For your amusement, my latest Poser shader trick.

This is stock M4 and a couple of primitive props. I didn't touch anything on M4 - this is with his out-of-the-box materials.

The right side is looking through a new prop I have devised. I call it the Artistic "Lens".

The pattern doesn't look right reduced, so click for full size.

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That's pretty neat :)

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Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad.

Somewhat of a news print quality.

Cool. Please tell more. Can it do a "hand drawn" look? I wonder if it can do stuff like over or under saturate?

There are tons of things you can do. I've only just started exploring it.

Here is monochrome - precisely (mathematically) the way old TV's did black and white. Not the same as desaturated, but better. (I can do desat as well, but it's not as good.)

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B&W with extra contrast.

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Slightly over saturated.

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Way oversaturated.

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Stark.

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B&W TV complete with scan lines and blue tint.

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No name. Deconstructed? Color Dissolve?

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Monochrome noise.

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Distortion.

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Fibers?

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Scary.

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so how does it work?

Dangit, I meant to do a tutorial on this stuff a long time ago and forgot. Fortunately, BB is much better at tutorials than I am :)

Awesome effects! Might be interested in the B&W one. How'd you do it?

"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate

Weapons of choice:

Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8

I want one. :-)

Quote - No name. Deconstructed? Color Dissolve?

Looks more "Matrix" like

Poserverse The New Home for NYGUY's Freebies

looks like filters from the Gimp or probably Photoshop. Interesting effect.

I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit

anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)

That's really cool stuff. How are you doing it?

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.

The basic setup is very simple.

Load a one-sided square. Scale it up so it is like a screen hanging in front of your whole scene, between the camera and the subject. This is your "lens". You cannot see the scene directly anymore, only through the lens.

Set the square properties to no shadow, and not visible in raytracing.

Go into the material room for the lens (the square).

Set Diffuse_Value=0, Specular_Value = 0.

Add a Refract node and plug it into Alternate_Diffuse. (Or if you prefer, use one of the two-knob channels such as Ambient or Refraction. With such channels, you can have separate controls (and potentially nodes) on the color and the brightness.)

Set the Refract IOR = 1.0.

At this point you can render and your original scene should appear unchanged. You have a neutral lens. Save this in your library for future use as a starter.

Then you go from there playing with the effects.

For example, put an HSV node between the Refract and the root node. Now you can adjust hue, saturation, and brightness for the entire scene. Not only does this simple setup give you many artistic options, but you can also adjust your LIGHT LEVELS all from this one place: HSV.Level.

After you get the hang of that you can start doing more tricky stuff between the Refract node and the root node.

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i think this is fantastic and can make very artistic renders.

but photoshop is more handy. of course if we dont have photoshop then this is the way to go.

Wow! Very nice. The black and white w/contrast boost looks great. I linke the TV and Fiber and the rest too. Very curious.

You can also perform the same operation as post-work gamma correction.

Here's the setup.

Of course, you really should anti-gamma correct all your incoming colors to get this to work really well. Otherwise, it may look washed out.

If you're not going to anti-gamma correct all your incoming material, you can try decreasing the amount of gamma correction. I used 2.2 here in the Math:Div node - try lower numbers like 1.5.

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Here's a workaround.

I inserted an HSV node between the Refract and the gamma correction. Using that I pre-saturate the image and then gamma correct using 1.5 instead of 2.2.

This brings back a lot of the tones that get lost from using bad incoming material with GC.

And, yes, you can do these same effects in post-work. However, I like this better, because:

1) I don't like the extra step of postwork
2) I can see the true final outcome immediately, and can make adjustments in place without having to guess how that will look after I post-work.
3) If I am making an animation, the effects are already done for every frame. Postworking a movie is a lot harder than postworking a still image.

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Check this out. Many Poser users say they just don't know how to get good lighting. It's not the lighting, folks, it's your monitor. You *must* tone-map the image for your monitor.

Here's a render with just a single infinite light at 55%.

Most people would immediately start adding more lights or increase this light's intensity. That's not the problem. There is plenty of light.

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Here is the render with the setup in the post above with GC = 1.5 and the Saturation=1.5.

The realism is much better than you'd get if you just blasted more light at it.

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this gamma correction setup is very interesting. this is better then in photoshop. because there you lose a lot of detail.

Quote - Check this out. Many Poser users say they just don't know how to get good lighting. It's not the lighting, folks, it's your monitor. You must tone-map the image for your monitor.

Here's a render with just a single infinite light at 55%.

Most people would immediately start adding more lights or increase this light's intensity. That's not the problem. There is plenty of light.

they dont listen. htey just dont read.

i sitll see the classic poser renders with the 3 times over bright lighting.

The Gamma stuff is PoserPro? I'll check my P7.

Do you have advise for setting up the LCD on a laptop without calibration hardware or is expecting a descent display on a laptop unrealistic. I tried pulling out my old c.2002 color monitor and plugging the laptop into it but the color seemed really off, it was much darker and warmer than my laptop and fuzzy and blinky, so I gave up on that idea.

I am not the brightest... would you show a screen capture of the set-up for the fiber effect?

Quote - The Gamma stuff is PoserPro? I'll check my P7.
... would you show a screen capture of the set-up for the fiber effect?

PoserPro is not needed for this lens. The GC lens I showed will work all the way back to Poser 5.

I'll post the fiber effect in a minute.

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Oh I forgot the question about calibration.

Laptops displays (both the video card and the actual screen) are usually crap, I think. I've tried calibrating both my laptops to produce consistent looks with my desktop and I can't.

Since I'm on the road almost all the time now, most of my thread posted renders are from my laptop. Quite often I get home and look at my own posts and I'm shocked at what I posted.

My laptop is dark and muddy, so I overexpose a lot of my renders lately.

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Here is the node setup for the fiber effect. Pretty simple.

Play with the numbers to see how you can alter the outcome.

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Here's the node setup for the black-and-white TV with scanlines.

The green color is RGB 77, 149, 28. These add up to 255. Those represent the RGB ratios originally used to map real-life color onto a monochrome tv image.

The Math:Cosine node is doing the lines. Then I have to adjust them to make them positive and produce the correct contour.

The frequency of the lines is that number 1500. Bigger numbers produce more lines. Be careful - you can get interference patterns if the lines start to approach the size of your actual pixels. To make really fine lines, you'll have to increase your render quality quite a bit. You'll want to use smaller Min Shading Rate, and larger Pixel Samples.

I also added some small amount of blue tint to the results - this is in the color setting of the Alternate_Diffuse channel.

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Very helpful. Thank you. Esp, re. RGB 77, 149, 28.

I'm so glad I came to Rosity today and browsed around....this will greatly help a render I've been working on and just can't get to look "right" with the lighting adjustments I've done a million times.

Many thanks BB!

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

Realm of Savage - Poser goodies and so much more!

~~

bill, it's very ingenious IMVHO. I haven't seen this before.

one question - if the figure has got a poser 7.x toon shader applied to its body,
can your lens be adjusted so that it has the effect of adding an edge-blend node
over the toon shader?

the reason I ask is that this might allow one to combine an edge blend (fall-off shader)
layer over the toon shader (sans lines) to get better-looking line work in poser, without
having to export the raw toon shader render and edge-blend renders to photoshop and
combining them there , with the edge-blend render as multiplying layer over said toon layer.

Nope, can't be done.

The lens is like a screen within a screen. You're viewing a picture of what is on that screen. The only information it has to work with is what color is on the screen, and then it gets to modify what that color is.

Any thing like edge detection, blurring, etc. requires that you be able to examine more than one point in the scene. But the lens shader only gets data from one point at a time.

Worse, I have no access to anything but the color of the scene element behind the screen. I can't ask how far away it is, or what direction it is facing, or anything like that. If I could, there are many interesting effects I could do, not just with this lens but with translucent/transparent materials in general. Even better, if I could launch multiple rays of my own, in any direction I wnat, I could implement true subsurface scattering.

The issue of toon lines has come up many times. Even if I could access the edge-blend information of what is behind the screen, it wouldn't help much. I can put a shader directly on the prop and still not do a good job with toon lines. If you could, you'd see better toon shaders already.

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This worked wonders! You can actually see the features on the face now (I fiddled with lighting for a full day trying to get it to look right...and was about ready to give up on this image) I think I'll be using this for all my renders now...more addicting than chocolate. ^_~

Though I'm wondering if I need to make any adjustments to my normal render settings? I have one infinite light (white) set to raytraced shadows, and my simple color-based IBL. (can post those too if needed)

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

Realm of Savage - Poser goodies and so much more!

~~

neato i am trying it now

go that way really fast.
if something gets in your way
turn

hey baggins...can you work with single color channels this way?...say for a faked chromatic aberration effect(by scaling up one of the channels a couple pixels),maybe some vignetting and fish eye lens also

..calling it "Lens" has me thinking of camera stuff :)

Cg Society Portfolio

Quote - This worked wonders! You can actually see the features on the face now (I fiddled with lighting for a full day trying to get it to look right...and was about ready to give up on this image) I think I'll be using this for all my renders now...more addicting than chocolate. ^_~

Though I'm wondering if I need to make any adjustments to my normal render settings? I have one infinite light (white) set to raytraced shadows, and my simple color-based IBL. (can post those too if needed)

Hey that really helped, eh? The face is more clearly defined and the hair is just wow in the after picture. That black skin with only some specular is exactly why you need GC. If you added enough light to bring that out, you'd blow out the hair.

