. The overall shape of the surface does. So even if each facet is flat, if they join together to form a curve (like they do in most gems) then you get caustics. The most noticeable effect in gems is the 'inner glow' they show. And this is also why most simple renders it looks like its some sort of plastic, not a gem.

eg in this (real) ruby:

http://texasvc.weblogswork.com/wp-content/images/ruby.jpg

Notice how the gem actually seems to be emitting light, and not just reflecting it. Compare this to the render you posted and tell me if it is even close ?

**tekmonk:** Even a flat facet (although a single flat polygon is impossible to replicate in the realworld) will produce a caustic depending on the angle the light strikes it and the material applied to the facet.

A coincidence you refer to a ruby image - I done this rough and ready one last night while I was trying out the Gem model just to see how it performed. Needs a better lighting set up and some more render time to get it to photo quality though :-). It uses correct Index Of Refraction data to give a good result - by data I mean the usual IOR value for the gem, plus light dispersion etc.

Quote - Acadia - The RDNA Sky Dome did'nt work for me either. And, from what I remember, Dr. Geeps tutorial is as much geered toward making a sky dome as anything else.. WIth Ajax's freebie all you need to do is load the Sky Dome Figure. The ground plane is automatically positioned properly, and the dome huge! Just e-mail for my material file, and apply that Collection, before you try to render the water plane...

Where do I find Ajax's freebie? I looked in free stuff and I don't see a dome listed in his free stuff.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

In another thread, I read that Ajax's free dome is included in the free Dystopia package(s) at DAZ.

kalonart.com

Hi folks.

Perhaps we're not agreeing because implicitly we're using different definitions for the words we're throwing around?

In Becco_UK's beautiful ruby a couple posts above, I agree that there is something red shining in the shadow, and that Poser doesn't model that. I disagree that the term for that is a "caustic". I can only go by the dictionary on these issues. The American Heritage Dictionary gives me this for "caustic":

The enveloping surface formed by light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface, especially one with spherical aberration.
Since the definition of caustic encompasses both reflecting and refracting light, the key is the word "curved". I totally agree that there are reflections in a gem seen through the gem's surface and also that those reflections can hit the table beneath it and light up the table. I disagree that those are called "caustics" - they are called reflections and refractions.

The notion of a caustic in optics is related to the other meanings of caustic, having to do with burning or stinging. For example, when you use a magnifying lens to focus the sun's rays into such a small area that you can cause paper to burn, that particular hot refraction is a caustic.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - In another thread, I read that Ajax's free dome is included in the free Dystopia package(s) at DAZ.

Thanks :) It was there.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

bagginsbill: I tend to agree with your description - in my simple ruby image you see reflected light from the faces on mainly the left side of the image (the sun shines from that side!) and within the shadow the focused refracted light is visible (but needed longer render time to achieve more definition). The key part of the ruby material is the Index Of Refraction data file that controls all elements of the material. I have a simple diamond rendering at the moment with surface and refracted abberation (rainbow) effects visible. Post it later.

Regarding Poser and diamonds I feel the best results will come from dedicated reflection/ environment maps. I've been messing about all afternoon and I have doubts that Poser can achieve a good degree of realism without much time being used. Always fun to have a go with Poser now and again though!

Acadia - What would you like for a background to the Tiera(Post example?)

If you ave a direct link to the Tiera please post it. RDNA and Renderosity have the same ownrs(No Badwidth Theft)

Ajax has more than one Dystopia Freebie(I think.) So there is no confusion, the one I used is here:

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=4706&spmeta=rl

I tried to uload a .RAR of my .MC6, for the Sky Dome, but a i did'nt work, would a .zip have? Either way I would'n try the sky dome without it, or it'll take you at least 20 minutes to render, becasue of the water plane's Dissplacment(or bump?)
Becco_UK - Trust me, Poser needs a Sky Dome(Or another encompassing object), in order to get good Reflection and Refraction. And no they do not require increase render time all that much:

Here is a render using a SKy Dome that Bushi gave me. The background needed to be composited, but the only material aplied here is bagginsbill's mirror(Demo Set)

Thee pics are imported from other threads. Please do'nt mind the pink squigly, it refers to a form of sphereical mapping preparation I'm trying to lern how to do.

Anywho, this is another render with bagginsbills mirror material, this time using Ajax's Sky Dome, and the actuall rendered background.

These are mirror materials, and not glass materials, but actally they both look very similar(with as many smooth surfaces.

Again , the render times of these scenes were not much diferent than the same scene with textures, in fact maybe a little quicker.

Here is the gem model rendered with a diamond material. I didn't have IOR data available for diamonds so I took a guess at the value needed to get the light dispersion which, in this instance, splits the light into 'rainbow' effects - all very rough and ready but shows what to aim for with Poser.

I only know of Maxwell Render that can create this effect accurately.

All of this is interesting, but it's not helping me with my problem :)

I am trying to use a free tiara from RDNA and have the stones look like diamonds.

I managed to find the Tiara at RDNA in the free stuff. So if someone would like to try all of this theory on that, I would appreciate it very much.

It's in the RDNA free stuff and it's called: 13Days Past - Ballerina Tieras If you search for TIERA it pops up.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Attached Link: Poser Diamond Model

For anyone interested here is the gem model that I used for my simple images. I include a texture template made in BodyPaint.

The model uses unconnected faces, so if this is not wanted simply import the object from the geometry golder and sellect weld on the import panel. Otherwise the model loads from a prop folder.

File list:
ReadMe's
ReadMe_Diamond01.txt

RuntimetexturesDiamond01
Diamond01_Template.png

RuntimelibrariespropsDiamond01
Diamond01.png
Diamond01.pp2
Diamond01.rsr

RuntimeGeometriesDiamond01
Diamond01.OBJ

Acadia - Post a background image, and I'll have a whack...

Quote - Acadia - Post a background image, and I'll have a whack...

Thanks, but I don't want a background on the image. I am making renders that are backgroundless (.png with transparent alpha channel) for my graphic group so that the image can be transposed onto any background.

I tried doing what someone suggested and placed 4 hi res balls around, but not touching the figure so that I could erase them after the render, but the result was the same as if they weren't in the scene at all.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Ok, I've been trying this again. I've spent time fiddling with the RDNA dome.

I don't want a background, so I tilted it up so that it was above and in front of the figure (behind the camera). Here is the screenshot from the side. The dome is 1% of it's actual size, but I reduced it to 1% so you can see how I've tilted it in order to avoid a background behind the figure when I render and save the image.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the material room set up for the diamond portion of the tiara

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the result. It didn't work :(

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I'm not sure that's ever going to work out right. You want any background to show, straight, through parts of the object; but in real life the light directly behind a gemstone would never shine straight threw. It would get distorted, through refraction and reflection; dozens of times, before shining clear through the front side of the object. As well as be mixed with light being reflected and refracted, from the other sides of the object, withing the gem. You'll really need to re-render the object for each environment(Sky Dome texture).