I don't think you need to change any settings. Those are good everyday settings. for 90% of all images they work great. You're using RT shadows and simple lighting, one infinite and one IBL.

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Quote - hey baggins...can you work with single color channels this way?...say for a faked chromatic aberration effect(by scaling up one of the channels a couple pixels),maybe some vignetting and fish eye lens also

..calling it "Lens" has me thinking of camera stuff :)

Hmmm. Chromatic aberration, not with one lens because it only gets to look at one point at a time. CA is a kind of blur and that means integrating data from multiple points in space. I'll have to think about whether or not there is some trick I can do with multiple lenses.

Vignetting and fish eye could be done quite easily.

Remind me over the weekend. I'll look into it. I'll be travelling all day tomorrow (actually sailing) and I'll forget.

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Question - how can you use the lens and still keep more of a "shiny" specular look on certain things? Something added to the alt specular channel on various materials for the figures and such?

The look I got for the full render of the face I posted earlier (Gallery link - there's nakedness too..so don't say I didn't warn ya) was great, and I personally liked how it turned out....just had a thought on like hair highlights and similar such items for future renders.

Don't mind experimenting on my own...just sometimes it's nice to have a jumping off point.

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

Realm of Savage - Poser goodies and so much more!

~~

So many great and innovative ideas... THANKS!

-- Jeff

Tried it out earlier. Looks nice, but it has some problems with colored lights and you need to do a bit of tweaking and fine tuning if you want to use a background picture... you have to put it in the refraction node to see it and then you've got to tweak the lens and the node to get it lined up right.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

I prefer to put background images on a one-sided square. That way they're real and can be seen by reflections and refractions. When you use the Poser "Background" for the background image, it's like that's what is printed on your "paper" before the render is drawn on it, which has many drawbacks.

What's the issue with colored lights?

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Yeah, I'm probably going to have to do that with the backgrounds in the future if I plan to keep using gamma correction.

I had a few blue lights and the shadows became redish. So I'd almost need to make them white and then colorize things with the HSV filter you were talking about. I haven't had too much time to go back and tweak things yet as I only did a quick render. I also noticed what you said about a scene having too muc lights; when adding the filter to the last image I put in my gallery and not doing anything else, the difference was huge.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

My champion workflow for B&W right now is to render out of PoserPro openEXR format. Create an Action in Photoshop to adjust the Exposure/Offset/Gamma and Channel Mixer Red/Green/Blue->Monochrome and then set the mode back to 8-bit.

Apply Action to the image sequence folder through PS Automation.

The power of adjusting an openEXR image in 32-bit mode is wonderful.

::::: Opera :::::

How does one do the gamma correction in Poser 6? Where does one look?

I don't see the anything under render setting to indicate gamma correction or maybe I am not looking in the right place...

===========================================================

OS: Windows 11 64-bit
Poser: Poser 11.3 ...... Units: inches or meters depends on mood
Bryce: Bryce Pro 7.1.074
Image Editing: Corel Paintshop Pro
Renderer: Superfly, Firefly

9/11/2001: Never forget...

Smiles are contagious... Pass it on!

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday

Quote - How does one do the gamma correction in Poser 6? Where does one look?

I don't see the anything under render setting to indicate gamma correction or maybe I am not looking in the right place...

There isn't any GC in Poser 6 or 7 - only Poser Pro has it built in.

The lens posted here is one way to get it in Poser 5 through 7. Go back to page one of this thread and search for "gamma". I posted a version of the lens material that will do a decent job of making the darker areas brighter. This is pretty easy to set up and requires no other changes to your scene. The downside is that it adds render time to have to use refraction and raytracing. The other is the results aren't quite as good because your incoming material (image maps and color in node parameters) have not been anti-gamma corrected first.

The other way to do it is more work but more accurate. You have to use extra nodes in every material - every one - to do the incoming anti-gamma and the outgoing gamma. I've posted about this a few times, but it's not really a great workflow if you have a lot of materials that need changing. It's no problem for me to do that, since I have tools to speed up the process such as matmatic and VSS. Also, I tend to replace every material anyway, even if I didn't make any of the props or figures I use.

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Quote - I had a few blue lights and the shadows became redish. So I'd almost need to make them white and then colorize things with the HSV filter you were talking about. I haven't had too much time to go back and tweak things yet as I only did a quick render. I also noticed what you said about a scene having too muc lights; when adding the filter to the last image I put in my gallery and not doing anything else, the difference was huge.

Hmm. That doesn't happen to me. Can you give some more info about what you're doing? What are your lights - type, position, color, intensity?

What is the shader setup on your lens?

I just did an experiment with a blue light and it came out fine. I'll show you in my next post.

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(Click for full size) Here is Simon. No fancy shaders were used. I simply loaded him from the library and I made only one small change to the skin. By default he has no specular settings turned on. I used Specular_Color=WHITE, Specular_Value = .3, and Highlight_Size = .1. Of course with a more interesting shader the results would be better, but this is good for a basic demo.

The light is a single infinite light from the upper right with ray-traced shadows. The light color is RGB 153,153,255. The light intensity is 50%.

I'm showing two renders - on the left without the lens, on the right with the lens. The lens setup is that on page 1, with the HSV Saturation at 2.0 and the gamma correction factor also at 2.0.

The un-corrected image on the left is extremely dark (at least on my monitor). It should look like that. If the figure is well lit without the lens, you are using way too much light.

This render with a single light is so we can see the contribution of lighting from the blue light. Next I'll add a small amount of IBL for ambient lighting.

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(Click for full size) Here I've added an HDR IBL at only 5%!

Again, left is without the lens, right is with the lens.

While there is a lot more red now (from the white IBL and natrual skin color) I don't see the extreme redness you showed.

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Just for reference, here is another pair of renders with the infinite changed from blue to white

Since his right shoulder is in shadow and only lit by the IBL, the colors on that part of the body are identical in the last two renders. Only the parts being lit by the infinite have changed.

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Here's a test render using two infinite lights both are at 80% intensitity. As you can see, the shadows on her right side (left part of the picture) are reddish as is the white part of her eyes.

The first one has a slider RGB of .25, .50, 1.0 and is at xRotation -30.
The second one has a slider RGB of .70, .80, 1.0 and is yRot 50.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

Here's the same render without the lens. Note the shadows don't have that pronounced red tinge and the white part of her eyes are white.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

Finally, here is my lens set up.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

And here's something I discovered accidentally when leaving value2 of the power node black.

I used a single white diffuse light on this one.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

Quote - Finally, here is my lens set up.

If you unchecked on the root node: Reflection_Lite_Mult, you should see an improvement. I stumbled upon that accidentally while doing mat work.

Remember reading about it being no good or unhelpful .

===========================================================

OS: Windows 11 64-bit
Poser: Poser 11.3 ...... Units: inches or meters depends on mood
Bryce: Bryce Pro 7.1.074
Image Editing: Corel Paintshop Pro
Renderer: Superfly, Firefly

9/11/2001: Never forget...

Smiles are contagious... Pass it on!

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday

Quote - And here's something I discovered accidentally when leaving value2 of the power node black.

I used a single white diffuse light on this one.

This is no mystery. If you'll recall from math, any non-zero number raised to the zero power is 1. That is

x ^^ 0 == 1 for all x != 0

Now if Value_2 is black, that is numerically 0. Voila - all white no matter the incoming color value.

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Except in poser, if you don't play around with it a bit, you'll end up getting this. Again, I was having problems with red. I also tried one with a light that was Red - 0.0, Green - 1.0, Blue -1.0 and her top came out aqua.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

I think I know what's happening. Are you using the DAZ skin shader that comes with V4? That shader was written by face_off and uses a technique for faking sub-surface scattering I published a couple years ago.

The shader adds some red to the skin in areas that are weakly lit. The amount of red is very small but is effectively already gamma corrected. What I mean by that is that the amount of red introduced is just enough to be visible in a render that is not gamma corrected. Typically in areas of shadow it is about 3 to 10% red. This doesn't seem like much and with normal rendering is barely visible, because of how values like that display on your monitor. A 3% red value shows on your monitor as a true brightness of .044%. A 10% red value displays a true brightness of .63% on your monitor. These are tiny increments and are just enough to give the sense of sub-surface scattering.

But when you gamma correct those values using a gamma of 2.2, they are restored to the actual brightness of 3 to 10% red. That is very bright red!

I'm afraid that this is one of those cases where failure to anti-gamma correct the incoming material is causing problems. That's why I suggested that if you are going to do GC with the lens, you can't go with the full 2.2 value. Any skin shader that is already taking into account the severely decreased amount of red that shows on monitors will result in way too much red.

The same business is happening on the eyewhite. I'm pretty sure there is SSS being applied there too.

I think that the best you can do with lens-based GC is to stay clear of the full 2.2 value - you have to compromise.

As an alternative, might I suggest that you scrap the lens approach, and try my VSS figure shaders? They are fully self-gamma correcting and do not require the lens to produce realistic lighting and shadows on human figures.

Of course, then your other items in the scene need to be modified to match. You want to use gamma-correcting shaders on everything. The lens approach is quick and dirty, but limiting. Gamma correcting shaders are much more powerful. I know its a lot of work to convert all your existing shaders to GC shaders, but that's the best approach for "pro" work.

Eventually, VSS will provide single-click solutions to turn most any existing shader into a GC 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)

Andy Feller recently posted this render using VSS. I think the realism is outstanding. (Nudity)

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1791637

BastBlack did a cool portrait of a pale Bishy here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1771653

I like this one by Honey_ZA:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1763329

If you want to see more, click this to search the gallery for VSS:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/search.php?query=vss&section_id=&genre_id=&sort=post_date&use_age=yes&older_age=1&older_units=day&newer_age=&newer_units=day&username=

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Bill, for most of the images I've played around with for the lens I've just added a character pose from my library. So unless they turn off that shader, I'm going to have to guess that I am using it.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

Very interesting, thankyou. Can see I've got some new games to try

Fantastic BB!!!
The first effect you post is great, is it hard to be done? can it be done using colors?
The general procedure is the one used to get the ghost effect, isn't it?

Well BB, this is interesting; I stumbled into this thread and 3 pages on, I'm actually learning something in Poser.

I can't wait to try it out now.

JB

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Asus N50-600 - Intel Core i5-8400 CPU @ 2.80GHz · Windows 10 Home/11 upgrade 64-bit · 16GB DDR4 RAM · 1TB SSD and 1TB HDD; Graphics: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 - 6GB GDDR5 VRAM; Software: Poser Pro 11x

Excellent shader, Bill!

Heck, I'm trying to work out how to fix it so I can parent the "Lens" to any camera I choose lol.

Thanks BB, I'm getting great results with this. :)

Silke

Silke, that's a good idea! Parenting the "lens" to any camera. Gonna try that.

===========================================================

OS: Windows 11 64-bit
Poser: Poser 11.3 ...... Units: inches or meters depends on mood
Bryce: Bryce Pro 7.1.074
Image Editing: Corel Paintshop Pro
Renderer: Superfly, Firefly

9/11/2001: Never forget...

Smiles are contagious... Pass it on!

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday

> Quote - hey baggins...can you work with single color channels this way?...say for a faked chromatic aberration effect(by scaling up one of the channels a couple pixels),maybe some vignetting and fish eye lens also > > ..calling it "Lens" has me thinking of camera stuff :)

Chromatic Aberration, at your service.

Here is the shader setup. With 3 Refracts, it's a bit slow. You can probably get away with only two - use cyan (blue+green) instead of just green and delete the whole blue section.

Anyway, this works but doing filtered refrections for each channel, with different IOR on each.

The bottom right node controls the overall amount of aberration.

The focal length of the camera will affect how much aberration there is. I used a 20mm here, so I'm getting a lot of aberration. (It increases with the angle between the camera and the lens.) If you're using a longer focal length, the rays are more parallel. In such cases you will have to increase the control value.

The amount of aberration is zero in the middle and increases to maximum in the corners. I don't know if real cameras work that way or not.

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Test image without aberration.

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And the same render with CA enabled.

If you click on both in a tabbed browser, you can flip-test between them pretty easily.

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Using a very similar technique, we get spherical aberration. (I think) Blurring in the corners.

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Rendering SA.

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Here I started with the spherical aberration and at the bottom I added more nodes to do vignetting.

For this to work, your lens must be square and centered in front of your camera.

You must adjust the lens so it just fills the viewport of the camera.

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Here is the effect if vignetting + SA.

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Very interesting...

===========================================================

OS: Windows 11 64-bit
Poser: Poser 11.3 ...... Units: inches or meters depends on mood
Bryce: Bryce Pro 7.1.074
Image Editing: Corel Paintshop Pro
Renderer: Superfly, Firefly

9/11/2001: Never forget...

Smiles are contagious... Pass it on!

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday

Hmmm, I thought about it a little more. The vignetting should be maximum exactly in the corner, not before. So put 1/sqrt(2) = .7071 into the Blending value.

I also added a Bias node to delay the darkening a bit.

Then you can darken it even more.

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Improved vignetting.

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wow that's really impressive Bagginsbill!..thanks a lot,I'll be hoping to have a play with this during the week.
it always blows me away seeing the stuff you can do in the material room.

good job!

Cheers
Stefan

Cg Society Portfolio

Quote - The basic setup is very simple.

At this point you can render and your original scene should appear unchanged. You have a neutral lens. Save this in your library for future use as a starter.

Not certain exactlywhat i am doing wrong here.
Followed you instructions Step By Step.

My Material Room setup looks like yours.
When i render (PoserPro) all I get is a black scene.

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
Thomas Jefferson

You have to enable ray-tracing. The lens works by using a Refract node. You have to have one more bounce than you usually need because of it. If you were rendering a scene without ray-tracing, then you need to enable it and add at least one bounce.

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 - You have to enable ray-tracing. The lens works by using a Refract node. You have to have one more bounce than you usually need because of it. If you were rendering a scene without ray-tracing, then you need to enable it and add at least one bounce.

Happy Holidays BB

Many Thanks, that did the trick.

DR

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
Thomas Jefferson

Very nice! I'm adding this to the Material Room Bookmarks thread.

"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 had an odd experience with the gamma correction setup. I had a scene with a reflective water surface. With the lens on, the reflection wasn't there, and you could see below the water plane. It might have had to do with an intersection between the lens and the water plane? Time to play around some more.

AnAardvark,

The lens works by using a Refract node. In Poser, Reflections and Refractions count as a ray-trace "bounce" and there is a limit to these. You control the limit. If you have the limit at 1, then the only raytrace is going to be through the lens - the next one, bouncing off the water won't happen.

So I will quote myself from 3 posts ago, only this time in big letters so you all pay attention.

You have to have one more bounce than you usually need because of it. If you were rendering a scene without ray-tracing, then you need to enable it and add at least one bounce.

I hope that helps. Show us your render! I love to see renders.

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You are correct. I went back to my saved file and realized that I hadn't set it up for the final render. (Usually I do all the prelims with a single bounce.)

Anyone know why the pillow turns out okay with gamma correction and saturation applied via the lens, but the bed still doesn't look right?

I have a question about lenses... is it possible to simulate a toon look with them so I can just use the lens to make a toon scene?

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

bkmk

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

Quote - I have a question about lenses... is it possible to simulate a toon look with them so I can just use the lens to make a toon scene?

Not really.

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 haven't seen any mention of this in the thread so far, but I came across a side effect of using the Artistic Lens.

For the last day or so I've been banging my head against the wall trying to get Poser to output an image that puts the figure on a transparent background so that I can render the background separately and apply post-work to it (fake depth of field) and then composite the figure on top of the background. Normally, the render just has to be on a black background and if you export it as a TIF or PNG, the black is interpreted as a transparency and everything is fine. But when I use the Artistic Lens to apply gamma correction and an anti-gamma saturation boost, either the black level or the alpha channel is affected and the background stays black and the alpha channel is one big block the size of the whole image, so selecting just the figure to do a composite of both renders isn't possible.

It should have occured to me sooner what was happening, but this is the first time I've actually done anything with compositing renders and alpha channels, so I thought I was doing something else wrong.

So it would seem that I'm going to have to stick to using Poser Pro's gamma correction function and apply the saturation boost in Photoshop. Hopefully the final result is close to what the Artistic Lens is capable of.

As far as Poser is concerned, seeing the background through refraction is not at all the same thing as directly seeing the background. So those pixels are no longer considered transparent.

If you're going to composite in post, then you don't need the lens at all, do you. I mean, the point of the lens was to avoid postwork. If you intend to do postwork, particularly compositing, then why bother with the lens? To do a proper job of compositing, you'd want to adjust levels and tone the render against the background. My preference would be to avoid postwork altogether, which means I always render with my background in place in 3D, on a one-sided square or on an environment sphere. If I were of a mind to, I could also render in a picture frame, or signature, or other things.

If you have Poser Pro, then using PPro GC is superior to the lens. When you enable PPro GC, it will also fix your incoming material. Which means you won't get washout, which means you won't need the saturation boost. I suggested using the lens for GC when you do not have Poser Pro and you have to GC in post.

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Quote - If you're going to composite in post, then you don't need the lens at all, do you. I mean, the point of the lens was to avoid postwork. If you intend to do postwork, particularly compositing, then why bother with the lens?

for dozens of reasons. because it takes about 2 seconds to do background blur in post and ages to get grainy blur in Poser, and your render takes more than a day without it. because no existing figure has joints that don't need a good amount of post. because you need to correct gross anatomical errors. just putting any Vicky's arm above her head generally means you need severe post to deal with the huge gap that shouldn't be there between her arm and head because, somehow, her arms end up way too long and her elbow too high. because dynamic cloth with raytraced shadows is often impossible to use without getting artifacts or having a completely unhelpful bias. because most textures have awful pubic hair and a completely and painfully unrealistic pubic region, and some of us like to do nudes. because the eyebrows don't match the hair color and the easiest fix is a few seconds of postwork. because you want to depict someone with naturally curly hair, and all the 3d curly hair is awful or in ringlets (both mesh and dynamic). because you don't want to spend hours morphing to get your conforming clothes to not look inflated and unnatural. because you don't want to spend hours morphing to get your dynamic clothes to have better wrinkles than Poser's cloth room can provide. because you don't want to spend time morphing a tiny bit of poke through. because you like the cloth sim you have and don't want to alter it or spend time morphing just to account for a tiny bit of poke through.

because professional photographers pretty much never put their stuff out without tons of postwork, so why should we?

i use GC materials all the time now, and i've never done less than 8 hours of postwork on my images with them. and mostly much, much more.