The best work around I can think of is to use a grey map on the sky dome texture. Then, with Photoshop, clear out the extreme black and white values?

just to agree with somebody above, I was reading the maxwell render manual yesterday and it looks pretty good IMVHO. they are using the terms "reflected caustics" and "refracted caustics". if one looks at carrara renders of diamonds, one also sees those concentrated areas of light that are generated when caustics are enabled. they are likely due to repeated internal reflection and consequent refraction upon exit, which forces some beams to converge, due to the radial symmetry of the diamond cut. some may use the term "brilliance" (rather than caustics) when referring to the physical phenomenon.

I just searched for the Tiera, but no luck, which free stuff section is it in?

It's under the RDNA free downloads. It's misspelled and called "Tiera" instead of "Tiara".

I sent you a PM

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Ok. Still working on this.

I used the sky dome as above, only at 100% for the render. But it was angled as above. I applied a blue sky with a few clouds texture.

I also applied a shiney chrome texture to the circlet and diamond_base, and did a reflection and refraction to the diamonds.

Here is the material room set up for the diamonds:

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the final result when rendered. It's getting closer!!!! :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia, the material you posted a few posts ago had diffuse color turned it - that will ruin the effect. In this last one you turned the diffuse color to black (effectively turning it off) and you noticed you're getting closer.

But you're still trying to use reflection with the Fresnel node. If you're using the Fresnel node, you should not be using the Reflection node as well. The Fresnel node includes correct calculation of reflection and refraction and by you adding another reflection you're overdoing it.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

I also see you're using the regular built-in specular on the root node. I think you'd want to use a much smaller highlight size on that. Probably closer to .2 or .1.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Ok, so lower the specular and get rid of the relection node...got it. As soon as my render is done I'll give that a try.

This is oh so frustrating...but at the same time kind of fun! I'm learning stuff, hehe

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Thanks, Becco_UK. And that "Matmatic Explained" is also very useful. Mac users will have an extra step. bB

Ok, here is the result with bagginsbill's last recommendations.

Here is the material room

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Still had the sky dome as above.

Here is the render.

What do you think? Like diamonds?

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia I just downloaded that prop and I'm so sorry to tell you but you're wasting your time.

That tiara doesn't have the shapes of real diamonds at all. The back is flat instead of having a cone shape made of facets. And the front of the stones only have 7 facets - a real diamond has over 50 facets on the front and without those facets any "physics" based simulation of light is not going to make them look like diamonds. They're going to look like flat pieces of bevelled glass.

I noticed that the prop actually comes with a diamond photo texture - I suggest you use it for this prop. If you like, you can still improve the original as I've done here. A proper specular highlight size, and some fresnel effect reflection helps improve them - I think this looks fine.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Although now that I see what you did on that last update, it looks pretty good! So what do I know. LOL!

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - Acadia I just downloaded that prop and I'm so sorry to tell you but you're wasting your time.

That tiara doesn't have the shapes of real diamonds at all. The back is flat instead of having a cone shape made of facets. And the front of the stones only have 7 facets - a real diamond has over 50 facets on the front and without those facets any "physics" based simulation of light is not going to make them look like diamonds. They're going to look like flat pieces of bevelled glass.

I noticed that the prop actually comes with a diamond photo texture - I suggest you use it for this prop. If you like, you can still improve the original as I've done here. A proper specular highlight size, and some fresnel effect reflection helps improve them - I think this looks fine.

Yes, the one you did does look great! When I tried using the texture that came with the tiara all I got were stones that looked like ugly pearls, nothing like a diamond at all.

I'm going to use your set up and save it as a material set for future use, thanks so much :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

First render, default tiara, 5 min. after DL.

Want the file, or just a masked .PNG?

Again with ebots! I upload this pick and then each post, since Acadia's on Posted Sun, Apr 1, 2007 8:23 pm, pops up! I do'nt mind helping, but do mind being redundant.

BTW - Can we upload .zip file to the forums, I thought I saw one the other day? This whole scene, and inventory, would probably be less than 200K.

Othrwise e-mail me, or I can just post the alpha mask?

Thanks :) I sent you an email.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

O.K. Check your e-mail. I ran collectsceneinventory.py, through in a Masks.PSD, and saved a Tiara Transparency.PNG file.

If you'd like to export another .PNG, with areas within the Tiara clear, take back the Opacity of the "Solid Opacity Tiara" layer. The layer above it has had it's Grey Pixels removed, but was a little thin in my opinion.

And there is an extra, Mask, .PZ3.

I'm probably OT for the main thread, here.... Ahh.... My apologies.

Angelouscuitry - the Parmatic link above leads to the seawater discussion. :( A search at RDNA for "parmatic" comes up blank. Do you have the correct link? (I hope....)

===========================sigline======================================================

Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.

:biggrin:

Parmatic! Automatically Parameterize your Materials by bagginsbill on 06/30/06 02:37

That's the one! Thank you! :)

===========================sigline======================================================

Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.

regarding that tiara model, is there something wrong with my monitor, or are those diamonds flat, and the hexagonal mounts disconnected from each other? p.s. I tried doing caustics with a diamond in poser, but gave up after an overnite render that looked like a piece of window-glass. took about five minutes to render in carrara. after 50 minutes in maxwell render, I got a grainy image that showed promise, but I later learnt that caustics and especially dispersion (fire) slow maxwell down to the point of unusability.

Miss Nancy: Using dispersion with Maxwell can add further time to complete the render but nothing else I know of can create the acurate light splitting (rainbow colours) that Maxwell can. Increase the abbe value of the diamond material being used in Maxwell to speed up render times. Using caustics alone with Maxwell does not slow down the render too much.

becco - thanks for the info. I couldn't find any answer in the maxwell forum on why my default renders, whether 5 minutes or 50 minutes, are extremely grainy. I saw one render in the maxwell forum that showed dispersion in a head-on view of a diamond ring, but not caustics. I am trying maxwell studio, the stand-alone app. dispersion is apparently impossible in carrara. a good display of dispersion and caustics would be a side view of the diamond at near right angles to the light source (from above at a 15 degree angle), in which the caustics and spectral effects are projected on the plane upon which the diamond sits.

**Miss Nancy**: It's diffucult to relate to times when using Maxwell because it is so hardware dependant for reasonable render times. I use it on my aging Pentium 4 machine and generally for a modest sized image (800/1000) I would expect the render to take some time to get to sample level 16 (16 I feel is when image noise is, or should be, to the point it is not very noticable). If by then the noise hasn't really gone then it's time to call it a day and find out what's causing the noise problem!

You also need to consider the environment being rendered. Closed interiors always take far longer to become noise free than outdoor ones using sunlight. Try to avoid using too many light emitters and white (rgb: 255/255/255) materials. The best defined caustics come from using small, high powered light emitter/s. Maxwell is based on physical 'real world' properties and a good photography book comes in very useful with Maxwell!