Quote - > Quote - I have a question about lenses... is it possible to simulate a toon look with them so I can just use the lens to make a toon scene?

Not really.

Okay thanks for the reply... I was hoping there was another way to do toon renders.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

cobaltdream,

You seem to be arguing a point that I did not make. At least I think I didn't make it. The gist of your post seems to be why we need postwork, as though I argued against postwork. I never said you can skip postwork. I asked why you need the lens if you're going to postwork anyway.

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)

right. i use Poser 6, and assuming it works in 6, it would be a lot easier to use the lens than alter every single material in the scene (though not necessarily better results?). all the reasons i gave for doing postwork don't change anything that you'd want to use the lens for. including compositing, because you might want your color to be right but blur need the alpha channel to blur the background.

I hear ya, I just mean that it is easy enough to do GC and saturation adjustments to your render in post if you're going there anyway.

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i dunno. i've found the better my render is to begin with, the better it is after post. or rather, the closer it is to what i want. i spend a lot of time painting hair, but it's always better if i have a good base hair to begin with. as a result i've spent a lot of time on my hair shader. and the only GC correction i can find in Photoshop isn't as good as just using GC materials, but maybe i don't know the right place to look.

basically, that's not what i've found. i'm not saying that i know enough to be definitive, but i've definitely found doing as much as i can in the render to give me results i like better. even for more illustrated looks.

I'm with you on that. I suppose I'm just being contrary with myself in this case. I actually do not know how to do GC in Photoshop and get the same results I get with shader math, or the lens.

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Coming in extremely late for this.. BagginsBill.. You've been my HERO for a long time, and this just proves why!

I love this, especially the B/W one.. I've been wondering for a LONG time if there was a way of actually making Black & white images in Poser. Not just desaturating them afterwards in Photoshop, but rendering them that way. You've shown me the way!

Ah I KNEW coming back to Poser after a hiatus would be a good idea.. New and cool things are bound to crop up!

Gawd I've missed you guys!

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - I have a question about lenses... is it possible to simulate a toon look with them so I can just use the lens to make a toon scene?

Not really.

Okay thanks for the reply... I was hoping there was another way to do toon renders.

I'm wondering (actually thinking aloud here).. what if you combined this lens thing with the Z-toon technique? - the one PhilC came up with years ago, scaling the Z-axis to almost-zero thereby giving a toon effect even in Poser 4?

What if? Give it a try.

Actually I can make a lens that does toon shading. I just can't make it draw outlines the way a human would.

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)

While it should be possible to get the lens to do quantising of colour, there's no way it can be made to do the outlining as that requires an edge blend setup on the object because that's the only way the renderer can find the edge.

Quote - As far as Poser is concerned, seeing the background through refraction is not at all the same thing as directly seeing the background. So those pixels are no longer considered transparent.

If you're going to composite in post, then you don't need the lens at all, do you. I mean, the point of the lens was to avoid postwork. If you intend to do postwork, particularly compositing, then why bother with the lens? To do a proper job of compositing, you'd want to adjust levels and tone the render against the background. My preference would be to avoid postwork altogether, which means I always render with my background in place in 3D, on a one-sided square or on an environment sphere. If I were of a mind to, I could also render in a picture frame, or signature, or other things.

If you have Poser Pro, then using PPro GC is superior to the lens. When you enable PPro GC, it will also fix your incoming material. Which means you won't get washout, which means you won't need the saturation boost. I suggested using the lens for GC when you do not have Poser Pro and you have to GC in post.

Ah, I was under the impression that the gamma correction results were the same with either method, but doing the saturation boost in Poser with the Lens was better than doing it in Photoshop, but even that isn't necessary. I guess I've been needlessly increasing my render times for a while now. Good to know.

BB -- I'm having some issues with using the Gamma Correct lens (one with the hsv node) that's been putting me off my render-fu. (I'm also at work right now....so images will have to wait...sorry)

I end up with my characters having glowing eyes like they're in some crapy B vampire movie...which would be great if I was rendering crapy vampires....however, I'm not. It's like there's something on the ambient channel when there isn't and it's completely off. (unless I've missed something else on one of the other eye materials on the figures I've used...completely possible) There's no hint of the eye texture, just a washed out glowy look - even when it's more of a closeup shot.

I don't have a lot of options for doing it within P6....unless I do it in post, but I'm rather lazy and the most I want to do after the render is done is stick my signature on it and make thumbnails...

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

Realm of Savage - Poser goodies and so much more!

~~

Well, of course I'm guessing since I don't know what you have going.

If you are using Ambient Occlusion on the eyes, it is typical that the AO darkens them considerably. In a normal render, you'd probably boost the Diffuse_Value to compensate, trying to keep the overall brightness, while showing some of the AO effect to give the eye some depth.

When I say "boost" I mean simply that the current value is too high. With GC, even darkened eyes will not be dark anymore. You'd want to un-boost the diffuse reflection in such cases.

If you're not using AO, this could still be the case. It's just a matter of what half-assed workaround was being applied to make the eyes appear to be the correct brightness when viewed on a computer monitor. Such choices turn into over-compensation once the GC lens is applied.

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 will experiment some more when I get home and post some pictures (I just made myself post from work because I keep forgetting in the middle of my frustrations with Poser recently....)

It's probably some material setting I haven't even thought of or some little thing I've missed, just that after rendering, futzing, rendering and repeating such for hours I throw the towel in and go read a book. If I render without the GC lens, you can see the eye textures, but then the rest of the scene is rather "blah"...and with it, everything else looks fine, I just have odd glowy eyes.

But will be back later with images so I can hopefully get whatever is going on sorted out and fixed.

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

Realm of Savage - Poser goodies and so much more!

~~

Ok...am back. Fresh scene that I hadn't fiddled with yet. Mike4 with the Sliman texture and Salsa hair.

The skin tone on the corrected side is great - except for the eyes having gone totally funky and the oddness with the hair prop (and a couple others where there's no hair to cover the forehead show the same thing...forgot about those earlier).

I have one simple color IBL at 20% and a white infinate at 93% (little high I know, but I forgot to turn it down when I rendered) No AO because I generally forget about it...99.9% of the time.

And this is usually where I give up and find a book to read...because I have no idea where to start on what to change as none of my past experiments have seemed to work all that well. Eyes don't like me, hairs don't like me.../sigh

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

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~~

It looks like the iris is ok, but the sclera is messed up.

At first I was thinking there might be a problem with the EyeSurface material, but that covers the whole eye, so I don't think that's it.

I'm curious what the shaders are on the eyewhite. I'm wondering if it somehow mis-uses reflection, and that whatever it's trying to do is being prevented because you only have maybe 1 ray-trace bounce, and that got used up by the lens.

In general the lens is going to mean that any ray-tracing bouncing effect, such as reflection or refraction, is going to need one more bounce than it used to.

Can you show me the node setup for the sclera?

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My typical render settings (they're on page 2 or 3 of this thread) have raytrace bounce set at two...would it be better to increase it anyway?

Here's how the vendor set the sclera up....and it makes absolutely no sense to me /blush

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~~

Interesting. This person has been reading my postings on how to manage AO strength in a material. There is also a Bias node, something else I posted about. It allows for more direct control of the AO shadow evolution. It is, however, acting as a pass-through at the moment, with the Bias being .5.

Can you show me what is in the Image_Map_4 that goes to transparency - just open image map node previews so i can see the patterns in them. Otherwise that's a total mystery to me as to what is in there. I need to see the image. If it is all white it doesn't matter.

Also, I'd like to see the EyeSurface material, please.

I might ask for cornea and iris later. If it's handy to show those while you're at it, do 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)

There's something terribly clever going on here. I'll know better when i see what's in that transparency map.

I'm noticing that there is a bright red circle in the color map. I'm wondering if there is some intentional leaking of that via the use of transparency. In which case, this is another example of a technique for faking SSS that is going haywire. The amount of red is effectively already gamma corrected. By adding the GC lens, we're doubling up on that.

Try disconnecting the Image_Map_4 from all the transparency channels, and set all 3 of them to 0.

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Sorry I didn't get back sooner...will do some more fiddling and post the rest of the materials tomorrow evening. (got distracted with other things earlier)

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

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~~

Sclera transmap

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Eye surface setup

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Cornea setup

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And iris setup

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And what happens when, on the sclera, you disconnect nodes from all transparency channels and set those to 0?

By the way, the transmap is white only where the sclera is. Which means it is doing nothing. You can delete 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)

You can delete the AO stuff from the iris. It is neither useful nor realistic. Light reaching the iris is collected and bent by the cornea, which makes it pretty much evenly lit no matter what.

If you don't want AO on the sclera, disconnect those too.

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 didn't have time to test adjustments for a render...just woke up early enough that I figured I'd get these posted before leaving for work.

So will be a bit, but will see what happens when I get home this evening.

Thanks for helping on this, was really starting to drive me crazy.

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

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~~

Ok, all transparency off on the sclera, and AO taken off the iris. The iris is looking better, but the eyewhite is still...not white. (rather interesting effect at times I guess...)

Need to fiddle with the transparency settings on the hair prop as well and figure out what's going on there...and why it's only a few of them when I use the lens. =P

Crazy alien chick FTW! (yeah....right....)

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~~

bagginsbill can you please show me how to get the efect in your first post, it looks fantastic, and I try and try but can't get not even close that good.
Thank you!

Here ya go.

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)

Thank you very much!!!! :-)

i love 'distortion'.....!!!!

-s/.

Here's "Distortion". It's very simple. It works by modulating the index of refraction.

Because the camera looks straight through the middle of the lens, the distortion there is minimal. As you look towards the edges, it increases because more bending happens there.

Therefore, adjusting the position and size of the lens with respect to the camera will alter the effect. If the lens is closer, the edges are at a more shallow angle, and will distort more.

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I have a question for bagginsbill. is there any way to make the lens blur the image? ie the render will come out blurred, and is it possible to control the blur amount????

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

Hello all,

i hope my question is not off topic, but i tried to understand Gammacorrection all day long and searched the net, but i don`t get what it does... (i even follwed the mathematics in wikipedia but args :D)

I have Poser Pro.
I have a single white light intensity 100% with victoria 4 base.
I render without gammacorrection ticked in rendersettings: the image is a little intensive but ok.
I turn gammacorrection on with value 2.2 -> V4 looks desaturated and a little greenish, more like a goblin and somehow "flatter" .

What does the gammacorrection and why to gammacorrect when it messes the output?

Thanks for reading ;)

Saying that gamma correction messes the output is a little like saying using a hearing aid when you are not hearing impaired messes the sound up. That's correct, using a hearing aid messes sound up IF YOU DON'T NEED A HEARING AID.

But your monitor is not able to render linear colors correctly using linear color values. Furthermore, complaining that a 100% light looks bad when gamma corrected is like saying listening to a stereo that is already loud and also using a hearing aid is too loud.

The only reason you're using a 100% light is because without gamma correction, only brightly lit things look close to correct.

There is a diagram explaining the phenomenon in this thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3388435

If you're using gamma correction you don't need lights at 100%. Not even close.

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didn't you say you were using an infinite at 270% in addition to your IBL in your outdoor images?

Quote - didn't you say you were using an infinite at 270% in addition to your IBL in your outdoor images?

Yes, what of it. That was because I was trying to simulate what is called "over exposing" on a camera, by about 1 and 1/2 stops. (Roughly a factor of 2.8 more than a normal exposure)

I was not doing it to force my render into a range of illumination that looked "less wrong". Rather I was doing that because I was simulating a render in broad daylight, which means directional light is about 7 to 8 times brighter than the ambient light. Since my ambient light was on average at a level of about 40%, that lead to a "sun" intensity of 270%, 40% * 7.

This not art - it is physics. I'm just using the information I know about how light works, particularly in photography. When rendering to simulate a photograph, you must create the same conditions. When rendering for arbitrary art reasons, you can do otherwise, but I was doing aviation photorealism on a bright, sunny day.

And, just so you know, if I did not have gamma correction turned on, that would have totally blown out my render. Not only does GC brighten dark things, it also darkens bright things. Bet you didn't know that.

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Quote - I have a question for bagginsbill. is there any way to make the lens blur the image? ie the render will come out blurred, and is it possible to control the blur amount????

I did blur earlier in this thread, but it was not a general blur, rather a blur like is produced by a less-than-perfect lens. That means almost no blur in the center, more in the corners.

Did you want something else?

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The reason i ask about the blur effect was that i had an idea...
DOF in poser is incredibly slow, as those who have tried it will know, and doing depth masks and moving them to photoshop etc is annoyingly time consuming, so i thought......
what about making several inward facing spheres each with the lens material on them but with a blur effect on each one.... then depending on where objects are positioned (ie between spheres) depends on there blurred effect. and hopefully a faster and cheaper version of DOF....
i did try altering the refract node (plugged into the alternate diffuse)softness value and quality but this has two problems.... 1st is it increases the time of the render which wasn't the point and 2nd is the refract not on the closest sphere to the camera negates the effects of all the spheres further out from the camera.... so is there a fast and more stable way of doing this and is this a good idea????
I hope when poser 8 comes along they will make a fast realtime DOF....

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

Hello it´s me again ;)
first, thanks for your advice,
I spend some time understanding the diagrams... it stayed with trying to ;)

What i did so far... (and please dont laugh at me, i simply dont know better)
I "tried" to calibrate my monitor to a gamma of 2.2 using greytone testimages on the net, hoping we can now speak from equal prequisites.

i rendered props and voila, on high as well as on low intensities they are, at least as far as i can judge, more realistic with gamma correction.

Now it comes to humans ;)
on some intensities (10%-20%) gc doesnt look froggy, but better. (but its too dark to show much anything.
below 10% intensity here eyes look glowing... erm.
above 20% she looks green and it looks far worse then rendered without gc.

now my question... if i want to make a render with just an infinite light, nothing else, why cant i do a bright image with gamma?

Quote -
Yes, what of it. That was because I was trying to simulate what is called "over exposing" on a camera, by about 1 and 1/2 stops. (Roughly a factor of 2.8 more than a normal exposure)

I was not doing it to force my render into a range of illumination that looked "less wrong". Rather I was doing that because I was simulating a render in broad daylight, which means directional light is about 7 to 8 times brighter than the ambient light. Since my ambient light was on average at a level of about 40%, that lead to a "sun" intensity of 270%, 40% * 7.

This not art - it is physics. I'm just using the information I know about how light works, particularly in photography. When rendering to simulate a photograph, you must create the same conditions. When rendering for arbitrary art reasons, you can do otherwise, but I was doing aviation photorealism on a bright, sunny day.

quote from previous post:

Quote - If you're using gamma correction you don't need lights at 100%. Not even close.

so this is the problem people have when they ask you about gamma correction and lights: they say it's not working properly, because the Poser lights at default are designed to work without gamma correction. meaning the brightly lit scenes that are most popular here are acheived with one light at about 100% or more at lower intensity. and then you say they don't need lights at 100% or even close to that. so when they try it, they don't get at all the results they want.

the point is that for the bright lighting most people seem to want to acheive, you had to boost your light to more than double 100%. that's important information for a lot of users, and your statement sounded as if you were saying you don't ever need lights at 100% or even close. not, you don't need your lights at 100% to achieve realism, which is what you seem to have meant.

i think you're expecting people to not follow you as closely as they need to to be able to move forward. or to do too much advanced work on their own. and to think renders that don't look like they want and possibly don't look right to them at in general do look right. me, i make my lights what i need (or at least as close as i can), but most people aren't willing to spend as much time on lights as i am.

Quote - And, just so you know, if I did not have gamma correction turned on, that would have totally blown out my render. Not only does GC brighten dark things, it also darkens bright things. Bet you didn't know that.

yes, i did. from months ago, when i was first playing with it. the non-linear response makes handling the lights a huge PITA at either end of the extremes of lighting, and generally makes it harder to make lights with a significant (to me) differential. from my totally unstructured, random test renders in the process of making images, from what i could tell, when a light hit something squarely so it was fully illuminated by that light, it was really hard to get darker than a certain point, requiring almost absurdly tiny differences to approach black. and it's almost equally hard to get very bright. my first real GC image had one bright light from above and one dim light from the side, and i never could get the side light dark enough for my satisfaction. iirc, i went below 1%. conversely, i think the brighter light was over 100%. i'd really have to double check, and i was using spots with falloff, but the dim light was further away. i haven't been able to blow a picture out yet, either. not that i've tried, but there are a few overexposed (i've only known photographers to use the term to mean a photo with a blown out area, so that's how i use it) portraits in my references i'd like to take swing at, and i know i'll be working with absolutely enormous numbers.

when i have to type in either decimal point changes or changes by the tens or even more for every adjustment to work as dark or bright as i might like, i wish the controls worked differently. basically, controls with a linear scale that don't have a linear response are hard to use. which is why people complain. imho, it's worth the trouble, but it isn't intuitive or (in some cases) easy to get the response you want.

oh, and it's not just that without GC, Poser looks better with strong ambient lighting. personally, it was my low-light images that were strongest and most photoreal way back in Poser Pro Pack days. it's just what people want. look at fashion magazine covers. you'll see lots of white and plain light backgrounds and bright lights. it's a pinup/commercial image look, and it's by far the most popular style of lighting here.

Hi CD. I've been pondering your post for a few days.

With regard to the claim I made about "you don't ever need 100%" I meant "to get your figure lit indoors." Of course if you're doing a scene which is supposed to model the reality of a situation where the dominant light source is 10 times brighter than the ambient light, AND you're simulating a camera exposure value that is adjusted to the ambient light, then of course you'd have a light source that is way over 100%, as I did.

Meanwhile, I've been studying your issue about how hard it is to get dark with GC.

Guess what. I think you're right. I think Poser Pro is f'ed up, and the approach I took to mimic the Pro GC is also f'ed up.

Essentially, the point is this:

GC(2.2) does NOT equal sRGB. OH MY GOD.

It has taken me a few days to work out why and when this really matters. In a nutshell, when you're dealing with very dark things, GC(2.2) is too bright if you're going to display it on an sRGB monitor.