For some dielectric materials a coating layer controlled with a gradeated texture can give some nice surface colour variations withou the decrease in render times that happens when dispersion is activated. The preview image I done earlier shows a glass material with a coating.

o.k., thanks for the tips, becco. those glass rendered details look very nice. I used the default sample setting (10 I think; may have even dropped it to 5). it was an outdoor scene, probly with some lights, which I could see in the list but which I couldn't find in the 3d scene. i used an african equatorial sun setting around 11. a.m. will try it with adjustments. the graininess reminds me of a photo taken with very fast film, very brief exposure, poor lens. hence I daresay the manual may have some tips on fixing it up, in terms of camera/lens/diaphragm/film/ISO settings.

Miss Nancy: Ok - I think that's the problem - you have set the sample level much too low. Set it around 25 (or higher) with an high render time. You can then stop the render when you are happy with the quality. With those settings too low you get stuck if the render is naff and have to start all over. For my proper renders I usually do some small test renders to check lighting etc and when ok I leave a full render overnight while I sleep!

Becco_UK
Thank you for the diamond model. Might take a while but I'd be willing to put some time into seeing if I could make it sparkle in a Poser animation.

Without you going far out of your way, would you (or anyone else) say "That is not a dead-end street, you CAN make it sparkle in Poser with the right material and light and raytrace settings?"

::::: Opera :::::

You could make it sparkle nice!

Look for Ockham's Free Stuff. He has a python called LightPanel. Load a Ball prop into your scene, and make sure its x,y, and z coordinates are 0, 0, and 0. Then Parent all of your ligths to it, with the script. Make a Key frame. Skip X many frames. Rotate the ball 359 degrees. Make a key frame and render.

You'll light us up like disco night at Hooters!

I think the firefly render engine is under-rated.

I am pretty new to this type of render, but

I think the refraction is pretty damn good.

Daffodills from Transpond

Crystal/Diamond model by John Austin (Becco_UK)

John thank you for this great model.

It is a perfect 57 facet brilliant cut, right?

Four spot lights

Only one of which renders shadows (depth map)

No AO, IBL

Nodes: Reflect and Refract on GROUND

Nodes: Reflect and Refract on diamond

Made many lighting tests with weak settings,

then cranked everything up for this render.

I am highly inexperienced in raytrace render settings,

and did not really know what I was doing;

for instance, I have not the slightest idea what

"irradiance cache" is!

I would welcome feedback on these setting as

some may be too agressive and a waste of render

time for no gain.

The transparancy might be too high; don't think

you should be able to 'see through' a diamond

that clearly. Nor should the reflections be so

perfect, like a mirror, right? Or....am I wrong?

System:

AMD Athlon 3500+

4 Gig RAM

Twin Raptors in RAID0

Windows XP Pro

Poser7 sr1

RENDER TIME: 3030 seonds

I am rendering an animation now with these exact settings,

just to see how the sparkle goes as I move the camera.

Twelve hours from now I will only have 14 frames,

but that will still be 1/2 second of interesting viewing.

Will post tomorrow.

::::: Opera :::::

P.S. Needed: model maker to create beautiful jewelry finding

for this. Engagement Ring. Studs for earings. Please contact

me concerning paid commission to do so.

operaguy: Thank you for the comments about the diamond prop I made. I don't know about its 'perfect 57 facet brilliant cut' though! I made the model in Cinema4D using a plugin - my proper work with it was seperating all the faces and making a texture map.

I agree Posers' render engine (and materials) are often underated. The refraction looks great on your render.

Can't make my mind up about the reflection though - should the reflection when looking at the grazing angles be greater than when viewing a surface full on? That said if Poser doesn't support fresnel then that's probably the best it's going to get. Can the strength of reflection for individual faces be controled with a texture map (this would rule out animations though).

Most people percieve a diamond to be perfectly transparent so I think your render is spot on with that.

I look forward to seeing the animation.

Just noticed your material screen - for your test it probably is too late now but the diamond refraction value is set to low. Also, do you need to adjust the refraction value as well as the refraction value?

Gemstones (Index Of Refraction):

Agate 1.544 - 1.553
Alexandrite 1.746 - 1.755
Almandine 1.75 - 1.83
Amber 1.539 - 1.545
Amethyst 1.532 - 1.554
Ammolite 1.52 -1.68
Andalusite 1.629 - 1.650
Apatite 1.632 - 1.42
Aquamarine 1.567-1.590
Axenite 1.674 - 1.704
Beryl 1.57 - 1.60
Beryl, Red 1.570 - 1.598
Chalcedony 1.544 - 1.553
Chrome Tourmaline, 1.61 - 1.64
Citrine 1.532 - 1.554
Clinohumite 1.625 - 1.675
Coral 1.486 - 1.658
Crystal 2.000
Crysoberyl, Catseye 1.746 - 1.755
Danburite 1.627 - 1.641
Diamond 2.417
Emerald 1.560 - 1.605
Emerald Catseye 1.560 - 1.605
Flourite 1.434

Garnet, Grossular 1.72 - 1.80
Garnet, Andradite 1.88 - 1.94
Garnet, Demantiod 1.880 - 1.9
Garnet, Mandarin 1.790 - 1.8
Garnet, Pyrope 1.73 - 1.76
Garnet, Rhodolite 1.740 - 1.770
Garnet, Tsavorite 1.739 - 1.744
Garnet, Uvarovite 1.74 - 1.87
Hauyn 1.490 - 1.505
Iolite 1.522 - 1.578
Jade, Jadeite 1.64 - 1.667
Jade, Nephrite 1.600 - 1.641
Jet 1.660
Kunzite 1.660 - 1.676
Labradorite 1.560 - 1.572
Lapis Lazuli 1.50 - 1.55
Moonstone 1.518 - 1.526
Morganite 1.585 - 1.594
Obsidian 1.50
Opal, Black 1.440 - 1.460
Opal, Fire 1.430 - 1.460
Opal, White 1.440 - 1.460
Oregon Sunstone 1.560 - 1.572
Padparadja 1.760 - 1.773

Pearl 1.53 - 1.69
Peridot 1.635 - 1.690
Quartz 1.544 - 1.553
Ruby 1.757 - 1.779
Sapphire 1.757 - 1.779
Sapphire, Star 1.760 - 1.773
Spessarite 1.79 - 1.81
Spinel 1.712 - 1.717
Spinel, Blue 1.712 - 1.747
Spinel, Red 1.708 - 1.735
Star Ruby 1.76 - 1.773
Tanzanite 1.690-1.7
Tanzanite 1.692 - 1.700
Topaz 1.607 - 1.627
Topaz, Imperial 1.605-1.640
Tourmaline 1.603 - 1.655
Tourmaline, Blue 1.61 - 1.64
Tourmaline, Catseye 1.61 - 1.64
Tourmaline, Green 1.61 - 1.64
Tourmaline, Paraiba 1.61 - 1.65
Tourmaline, Red 1.61 - 1.64
Zircon 1.777 - 1.987
Zirconia, Cubic 2.173 - 2.21

Casting Shadows, may be pertinant for this render, but is intensive. I never want shadows, and always keep it off; becasue it's a hog, and am always trying to aviod shadows anyhow.