All the stuff I read about GC as the way to achieve accurate colors on a monitor is wrong, and I've been foolishly believing it instead of reading the specs and doing my own experiments.

I've now come to the conclusion that GC(2.2) and sRGB have a lot in common, and for most lighting situations they are enough the same that you can't really tell the difference. But in low light, you can tell the difference, and quite easily.

Kudos to you, you have a f'ing eagle eye. :) I didn't see it until I went looking for it, deeply.

I'll post more on this, soon.

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Here's a quickie demo. Click for full size.

Each row uses a different color space correction scheme.

Top row is linear - no correction.
Middle row is GC(2.2).
Bottom is sRGB, in shaders, built today after I studied the sRGB specification very closely.

The first column is with 128% infinite light in front and a 64% infinite light in back. These lights are rotated 20 degrees around y, and the back one is 20 degrees up in x.

As you go left to right, each column has half the light of the previous column.

So they are 128%, 64%, 32%, 16%, 8%, 4%, 2%, 1%, .5%.

The top row drops off to essentially black way too fast. That's why we want some color space conversion.

For months I've promoted GC(2.2) as the solution. That's the middle row. But look at the last few columns. They're too bright! And also, the second and third are slightly too dark, believe it or not.

The third row is new - you've never seen this before because I've never built it before, and probably nobody else would ever put all the nodes together that are required. Look at the last column - almost black - I think that's how it is supposed to be.

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the difference is really small.

In some situations, yes, in others no.

I made a few more in various colors.

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here it is mroe visible.
but do we need to now change all shaders? i changed now all my shaders to GC 2,2 :)

Well I don't know if we need to change or not. In these renders I can tell the difference, but in practice how often does it come up that you're trying to render colors in the RGB 1 to 20 range accurately? To hear cobaltdream, it's all the time. :)

I'm doing some test renders using the sRGB value for skin instead of the GC 2.2.

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wow! yes! that shows exactly what i was experiencing. there are times i want a response like the 1 and .5 at the end of your 3rd scale, and i just pretty much couldn't get there. for those last 3 columns, i don't find what you're showing a small difference at all. they're exactly the range i'd like to work in if i'm doing a low ambient lighting scene. that's much better. woohoo! i'm so impressed!

edited to add: no, not all the time. just about 1/2 is what i'd like. i mean, basically what you're talking about is anything that's nighttime and not in the city. and personally, i can see a significant difference starting in the fifth column. which is pretty common for anything not brightly lit. if you want, i can show some of the works i've favorited that use about that level of lighting.

Quote -
With regard to the claim I made about "you don't ever need 100%" I meant "to get your figure lit indoors." Of course if you're doing a scene which is supposed to model the reality of a situation where the dominant light source is 10 times brighter than the ambient light, AND you're simulating a camera exposure value that is adjusted to the ambient light, then of course you'd have a light source that is way over 100%, as I did.

right. my point wasn't that you were wrong at all. my point is that you're communicating in a way that makes you repeat yourself and others have problematic results. you're coming at it technically, knowing the reality and how to match it. most people are just trying to make pretty pictures of pretty girls. most Poser users are pinup artists, and pinups are 90% bright, uniform lighting. so when they say, "the lighting isn't any good." what they mean is, "the lighting doesn't look like what i want or expect given what i was doing before."

given that people are still using light sets and don't seem (in general) to be using your IBL generator, the relationship between the environment and lighting isn't as concrete in your works. i mean, most people like a figure against a sunset to be fully and brightly lit from the front. totally breaks realism for me, but i've been told several times that it's better that way. same way i've been told burned in highlights in hair are better.

if you want to tell people how to have "good" lights, i'd estimate that well over half of the time that translates to bright as daylight in a white room lighting.

Quote - > Quote -

i mean, most people like a figure against a sunset to be fully and brightly lit from the front. totally breaks realism for me, but i've been told several times that it's better that way. same way i've been told burned in highlights in hair are better.

i

and then i am wondering why they dont make a good update of poser.
the best ratings in the gallery are from renders where they dont even use shadows. flat shader on skin without specular.

and then i ask them for area lights and so on. they must be laughing at me.

OK I built a new VSS shader using sRGB as the final correction.

I'll show you several renders. In each, there are three figures.

Figure #1 is linear, no GC in, no GC out
Figure #2 is GC 2.2 in and out
Figure #3 is GC 2.2 in, but sRGB out

I should probably do a fourth with sRGB in and out, but I'm hungry and want to eat. :)

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Here is a single infinite at 50%.

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Single infinite at 15%

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Single infinite at 5%

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Single infinite at 2%. Big difference now.

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oh! and one last thing: the point isn't just that one might want that level of lighting overall. it's that you might want that level of lighting _anywhere_ in your image. remember the person saying their work looked "flat" after applying GC? well, imho, the 3rd row looks much less flat. this is one of the images you posted to prove your point about the realism of GC. at the time, i thought how much less interesting and flatter the GC version looked. you might show the difference with your new calculation. maybe i'm wrong, and it won't be better, but i think it will be.

edited for cross post: i see a significant difference by 15%. and by significant i mean, if i were going for column 3, i'd spend days trying to get there from column 2.

Last one. Infinite at 1%.

Now I leave work and make FOOD!

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i know i said one last thing, but another point. you keep working with infinites. but studio and indoor lighting, which i think is pretty reasonable to emulate, is all spots and areas. which makes this issue much more relevant, because the shadowed areas are way too bright. i know this sounds lewd, but look at the shadows on the one at 15%, especially under her right butt cheek. huge difference, imho. even at 50%, i'd much rather have the 3rd.

Yes, CD, I agree. I'm using infinite so that we don't have variation do to parallax, that's all. Otherwise, you can't compare the figures or props.

Anyway, I prepared a graph showing all the issues. Click for full size and read the notes.

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Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB

Wikipedia article on the sRGB standard. For the math-heads.

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Key paragraph: (emphasis added by me)

Quote - Unlike most other RGB color spaces, the sRGB gamma can not be expressed as a single numerical value. The overall gamma is approximately 2.2, consisting of a linear (gamma 1.0) section near black, and a non-linear section elsewhere involving a 2.4 exponent and a gamma (slope of log output versus log input) changing from 1.0 through about 2.3.

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edited because i didn't understand. sorry! yeah, i can see why to test with infinites, i'm just saying you'd see a more significant change with images that duplicated, say, dramatic stage or studio lighting.

and just to say, to find your old test image, i went through the first few pages of VSS. at least two people in the first few pages posted images that would be strongly affected by this issue. and you posted about 2 or 3 others.

woot! i'm really loving your low-light results. they're just what i've always wanted. is it me, or is there a big saturation difference, too?

I noticed the saturation too, even in the 50% lighting. Somehow the SSS is working better, richer color and more contrast. I'm not sure why.

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Bagginsbill, you're a maniac!
In a good way :thumbupboth:

Heheh. So Stephan, will sRGB conversion be added to Poser 8? Hehehe.

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BB, you're my god. There is a matmatic script to ease all this mess?

CASETTE
=======
"Poser isn't a SOFTWARE... it's a RELIGION!"

Hypothetically speaking, if there should happen to be a "make my scene sRGB" script at some time in the future, then my money would more or less leap out of my wallet of its own accord. ;)

And thanks for making me look up sRGB. In my line of work, I ought to know this stuff. Maybe it's time to retire. Then I can spend more time playing with Poser. I just have to break it to Mrs. Bob that we have to live in poverty for the rest of our lives, or until the kids can support us, whichever is first. :)

Lastly, my compliments to this thread's participants for their dedication to scientific reasoning above personal axe-grinding. That happens all too seldom in this (or any other) forum.

Quote - BB, you're my god. There is a matmatic script to ease all this mess?

You could use these functions instead of the GC functions.

def IF(test, tv, fv):
return Blend(fv, tv, test)

def SRGB(x):
return IF(x <= .0031308, 12.92 * x, 1.055 * (x ** (1/2.4)) - .055) def ASRGB(x):
return IF(x <= .04045, x / 12.92, ((x + .055) / 1.055) ** 2.4)

The SRGB function will convert a linear value to SRGB. It works with colors or grayscale.

The ASRGB is the anti-SRGB conversion - to convert an SRGB value to linear.

Example use:

colorMap = ImageMap("whatever.jpg").labelled("Color Map")
color = ASRGB(colorMap)
linearShader = Diffuse(color, .8) + Specular(WHITE, .1, .2)
srgbOutput = SRGB(linearShader)
s = Surface(colorMap, 0, 1, 0)
s.Alternate_Diffuse = srgbOutput

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Uh... how I apply this? :blink:

CASETTE
=======
"Poser isn't a SOFTWARE... it's a RELIGION!"

pardon, but i'm wondering how one might put an sRGB filter on the Artisitic Lens? and is that OK to use, or is it better to add it to each material and therefore deal with anti-correcting the map? does it make a difference?

FWIW, I made an sRGB filter material for the lens - attached. Save as sRGB.mt5 in your materials folder and apply it to your lens. I included in it an HSV node set to boost saturation by 1.5 times to compensate for incoming material that isn't linear.

The script I posted above is wrong. I forgot that the Blending value on a Blender node is single-channel. We need to have a blending factor that is done once per channel, not for the whole RGB triple. So I built the filter with more math nodes because I can't use one blender to choose between the two ranges for all 3 channels.

As to whether it is OK to use, that's questionable. The difference between GC(2.2) and sRGB is very small, and only applies to very dark things. If you don't anti-GC your incoming material, you're getting a much larger deviation from reality - more than is compensated for by choosing sRGB versus GC. If you're looking for that kind of precision in the color space, you really should be working with anti-gamma incoming material. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother with the sRGB filter. If, for artistic reasons, you're finding your darks are too light with GC(2.2), try GC(1.6) or some other similarly lower value.

I wish Poser had implemented the GC as shader nodes - something we could configure as a whole. Then I could drop in the sRGB filter as a built-in pre-processing and post-processing step automatically for all materials. That's how I would have done it. Then it would be possible to configure the renderer to produce any color space, such as the Adobe color space, and we wouldn't have to muck about with shader nodes. Even better would be if it were possible to set up, using nodes, various pre and post processing filters and then select them for each material or image map. Or insert a node that calls upon these as subroutines. Then you could mess with them in one place.

Hmmm. I have so many interesting ideas for nifty plug-ins. if only the renderer had a more modular plug-in architecture for image pre-processing, materials, lights, and post-filters, as well as user-defined nodes. Sigh.

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Comparison for reference. This is rendered with a GC(2.2) lens, including 1.5x saturation.

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And here is rendered with the sRGB lens, including 1.5x saturation.

The only place you'll find a difference is on the dark gray prop, and a few places on the lower and left edges of his shorts.

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thing is, i noticed what i considered pretty big differences in all your previous renders. including the one with the light at 50%. for me, it's the difference between all the pretty (imho) unrealistic mid-tone renders people have been doing with VSS PR3 and reality. is it better to implement it in a material? because, imho, it's killing my work in anything but really, really bright light. the difference between my white or bright room renders and anything shadowed is... well... night and day in terms of realism.

it's not just dark materials, or a dark scene. it's mid to low toned shadows. it's why that person said implementing VSS made their work flat. to my eyes, all your previous tests showed a very significant difference in just about anything with meaningful shadows (on a self-shading object, i think).

enough so that i'd rather work an sRGB shift into my materials than GC, if i can figure it out. i'm pretty sure that it's what had me fighting even after 6 iterations of IBL creation and using only GC materials. i'll take the time up front over several days chasing my tail, so to speak.

i've been focused on modeling for a while, and not rendering (so definitely not materials and light). i was hoping to be able to deal with a new version of Poser, VSS PR3, Matmatic and a new workflow all at once. it seems like that might not work out. then again, i'm still learning so much in Blender. i'm (sort of) applying Adorana's technique for making clothes, and adding some of my own findings. Blender is awesome, but it isn't Clothilde.

so probably the best thing is to test PR3, my adjustment of PR3, and then a scene with sRGB materials on my last render. would i be able to ask you questions about using VSS, PR3, or the sRGB component? i know the information is all out there, but i'm pretty sure i'll hit snags.

Would you like a VSS sRGB skin shader? I could set publish one pretty easily.

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well, definitely yes! but since i'd also need to shift the materials of everything else, i'd still need to learn how to incorporate it into other materials (i say admonishingly to myself). i'm very sure the hair shader i've been messing with for ages would be better in sRGB, since the most important aspect of shiny hair is the contrast between its light and dark portions. usually, when people say hair doesn't have bright enough shine, what actually needs to happen is the dark areas get dark enough.

Did you say hair shader? Heheh.

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)

actually, that looks like has exactly the issue i was talking about, but maybe more so. though it still looks phenomenal to me. i can certainly say that when i post images with hair shinier than that, all i get is feedback that painted highlights would be more realistic (eww) because it's not shiny enough. sometimes there's no accounting for taste.

Quote - Would you like a VSS sRGB skin shader? I could set publish one pretty easily.

please!

oh and I'm quite sure someone said they needed the hair shader.

I think we will be held in suspense for the hair shader.

Quote - I think we will be held in suspense for the hair shader.

I think too !

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Thanks for directing me here bb. It's been really useful.

For anyone interested, I've only recently been properly catching up on a lot of bb's excellent shader work. I was playing with the VSS PR3 skin shader in single light (non IBL) setups and noticing what seemed to me like quite harsh "transitions at the terminator" (terminology I'm just learning) - basically where the light transitions into dark on a model (see above image to get an idea what I mean).

The sRGB VSS skin shader would be very cool if it goes some way to solving this.

Now I have to read this thread from the beginning to see what this artistic lens is all about.

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com

bagginsbill, could you post the setup that you used to get that first render? The newspaper comic-y one?

I can't seem to duplicate that one.

Thank you so much!

Quote - bagginsbill, could you post the setup that you used to get that first render? The newspaper comic-y one?

I can't seem to duplicate that one.

Thank you so much!

BB posted the setup for me some time ago, look the post #8 in the page #5

www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

oh! thankyou!

Book Marked!

Quote - The script I posted above is wrong. I forgot that the Blending value on a Blender node is single-channel. We need to have a blending factor that is done once per channel, not for the whole RGB triple. So I built the filter with more math nodes because I can't use one blender to choose between the two ranges for all 3 channels.

You wouldn't happen to have the asRGB/sRGB script lying around handy anywhere, Bill? I mean, the revised one... the one you wrote for the artistic lens. I'd be really keen to see it.

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, and have been using the above script (which you said was wrong) in my renders as an alternative to GC, just to see. Might just be me, but I kinda like the results better.

So, how would you separate out the colour channel? Component?

BTW, finally converting my skin shader to mix.mm1. There were some massive holes in my understanding of classes and that sort of thing which cobaltdream quite laboriously (well, I'm thick so it took a bit of doing!) helped me with, so I'll be bugging you soon with more questions about that... :laugh:

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand]

Metaphor of Chooks

wow, i'm dim. this is why i had that complicated IF function. you need to do it with Color_Math not Blender. ok, looking for it in thre forums.

just to say, i'm trying just the simple Python if condition: .... else: ..... is that OK?

edited to add:

oops, it's definitely not. because when i do it that way, it automatically uses color math. which seems to mean (glancing through the nodes of the resultant material), that certain over 1 nodes don't get made. gotta figure this out before going further with my experiments.

ok, just a note to say i've forced numbers using Add nodes, but the if structure just didn't translate.

well, i seem to have something that might work

def asRGB(x):
    ifMask = Color_Step(x, 12.92 * 0.0031308)
    xFalse = 1 - ifMask) * x
    xTrue = ifMask* x
    return xFalse / Add(12.92, 0) + ((xTrue + .055) / Add(1.055, 0)) ** Add(2.4, 0)

def sRGB(x):
    ifMask = Color_Step (x, 0.0031308)
    xFalse = (1 - ifMask) * x
    xTrue = ifMask* x
    return Add(12.92, 0) * xFalse + (Add(1.055, 0) * (xTrue ** (1/2.4))) - .055

edited to reverse the mask because i'm really not swift at this and easily turned around

I have just discovered this fantastic thread. I started playing with BB's most basic shader, it made a difference but left M4 looking "demon possessed".

...here are my shader settings.

Really cool idea. BB I'd like to see what you could come up with in FilterForge.

Handle every stressful situation like a dog.

If you can't eat it or play with it,

just pee on it and walk away. :-)

....................................................

I wouldnt have to manage my anger

if people would manage their stupidity......

Mathman, why are you using blue tinting in Alt_Diffuse? Is this for the skin?

Quote - I have just discovered this fantastic thread. I started playing with BB's most basic shader, it made a difference but left M4 looking "demon possessed".

Can anyone suggest a solution to my problem here ? .... rather can call in an exorcist, that is !

Did you see my post above?

Does the eye cover involve a refract node? If so, do you have enough raytrace bounces (2+) to get through the lens and the eye cover?

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 - Mathman, why are you using blue tinting in Alt_Diffuse? Is this for the skin?

Good question. Short answer is, I don't know. In any event, I have now fixed it, but the problem persists.

Quote - Does the eye cover involve a refract node? If so, do you have enough raytrace bounces (2+) to get through the lens and the eye cover?

BB, what do you mean by the eye cover ? ... I tried rendering with more raytrace bounces, but once again the problem persisted.

Perhaps it is the units; 0.85 for the ray bias (in the refract node) is very high, if you use poser units.

millighost, 0.85 was the value in BB's example.

You are right, though. I incrementally decreased the magnitude of the RayBias, until I started seeing a result at about 0.03.

math, dbl-chk to make sure all the eye surface settings are o.k., e.g. none of them have refl_lite_mult, and change the lites to ray-traced. poser sometimes has a problem with transparency and IDL, but in yer img there's no IDL AFAICT.

Nancy, you are right. There is no IDL.

I'm not sure what you mean by refl_lite_mult, though. The eye components each have a specular value of 0.5 and a highlight of 0.05, if that is what you mean.

You want this unchecked.

Handle every stressful situation like a dog.

If you can't eat it or play with it,

just pee on it and walk away. :-)

....................................................

I wouldnt have to manage my anger

if people would manage their stupidity......

Oh yes of course, thanks :)

None of the eye components have this checkbox ticked. M4 is still demon-possessed. Get out the crucifix and holy water....

Quote - Would you like a VSS sRGB skin shader? I could set publish one pretty easily.