The RayTrace value is how many times a ray will bounce, and receord, between two mirrors. This scene is especially effected by Ray TRacing, but the manual reccomends 3 to start with.

Irridesence has to do with light levels, on objects. If you lower the value you become more accurate, but add render time, and vs. versa.

I doubt you're using DIssplacement, and it's kinda intenseive.

Are these indexs Poser Values?

The index of refraction values are for any software that supports refraction, including Poser5 onwards. Water is usually set at 1.33. The values are how the angle of light changes direction as it passes through the surface/s of an object.

Attached Link: Fresnel Effect in Poser

Poser does support Fresnel - there is even a fresnel node! If you are doing clear glass, diamond, water, anything that doesn't color the refractions, you should be using the fresnel node.

If you're doing colored glass, ruby, wine, cranberry juice, anything that does color the refractions, then you should use separate reflect and refract nodes. The refract should be colored. The reflect should NOT. Please follow the link to my discussion of the importance of the fresnel effect and how to do it for many different types of materials correctly in poser.

Also, as I said earlier, gems are cut to take advantage of total internal reflection. Under most viewing conditions and angles, you cannot see through the bottom of the gem. I suggest that if you place the gem in a ring or other jewelry setting, you will not actually directly view the bottom facets. So you should create two material zones (use the grouping tool) and put a different material on the bottom facets. They should be just perfect reflectors, like a mirror.

Operaguy, I think a lot of sparkle is due to direct reflections of the lights in your scene. This is the job of specular nodes. I like the glossy one. If you put a glossy node into your shader, it will help - as you rotate the gem, it will pick out individual facets that face the right way to catch the light and they become really bright white, while nearby facets will continue to show the reflect-refract because they miss the light.

Also, your sphere-map is connected to a solid color. Instead you should connect it to an image map with some high-contrast shapes or blobs. Or even better, surround your gem with a real environment sphere, including sky, clouds etc. or for indoor actually assemble a room around it.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Check it out - this animation only took about 2 minutes to generate.

I did not use real reflections at all - I used a spheremap. The top material is doing refraction so you can see the bottom, but the bottom is just a spheremap. Both top and bottom are using glossy specular.

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This is the image I attached to the sphere map. I made it in photoshop.

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Same thing, but this time I strengthened the RED-WHITE-BLUE ColorRamp on the bottom facets sphere map that is driven by an edge blend. This creates the illusion of "fire", the prism-like effect of chromatic diffraction which varies with viewing angle.

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^Damn! You're GOOD!

The previous animations were using an IOR of 2.4 (for diamond). Here I've changed to 1.4, the IOR for glass. It looks different - the diffraction colors seem to be on the back, whereas on the diamond they seem to float inside the middle of the gem.

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If you put a color into the Refraction_Color on the root node, and leave everything else the same, the external reflections stay white, while the internal reflections are colored. This is ruby.

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good morning, just came back on board. my animation got rudely inturrupted last night, either by some glitch poser bailout or possibly a auto-reboot by "Bill" after an upgrade. The first 8 frames had issues anyway. So, I'm checking in here and see several responses -- gratitude to all -- and a major injection from bb. I've built a set with "The Pad", enganged HDRI "Albany Night" lighting, put the daffodils and diamond on a glass table, engaged the fresnel on specular, with specular setting of 2.0 intensity and highlight size .3, downloaded BB's pattern above and put it on the refract. The render seen here took only 163 seconds, with non-agressive pixel samples and min shade rate. Thanks for your insights Mr. Baggins! Will experiment some more and then execute an animation. More later.... ::::: Opera :::::

Good grief that looks like diamond right off a Zales diamond commercial!!! You set the bar high!!!

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Becco_UK said: *I agree Posers' render engine (and materials) are often underated*

I so concur.

This picture is off-topic, but the observation about Firefly being underated reminded me of this image I did in November. People think it can't do this stuff. It can. This scene was lit with one IBL (handmade drawing some blobs) and a single infinite light. Look how nice the chrome is, and the water looks just right to me. The water falling from the faucet is just a poser cylinder. The rings are poser torus times 2. All the shaping was done with procedural functions applied to displacement. The render time was just a few minutes.

(Be sure to click to see the details)

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Click to see full detail Well.........there's no free lunch! Here's the same scene as above.... Rendertime: 3224 seconds instead of 163 seconds! All I did different was kick up the pixel samples from 2 to 10 min shade rate from 3.0 to 0.00 Raytrace bounces are set at 4, by the way. This is certainly a much sharper image... But as the last scene of an animation, probably overkill. I gotta say, though, a crystal object on a glass table with HDRI+AO and fine reflection and refraction...our little Poser is acting pretty grown up! I'm going to put the settings somewhere in the middle and render out an animation. ::::: Opera :::::

bagginsbill - Would you show a screenshot of the Material Room setting for the first diamond?

Quote - Becco_UK said: I agree Posers' render engine (and materials) are often underatedI so concur.
This picture is off-topic, but the observation about Firefly being underated reminded me of this image I did in November. People think it can't do this stuff. It can. This scene was lit with one IBL (handmade drawing some blobs) and a single infinite light. Look how nice the chrome is, and the water looks just right to me. The water falling from the faucet is just a poser cylinder. The rings are poser torus times 2. All the shaping was done with procedural functions applied to displacement. The render time was just a few minutes.
(Be sure to click to see the details)

What did you use for the water in the tub? I was trying to make a bathtub render yesterday and I found a free water plane but it was huge and certainly didn't fit the tub. I ended up not use water at all and instead did post work bubbles to hide the fact that there was no water. LOL

What is a "poser torus"?

Could you also show your material room set up for that scene? The water looks very realistic.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

A Torus is a Ring, in the Primitives folder, of your Props library...For example an Angel's Halo is a Torus.

**Angelouscuitry** I deleted the file because I figured I didn't need it any more :)

But: I was able to recreate it, or at least get close.

Here is the material for the top facets of the gem. The image map file "facets" is that thing i posted above. Please realize that I did this to make it cheap and render fast. A proper shader would use real reflections, or both, as operaguy did.

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Here is the material for the bottom facets. Use the group tool to create a new group and assign those facets to a new material. Then attach this shader to those facets.

To get the richer colors for internal reflections, just make the pale pink and blue more saturated.

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bill, excellent work on the gem animations. I noticed in yer shaders, the sum of diffuse colour and transparency is 1, which is in accord with some theory of optics that I don't understand. but from which node is the transparency in yer gems derived?

Acadia,

Another (fun) word for torus is donut.

The water in the tub was actually part of that prop. I downloaded it from freestuff. Can't remember what the name is or who made it.

As usual, I deleted that water material a long time ago. See, when you make several hundred shaders a week, you just can't bother keeping them all. It takes less time to make them from scratch than to find them among thousands.

All you need to make good (clear) water is the fresnel node. Just hook it up to the Refraction_Color and set Refraction_Value to 1.

After that, you want to put some displacement on the water. I've used fractal_sum here to demonstrate.

Do I need to link you to that fresnel article again :)?

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Miss Nancy

Actually on these shaders diffuse is 0. The sum of one amount is of reflected + refracted light. Thus I use an edgeblend to drive the reflect, and 1 - that to drive the refract.

If you stop to think about it, it's obvious why this should be so. You have a clear material. Light has a certain probability of getting reflected by it or passing through. If I shove 100 photons at a prop and 70 get reflected, then clearly 30 went on through. That's all there is to it. Most people ignore this simple rule and as a result they get crap for results.

For opaque materials, the photon either gets reflected immediately, or partially enters the surface, where it gets filtered and bounced back out in a different direction. This is called Diffuse reflection and again, if 70 photos directly reflect, then 30 must diffusely reflect.

The Fresnel effect is how we decide what fraction of the photons reflect immediately. The rest most either diffuse or refract. If we were to do a partially opaque material like vaseline, then the sum of reflect + refract + diffuse is 1. Has to be, otherwise you are simulating the duplication of photons and that won't look real.

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Oh i didn't answer your question. These "transparency" as you say is from the refract node. But refraction is more than the light passing through - it gets bent too, depending on your viewing angle. The amount of bending is determined by the index of refraction (IOR). Becco_UK very kindly posted a bunch of IORs for real world materials. When you use the correct numbers, Poser simulates the bending accurately.

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Thanks, bagginsbill! THer ender is very nice, I would have suspeted you used a Sky DOme, until you mentioned the Reflection Map. I was very curious to see how you set up the Reflection node, and what happened to the Diffuse Node, when you did.

I've found a need to reduce the Diffuse Value to 0, also, when using a Reflection Map; but I had'nt thought to try the Sphere Map need!

Thanks Again!

Quote - Acadia,

Another (fun) word for torus is donut.

The water in the tub was actually part of that prop. I downloaded it from freestuff. Can't remember what the name is or who made it.

As usual, I deleted that water material a long time ago. See, when you make several hundred shaders a week, you just can't bother keeping them all. It takes less time to make them from scratch than to find them among thousands.

All you need to make good (clear) water is the fresnel node. Just hook it up to the Refraction_Color and set Refraction_Value to 1.

After that, you want to put some displacement on the water. I've used fractal_sum here to demonstrate.

Do I need to link you to that fresnel article again :)?

Ahhh, donut or "ring", hehe I'm going to ask for a dozen "torus" the next time I go to Tim Horten's, LOL

I searched for bath tubs the other day and I did see the one you used, but for some reason I couldn't find it on Gerald's site. Today I looked and there it is!!!

I'm going to try this this evening. I have the Fresnel node threads bookmarked. I'll post my results :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

FYI When you go to Horten's, you want to ask for a dozen "tori" as that is the plural of torus. :)

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

eh.....this seems better?:)

What am I doing wrong? I'm trying to mimic what you've done, and it's not working.

The light is an IBL light found in the Poser 6 lighting library.

My render

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the water from the tap material room setting.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the water plane material room setting

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia, several things are wrong:

Looks like you forgot to turn on raytracing and set ray trace bounces to at least 3 or 4. That's why the faucet water is black. You're not getting any reflection or refraction, and that is all there is to water.
The material on your tub water has Diffuse_Value greater than 0. It must be 0. And do not turn on transparency . That will ruin the effect. The Fresnel node handles the transparency through refraction, which will work if you turn on ray tracing.
The faucet and claw feet should have no diffuse reflection either. The material for those should be chrome or brass, so all you want is a reflect node, with the Reflection_Value at or close to 1, say .9.
Also, you'll want some displacement in the tub water material, too. Otherwise it will be rendered perfectly flat.
I wouldn't use a blue light from above. Think about what the lighting is really like in your bathroom. Imagine that behind the camera is a vanity mirror with lights above it, shining into the room. Or an overhead white light. The rest of the room then bounces that light around a lot, so you want an IBL to simulate that.
Put in a floor, walls, ceiling, maybe a couple cabinets out of sight. These are needed so that your objects, particularly the chrome things, have something to reflect. Make the walls be some soft pastel color, instead of white, or use tiles. That will bring out the crisp beauty of the variation in reflections between the white tub and the walls, and will anchor the tub better in the scene.

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Pasadena, CA
6:20 AM local time

Good morning all, I'm sitting here watching my 'Poser rig" rendering out frames of my 'Daffodils with diamond" animation. I can tell by the frames it's going to be good-looking. I'm as impressed with Poser's handling of the glass table-top as the diamond!

I'm on frame 88 of 120. It'll be done in later this AM.

My next step in this diamond quest will be stud earings and an animation with V4 moving her head to get sparkles. I'm already set up in my mind I may need a point light next to the stud animated and parented. Or inside it. We'll see. I'd love to see her showing off "across a crowded room."

::::: Opera :::::

operaguy: I'm looking forward to seeing the completed animation.

> Quote - Acadia, several things are wrong: > > 1) Looks like you forgot to turn on raytracing and set ray trace bounces to at least 3 or 4. That's why the faucet water is black. You're not getting any reflection or refraction, and that is all there is to water.

Thanks for the reply :)

I always have raytracing on. I have it set to 4. Here is a shot of my final render settings.

I'll try the rest of your suggestions and see what I can do and will post my results.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia,

If raytracing is on then I'm really confused. However, there are occasionally problems with depth-mapped shadows and ray-traced effects. Try turning shadows off. Or - try enabling shadow reuse (caching) and do two renders in a row, where the second one reuses the shadow. If that doesn't work I have no idea.

I hope you get this worked out, as I'm not going to be able to help you much longer. I'm leaving for Hawaii in a couple hours. I'll be gone for a week.

If any of you reading this see people looking for me, please tell them I'm not ignoring them - I'm on vacation.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

bill, have fun on holiday. there may be some discrepancies with the use of yer technique in P6 and earlier.

Quote - Acadia,

If raytracing is on then I'm really confused. However, there are occasionally problems with depth-mapped shadows and ray-traced effects. Try turning shadows off. Or - try enabling shadow reuse (caching) and do two renders in a row, where the second one reuses the shadow. If that doesn't work I have no idea.

I hope you get this worked out, as I'm not going to be able to help you much longer. I'm leaving for Hawaii in a couple hours. I'll be gone for a week.

If any of you reading this see people looking for me, please tell them I'm not ignoring them - I'm on vacation.

Oh have fun on your vacation!!!!

No worries. I'll keep plodding along and if I don't have it sorted out by the time you leave I'll put it on the back burner until you return. I don't need this for any particular project at the moment. I just want to learn how to do it.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

OMG! I'm so proud of myself! It's not as good as bagginsbill's but it's not bad! I had to tweak the displacement value settings because I was getting spikey looking water at the settings recommended. Here is my final render, followed by the screenshots of my material room settings.

I think the floor reflection looks pretty good if I do say so myself :)

Lights are my own. 3 infinite lights, all in white.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the water settings.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the running water settings. I didn't do the donut things for the rings yet. I'll try that later.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Here is the floor reflection settings.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Acadia,

nice job, i love it when persistence pays off in a new big thing learned. The water in the tub and reflections on the floor look terrific. I've never attmepted water.

my animation not quite done yet, i couild not resist adding 56 more frames!