Hey BB,

Did you ever publish the sRGB version of your VSS skin shader? and/or your Hair Shader?

It doesn't look like you updated the files/links on the VS homepage. Would love to get those when you get a chance - thanks.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Any takers on this, please ?

How can I fix the awful black pooling in M4's eyes ? (...see earlier entry for my shader setup for the "lens").

What is your setting of the ray bias? If using poser units, where bagginsbill uses inches, you have to divide by approx. 100, ie. 0.85 -> 0.008.

The lens is not doing the eye problem. I posted what my guess was - refraction on the eye cover and not enough bounces.

If you want more than a guess, show me eye material settings, particularly the cornea. Because of the viewing angle and the size of the image, I can't really make out well if the eye white is messed up or just the iris, or just whatever is under the cornea, or is it involving the whole eye cover. (There are multiple eye parts that can be set up for refraction or transparency, and possibly incorrectly.)

Then I may have other questions.

Also, how does it look without using the lens?

Also, how does it look with shadows disabled in render settings?

I may have other questions later about render settings, but first we need to figure out which ones matter. That means knowing what the shaders are doing.

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)

Hi millighost, I am using PNU. I am also using very low values for the ray bias. Still no luck.

BB ... here are the material settings for the cornea ....

... and here are my render settings,

thanks
Andrew

Mathman,

Not to state the obvious but if you are frustrated with all the eye surfaces, why not make the eyecover invisible? Then add your speculars to sclera and cornea.

Or, set transparency to say 88% on eyecover. You can still get refract effects, etc.

It may not be the current way of doing it but you can progress and pick up on other tech as you go. I put a reduced size anistropic right on the cornea and increase reflect to 2.00 sometimes.

I'd turn IDL on first. Render it small so it's fast...

nor sure you need bump or imagemap on cornea.

he can't turn on IDL yet. but I still dunno why he's using depth-map lites.

p.s. it almost looks like he got both the sclera and cornea transparent and/or refractive. maybe that's why it's dark. they're both covering an unilluminated space.

Probably wont help with the eyes but try these render settings.

bounces: 3

cache: 85

samples: 5

shading: .20

bucket: 16

Handle every stressful situation like a dog.

If you can't eat it or play with it,

just pee on it and walk away. :-)

....................................................

I wouldnt have to manage my anger

if people would manage their stupidity......

Nancy, the base v4 texture has that as well and doesn't give these problems under my normal settings but...

Mathman, try turning your raybias on the lens down to .085 and see what happens. I seem to be getting the problem on my base viki with the raybias over .3 (really noticable at 3.5, not so much at 3.2). I'm guessing that's what's happening to you too.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

After further testing, something's funky with the raybias setting on the lens.

Here's the basic version of the lens, basic viki has VSS shaders applied. RB = .4

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

Same thing RB = .1

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

I tried it again with the stock viki and I seem to get the same problem.

BTW, check out the earlier part of this thread. Realmling was having a similar problem. Now I'm wondering if he had his raybais too high as well.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

Quote - Mathman,

Not to state the obvious but if you are frustrated with all the eye surfaces, why not make the eyecover invisible? Then add your speculars to sclera and cornea.

Or, set transparency to say 88% on eyecover. You can still get refract effects, etc.

It may not be the current way of doing it but you can progress and pick up on other tech as you go. I put a reduced size anistropic right on the cornea and increase reflect to 2.00 sometimes.

I'd turn IDL on first. Render it small so it's fast...

nor sure you need bump or imagemap on cornea.

The eye surface is already invisible.

Quote - Nancy, the base v4 texture has that as well and doesn't give these problems under my normal settings but...

Mathman, try turning your raybias on the lens down to .085 and see what happens. I seem to be getting the problem on my base viki with the raybias over .3 (really noticable at 3.5, not so much at 3.2). I'm guessing that's what's happening to you too.

I already have RB set at 0.03. Doesn't make a scrap of difference.

Ifeyecover is truely invisible then make cornea invisible also for now until this is solved. It's not a proper node setup for cornea anyway. It has sclera and pupil on its colormap..

Save the map with two cornea spots to material library first (or copy/paste)so you can get it back..

Quote - Ifeyecover is truely invisible then make cornea invisible also for now until this is solved. It's not a proper node setup for cornea anyway. It has sclera and pupil on its colormap..

Save the map with two cornea spots to material library first (or copy/paste)so you can get it back..

If by invisible, you mean set the transparency to 1, it already is that way for the cornea (and also for the eye surface).

No. I mean to make nodes invisible as in "does not exist". I think if eyecover is made "non existent", the black will go.

Here's something simple but effective for cornea using your cornea mask.

I believe I have stumbled upon the solution. Originally, the RB attribute of the Refract node was 0.03. Very small, but I reduced it by a power of 10 (to 0.003). The problem went away.

math, maybe it means if yer using PNU (approx 8.2 - 8.6 ft, dep. on poser vers.), ya gotta lower raybias proportionately. ISTR one of 'em mentioned that above. the manual doesn't specifically say that raybias is function of user's units pref, but what if ya changed yer units to inches or feet or metric unit? if changed to inches, maybe raybias could be 100X larger.

I told you it needed to be reduced... I even posted an example. It's not my fault your unit prefs were differrent than mine. :p

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

I was going to write the same - but got busy today. When somebody says "My ___ is set to .03" they are saying nothing.

.03 WHAT? Feet? Miles? Millimeters?

I'm still mystified why this matters - ray bias isn't supposed to apply to transparency, and certainly not to objects other than where it is set. In this case, you guys are showing me that the refract ray bias on the lens is altering how light works on the eyes. That is news to me.

In any case, so be it. Observe my signature. MY DISPLAY UNITS ARE INCHES.

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'm using feet, (so that'd be between 3.0-4.0 if you're using inches) and I think I just figured out another part of the problem.

I'm using 8 bounces with the lens. I turn off transparency on the EyeSurface mat of viki and the problem goes away. I tried turning my render setting up to 12 bounces (the max in 7 which I'm using ATM) and the problem is still there.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

Not to take this thread in a completely different (but still relevant) direction, but I'm stumped. Is there a way to make the artistic lens also affect the background image or movie? I tried copying the background shading network and setting it as the background input on the refract node, but it still just renders over black.

No there isn't. The "background" is "written" onto your image as a separate step, before rendering. Then the render is layered on top, as a 2D image manipulation, much like layers in Photoshop. The background is not part of the 3D scene and is in no way visible to the lens.

However, that doesn't mean you can't have an image or movie in your scene, behind your subject. Place a one-sided square, suitably positioned and scaled behind your subject(s). Then place whatever imagery you want on that object in the material room. For self-lit backgrounds, connect the image or movie to Alternate_Diffuse or to Ambient. If using Ambient, set Ambient_Value = 1. In either case set Diffuse_Value = 0 and Specular_Value = 0, so that no part of its appearance is influenced by lighting.

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 Bill! :D That worked. Eventually I figured out that I could also just copy and use the artistic lens square's shader network, replacing the Refract node with the background image/movie, on the background shader.

Is there a way to get truly random, grain-sized noise? I'm attempting an in-Poser film grain effect (part of an artistic challenge I set for myself).

This is OT, but generally speaking, computers have a very difficult time of doing truely random anything. In programming you usually cheat by setting the seed which generates the results to date/time.

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)

Yep.. but strangely you can't set the seed in most Poser shaders. I figured out that with an X and Y scale of 128, the noise generated by Poser is exactly 1 pixel each grain. Anything bigger than that and you get rectangular splotches (which looks cool, and would be useful for digital compression errors). Also, if you set the ZScale to .001 * frame_number, that makes the grain change for each frame, giving a passable film grain (Assuming your noise min and max are within reason).

A very clever use of object properties. +1 internet

There are some cool uses of this lens on here! Nice work BB, for the idea. Would there be an option to use a lens like this for a less or more exaggerated "depth map" type of render?

I am on the road and don't have Poser with me to verify, but I'm pretty sure the lens obstructs Posers notion of "depth". Depth does not transcend refraction - the depth registered would always be of the lens itself, rather than what you're seeing through the lens.

Now if there was a Refract_Depth node, a node that returns the depth of what is encountered by refraction rays, then it would be possible. In fact, other important effects would be possible in general. For example, many attenuated refraction effects, such as obsidian, could be done if we had a Refract_Depth node.

When light passes through an attenuating medium (such as colored glass), the amount of coloring varies with how much volume was traversed. The formula is simple, but the information needed to pass to the formula is just not available in the current material nodes.

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 - Depth does not transcend refraction - the depth registered would always be of the lens itself, rather than what you're seeing through the lens.

Ah, good point. Thanks for the reply.

Maybe another way would be a camera with a lens capturing a greyscale image, combined with a large panel light that had a falloff, which based on the brightness of what it hit, could simulate the depth of the object in the image...? Perhaps then varying the falloff and intensity you could modify/exaggerate the depth. Of course it would have to be like a clay-like render, to ignore the maps.

Is Tilt/Shift effect possible using this method?

Quote -
At this point you can render and your original scene should appear unchanged. You have a neutral lens. Save this in your library for future use as a starter.

It works, but it loses the background color. Is there any way around that?

Nope

You can stop using background - use a one-sided square instead.

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)

Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL

Subject: Artistic "Lens"