::: Og :::

Thanks :) I don't know where bagginsbill gets all of the patience to fiddle in the material room! But he's darn good!!!

The only way I can learn in that room is to mimic what someone does which is why I was bound and determined to get this worked out because it has huge potential for future projects. Once I had it all set up and I was getting really spikey water, I played around with settings and discovered the problem was the displacement settings. After trying several different ones I found one that seemed to look ok.

I have this scene safely tucked away for future reference. I'm running out of hair to pull, hehe

Looking forward to seeing your animation.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Hi - I haven't left yet - checked in one more time. Congratulations! Very nice scene. The water looks perfect and so does the chrome.

Regarding the displacement amount, I have to say again, for perhaps the 300th time ;-), that Poser screen shots are showing displacements in the user's chosen Poser display units. I'm using inches. Clearly you are using feet or meters or something. So if you copy my value (in inches) and put those numbers in yours, they get effectively multiplied by 12 (inches per feet) or 39 (inches per meter) or 103.2 (inches per Poser Native Unit). Personally, I can't imagine why you haven't changed your chosen units yet, since I find it incredibly non-intuitive to think of shader bump and displacement in feet or meters. I mean, what makes more sense to you, a number like .0003424 PNU, or .1 inches?

So, everybody pay attention - I AM IN INCHES, ALWAYS, EVERYWHERE, EVERY SHADER DISPLACEMENT OR BUMP I'VE EVER POSTED IS IN INCHES.

Ok.

Here's some tips to refine it:

The floor isn't following our Fresnel rule - which is that Diffuse_Value + Refraction_Value + Reflection_Value = 1. As a result - it's somewhat overlit. Since you're using .5 for reflection, try .5 for Diffuse_Value. Frankly, though, the floor would best be done by setting up the EdgeBlend node as I showed in my tutorial on the Fresnel effect. See, as you look down at a part of the floor close to you, the angle is higher and should reflect less. As you look across the room to the farthest corner of the floor, your viewing angle is much lower and it should reflect more. This is the Fresnel effect and our brains are very sensitive to it. A constant amount of reflection never quite looks right. The reflections look far more correct and believable when you take that into account. Plus the beauty of it is you don't have to think about what value to set as you more the camera around. The shader will take care of it. But if that is too much for you to try just now, then I'd probably lower the reflection_Value. Given that viewing angle I'd go to betweem .2 and .3 and set the Diffuse_Value to .8 or .7 (so rv + dv = 1).
The lights are a bit too high. See how there is that hot bloom on the right side of the tub. If we were taking a photo, the camera auto exposure setting would have noticed that and darkened the whole scene to compensate. So lower all your lights until there is no bloom. You'll be surprised how much more contrast is created. The scene will look a lot more 3d.
Need shadows badly. You've got the overall quality of the other elements to the point where that is the most obvious departure from photo-realism. You don't have to make the shadows 100%, but you need some. Under the props should be darker, under the shelves, etc.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

The floor material has Reflection_Light_Mult checked. TURN THAT OFF. Never turn that one on or the other one, Reflection_Kd_Mult.

They are included for very special reasons and do not produce realism. They will make the amount of reflections depend on how strong the light is hitting the floor and that is bull crap for realism. Think about it. When you look in a mirror, what makes your face brighter, a light shining on the mirror or a light shining on your face? Answer: your face - shining a light on the mirror will have nothing to do with how bright your reflection should be.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - Hi - I haven't left yet - checked in one more time. Congratulations! Very nice scene. The water looks perfect and so does the chrome.

Regarding the displacement amount, I have to say again, for perhaps the 300th time ;-), that Poser screen shots are showing displacements in the user's chosen Poser display units. I'm using inches. Clearly you are using feet or meters or something. So if you copy my value (in inches) and put those numbers in yours, they get effectively multiplied by 12 (inches per feet) or 39 (inches per meter) or 103.2 (inches per Poser Native Unit). Personally, I can't imagine why you haven't changed your chosen units yet, since I find it incredibly non-intuitive to think of shader bump and displacement in feet or meters. I mean, what makes more sense to you, a number like .0003424 PNU, or .1 inches?

So, everybody pay attention - I AM IN INCHES, ALWAYS, EVERYWHERE, EVERY SHADER DISPLACEMENT OR BUMP I'VE EVER POSTED IS IN INCHES.

Ok.

Here's some tips to refine it:

The floor isn't following our Fresnel rule - which is that Diffuse_Value + Refraction_Value + Reflection_Value = 1. As a result - it's somewhat overlit. Since you're using .5 for reflection, try .5 for Diffuse_Value. Frankly, though, the floor would best be done by setting up the EdgeBlend node as I showed in my tutorial on the Fresnel effect. See, as you look down at a part of the floor close to you, the angle is higher and should reflect less. As you look across the room to the farthest corner of the floor, your viewing angle is much lower and it should reflect more. This is the Fresnel effect and our brains are very sensitive to it. A constant amount of reflection never quite looks right. The reflections look far more correct and believable when you take that into account. Plus the beauty of it is you don't have to think about what value to set as you more the camera around. The shader will take care of it. But if that is too much for you to try just now, then I'd probably lower the reflection_Value. Given that viewing angle I'd go to betweem .2 and .3 and set the Diffuse_Value to .8 or .7 (so rv + dv = 1).

The lights are a bit too high. See how there is that hot bloom on the right side of the tub. If we were taking a photo, the camera auto exposure setting would have noticed that and darkened the whole scene to compensate. So lower all your lights until there is no bloom. You'll be surprised how much more contrast is created. The scene will look a lot more 3d.

Need shadows badly. You've got the overall quality of the other elements to the point where that is the most obvious departure from photo-realism. You don't have to make the shadows 100%, but you need some. Under the props should be darker, under the shelves, etc.

I thought you left! hehe Don't forget the swimsuit and sunscreen!

I've never figured out what to have my settings at so I've always left it as "poser native units". I figured Poser was smart enough to figure the rest out, lol I'll go and change it to inches :)

Thanks for the additional tips. I need to go and make dinner but I'll work on it a bit more later this evening. I'll keep posting my results even though you aren't here to see them. Maybe you can check back in when you get back.

Have a safe and fun holiday. I've always wanted to go to Hawaii. I don't think I'd ever come home if I went though.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Attached Link: Click here to download, 3.8 MB Quicktime

Here's the animation......

176 frames @ 30 fps, 700x800 pixels

Daffodils from Transpond
Set is "The Pad" included with Poser 7
Diamond model by John Austin (Becco_UK)
Shader advice and scatter pattern jpg from bagginsbill
Thank you both for you contributions to the Poser community.

This is only a 'study' animation, not intended to be evaluated on composition, smoothness of movement, details (such as parts of flowers intersecting others) etc. The point is to show of f this model of a brilliant-cut diamond and of the materials nodes of Poser for reflection and refraction.

The frames were rendered NOT at highest settings for pixel sample and min shade rate in the interest of time (this is not a finished piece). Actual settings can be studied above. The settings used on this animation (Pixel samples = 2, min shade rate = 2.09, raytrace bounces = 4) generated render times of aprox 8 min. per frame.

Pretty impressive for our little Poser, don't you think?

::::: Opera :::::

That is mighty impressive!!

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Wow operaguy, that turned out really a lot better then I explected! Great to see!

"explected" - what the hell? Damn stubby fingers...

The last four or five frames ballooned to over 20 min to render, each. Why? Poser figured out that the daffodil leaves were not fully opaque and had to compute the translucence on 4 raytrace bounces; notice the light coming of the edge of the diamond right thru the yellow petal in the last frame!

That 'edge' of a brilliant-cut round diamond is called "the girdle" by the way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_cut

I am going to post a link to this animation in the forum, plus at CP and RDNA, with a link to this thread. By all means keep commenting on all things diamond, reflection and refraction here, if desired.

::::: Opera :::::

Great animation - it shows off the reflective diamond facets very well. Thank you for the effort you put into this.

I know this WAS the realistic diamond thread, but I just wanted to say cheers to BagginsBill for his great water texture advice.

The method I was using previously was far from ideal.

For anyone that is worried this may be all too complicated for them, bear in mind I'm a complete texture NOOB. If I can do it, anyone can!

This is a test render obviously as the room isn't enclosed, hence nothing relfecting beyond the bath.

Thanks again BagginsBill.

If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards...checkmate!

hehe, it turns out diamond reflection is refraction and reflection the same as water...so it's all good :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I agree it is all good. Claw that is really a fine example!
:: og ::

P.S. now how do i let V4 jump in there naked and have the water behave like a natural spash?

Just 'paint by numbers' really.

Seriously I don't think there's anything you could do short of witchcraft that would get Poser to have a body of water interact realistically with a figure.

Unless you were being sarcastic, in which case just push the 'Make Art' button and all your Poser dreams will come true.

If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards...checkmate!

I don't know what you mean by 'paint by numbers."

And...giving you the benefit of the doubt that your 'make art' comment was not a rude insult, I'll say this...

I was being "ironic" in that I am greatful to BB for new knowlege about water, and naturally I want more. Plus....other suble levels of humor too exquisite for forums.

and....I am far from ready to try witchcraft as of yet.

My first attack would be to 'clothify' something and then turn loose a wave deformer or wind deformer. If you could get the "water" to deform, that might be a start.

Another approach would be to search for various products I have seen from time to time for particles in poser.

You could also create thousands of props and apply PoserPhysics to them.

Many ideas.

::::: Opera :::::

What I meant by "paint by numbers" is that I simply followed the instructions posted by BagginsBill.

Don't worry, my "Make Art" comment was not intended as an insult. The witchcraft bit, same deal. Just trying to keep things light.

Fascinated by your ideas. I hadn't thought of using the Cloth Room. And even if that approach didn't yield perfect results, it'd certainly lead to something interesting.

If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards...checkmate!

At least if we throw out ideas, people who've tried them will hopefully pipe up and lend some guidance.

Attached Link: RealFlow

**operaguy** and **ClawShrimp**: You could try the RealFlow demo. RealFlow works best when used in conjunction with supported software but it's possible to use it on its own.

I made a post in the Poser forum ages ago and someone started to write a python script to enable animated RealFlow meshes to be imported directly into Poser.

RealFlow requires triangulated mesh to work with so anyone using it with Poser would need to take this into account when exporting from Poser.

The image from Cinema4D I posted features the character and splash effect made with RealFlow. The deemo is restricted to a maximum number of particles so it may be necessary to develop meshes in section if the licensed version isn't being used.

operaguy, the "Make Art Button" comment is not an insult :) It's actually an inside joke where Poser is concerned because so many people think that you just press a button and an image spits out and no talent of any kind or anything is needed.

If you have Wardrobe Wizard you will see that PhilC and Kamilche even put a "Make Art" button in their program as a joke, hehe

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

yes i have WW and Tool Box and am on the inside of the "PhilC Make Art Joke."

I just was not sure about the way Claw was using it, but he has explained; no harm no regrets.

I'd love to divert into giving V4 a fun time in the water, but my attentions have been returned to Dynamic cloth and hair right now.

Transitioning from "learning" all these things to actually making movies is my overriding concern right now.

::::: Opera :::::

effects of "interactive water" aka "dynamic fluids" can be acheived by a couple programs

the newest release of blender seems the simplest to use, atleast as far as a tub of water, or a glass being poured. i have not tried it for other situations such as a waterfall off a cliff, since i am used to other methods for doing that, or water dripping down a wet body since no events have lead me to trying it yet, but someone most likely will. this option is free

realflow as mentioned above, i have "heard" is good for the effects of water dripping down a wet body, just havent tried, the demo scared me away. this option is free demo, or pay

maya has dynamic fluids, and its one of those programs that would break your wallet and make it scream if you only get within 500 miles of it ;) think i saw it for either $1,500 or $15,000 MSRP, either way i wasnt looking again =P

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2591852&ebot_calc_page#message_2591852

> Quote - Seriously I don't think there's anything you could do short of witchcraft that would get Poser to have a body of water interact realistically with a figure.

Using Blender's Fluid Simulation and a Python script is a long way from Witchcraft (at least I hope so )

What I meant was that water simulations cannot be squeezed out of Poser nativley. I didn't say it couldn't be done using other programs (that would be craaaazy!).

Regardless, I think the humour in my post has been completeley missed. That's the biggest problem with the written word. Sarcasm is generally lost in translation, so to speak.

This Real Flow app looks pretty cool, and the image you posted Becco_UK is a fantastic example.

I'll also have to check out Blender's Fluid simulations.

So much experimentation, so little time! :)

If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards...checkmate!

Ok, I'm trying to do this fresne node thing on a floor to get a reflection instead of doing the reflection/refraction like I've always done. Only the above screenshot is what I get.

I'm using a black and white floor tile, but after applying the fresnel node, the floor becomes completely black without any shine. I have looked at the tutorial at RDNA but I'm still confused :(

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I have answered in the Fresnel tut.

Basically it's not appropriate to use Fresnel here. The floor isn't supposed to be transparent. Should be using Reflect * Edge_Blend, and Diffuse * (1 - Edge_Blend). That and the Diffuse_Value is 0 so the floor coloring has been turned off.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Sorry to bring up an ancient thread, but,...

I tried bagginsbill settings for top and bottom in PoserPro 2010, but when I try to add the Mod math functions node to ColorRamp Input it crashes. I tried it twice and it happened both times; is that a bug or is there a reason for it?

There should never be a crash, so it is a bug. However, mine does not crash. Maybe you are not up to date. Do you have SR1?

Also, is Value_2 set to 0 by accident? Mod is a form of division, and if Value_2 is 0, then you will divide by zero. Do that enough times and we're all going to get sucked into a black hole. Value_2 should be 1.

If that's not it, show me your shader.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Hm. I tried it again on a ballprop in a new document, adding the math function as Add first and setting the values before setting it to Mod and it worked. Copy and pasted it to my original prop and that worked, too.

But if I don't change the values that an Add math node comes up with by default first, Poser crashes. <- Ok, rereading your reply I see it might be the 0 in the 2nd value. Still, a popup saying I cause the world to end might have been more pleasant... It's that old "I didn't save that yet" thing.

That's the newest.

So wait, you're saying if I do exactly the following:

Add a Math node.
Change it's type to mod.

It instantly crashes? No connecting, no opening the node preview, nothing else it crashes immediately?

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

I create a new math functions node from Colorramp, which is an Add node, change it to Mod before changing any values and it crashes. Every time.

Ahh - that's the key - building it off the color ramp. Even that isn't enough to crash, though.

If the color ramp's preview is not opened, then it does not crash. Interesting bug. I will report it to SM.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - If the color ramp's preview is not opened, then it does not crash. Interesting bug. I will report it to SM.

Good to know. Then I can continue fiddling. However, a fix would be lovely. :)

I found also that even if the color ramp preview is closed, it will still crash if the color ramp eventually is connected to the Poser surface and that preview is open.

So - when you make a Math:Mod node, don't connect it to color ramp until you change Value_2.

I tested it with other nodes, such as Blender, and there was no crash. I also tested it with connections to other parameters on the color ramp and it did not crash either. Only when connected to the "Input" parameter does it crash.

Just in case you don't know, you can make a new node unconnected to anything. Use right-click.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - Becco_UK said: I agree Posers' render engine (and materials) are often underated

I so concur.

This picture is off-topic, but the observation about Firefly being underated reminded me of this image I did in November. People think it can't do this stuff. It can. This scene was lit with one IBL (handmade drawing some blobs) and a single infinite light. Look how nice the chrome is, and the water looks just right to me. The water falling from the faucet is just a poser cylinder. The rings are poser torus times 2. All the shaping was done with procedural functions applied to displacement. The render time was just a few minutes.

(Be sure to click to see the details)

thaz beautiful bathwater

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

the Fresnel link was page not found

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

Quote - the Fresnel link was page not found

This is an old thread and some sites have changed their servers resulting in broken links.

If you can post the link you tried that is broken, I can try and track the new one down for you.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?25885-The-Fresnel-Effect-Glass-Paint-Plastic-and-Metal

Fresnel thread

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

haha! I was just coming back to say that I went back to reread this thread because it's an interesting one, and found the broken link and also the new one at RDNA. But you beat me to it!

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Note that I wrote that Fresnel thread at a time that I had only a qualitative understanding of the Fresnel effect - i.e. more reflection at a shallow angle.

Today I know very precisely what the relationship is and have posted several times how to get a near-100% accurate reflection falloff, both with an approximation and with exact equations.

I published a more recent thread that covers many of the same topics as that old thread, but with much greater realism and accuracy.

It is here:

Glossy materials with true Fresnel effect using matmatic

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

i never payed attention to those falloff values before. something more to play with

♥ My Gallery Albums ♥ My YT ♥ Party in the CarrarArtists Forum ♪♪♪ 10 years of Carrara forum ♥ My FreeStuff

i thought it was about time i had a crack at diamond rendering with my new poser....i've downloaded bekkos' diamond and read this thread top to toe, but i think i'm missing something, two points elude me, firstly i presume bb was using the old lapi diamond prop and looking at the screen shot of the top mat on the first page of this thread, i see there is edge blend_2 included in the mat, but no edge blend_1, and if this is indeed correct is the mat purely applied to the top mat or to both top and bottom, secondly with the bekko prop having just the one mat surface i presume the diamond shader works for that as is....sorry to rehash this old thread but ive googled all morning but cant find a more sensible discussion thread........oh yes one last thing, lighting, skydomes/spots/caustics etc, does all remain the same in pp2012 or is there tweaking to be done?

OS: Windows7 64-bit Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz, 2401 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) 6GB Ram
Poser: Poser Pro 2012 SR3.1 ...Poser 8.........Poser5 on a bad day........
Daz Studio Pro 4.5 64bit

Carrara beta 8.5

Modelling: Silo/Hexagon/Groboto V3
Image Editing: PSP V9/Irfanview
Movie Editing. Cyberlink power director/Windows live movie maker

"I live in an unfinished , poorly lit box, but we call it home"

My freestuff

link via my artist page

just spent the last two hours re reading,,,,,,,,,,ignore my questions :( well, all apart from the light effects in PP2012 that is..no wonder BB doesn't respond to my messages lol, he must think i'm an idiot lol

sorry to be a numpty, but i've been struggling following any thread that has links to one that is posted on RDNA as they are all gone, so there are big gaps in following some of these threads....

OS: Windows7 64-bit Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz, 2401 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) 6GB Ram
Poser: Poser Pro 2012 SR3.1 ...Poser 8.........Poser5 on a bad day........
Daz Studio Pro 4.5 64bit

Carrara beta 8.5

Modelling: Silo/Hexagon/Groboto V3
Image Editing: PSP V9/Irfanview
Movie Editing. Cyberlink power director/Windows live movie maker

"I live in an unfinished , poorly lit box, but we call it home"

My freestuff

link via my artist page

The is no caustics in Poser, unfortunately.

I'm not ignoring your questions, but you were in a queue behind about 12 other people.

Glad you figured it out on your own.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

RDNA finished the move to the new server - they should remove that bogus message.

The URL for every thread has changed. I dont' know why - it's software, so it can be modified to handle the mapping of old URL to new URL for all threads. Be that as it may...

I can usually find threads at RDNA using search, and the knowledge that the only author that matters is me. grin Search for words you care about, author=bagginsbill. If that doesn't work, come back here and ask - I usually remember almost every thread and can figure a way to find it.

For example, search for nebulae, author=bagginsbill, and you get:

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?23620-Matmatic-Starfield-for-Space-Renders&highlight=nebulae

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

thanks BB, i wasn't actually inferring that you were ignoring me, more to the point i was inferring that i actually deserved to be ignored for missing out reading the paragraph that mattered..........

OS: Windows7 64-bit Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz, 2401 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) 6GB Ram
Poser: Poser Pro 2012 SR3.1 ...Poser 8.........Poser5 on a bad day........
Daz Studio Pro 4.5 64bit

Carrara beta 8.5

Modelling: Silo/Hexagon/Groboto V3
Image Editing: PSP V9/Irfanview
Movie Editing. Cyberlink power director/Windows live movie maker

"I live in an unfinished , poorly lit box, but we call it home"

My freestuff

link via my artist page

Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL

Subject: Diamonds That Look Like Diamonds in Poser 6 - How?

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL

Subject: Diamonds That Look Like Diamonds in Poser 6 - How?

RosemaryR --------------------------- "This...this is magnificent!" "Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts. Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

RosemaryR --------------------------- "This...this is magnificent!" "Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts. Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."