Quote -

It's not possible in any software. The feature you're talking about actually works with reflection, not specular. You start with a normal HDRI, do a diffuse/specular convolution on it in HDRShop (or similar apps) and use the resulting images on a sky dome. When this sky dome reflects in your surface, it appears to have a specular. The size of the specular can be controlled by choosing appropriate values while doing the convolution. But what we usually call 'specular' as it is found in the phong or blinn nodes plays no part in the whole thing.

Ah, ok. That explains a few things that I should really already have known. That's what happens when you dip in and out of 3d. Thanks for the link.

Quote - > Quote - I honestly have no idea how it should work. All I know it that at present our IBL's in Poser only influence the diffuse aspect of any material when using HDRI's, and it'd be nice to have access the specular as well. Maybe this just won't be possible in Poser (or maybe I don't understand HDRIs.)

It's not possible in any software. The feature you're talking about actually works with reflection, not specular. You start with a normal HDRI, do a diffuse/specular convolution on it in HDRShop (or similar apps) and use the resulting images on a sky dome. When this sky dome reflects in your surface, it appears to have a specular. The size of the specular can be controlled by choosing appropriate values while doing the convolution. But what we usually call 'specular' as it is found in the phong or blinn nodes plays no part in the whole thing. See:

Diffuse and Specular Convolution

but you can not use the same settings from the specular convulation on all materials.

Yes, and that's why it's mainly used in things like games. For normal renders, people still use the old way of placing real specular-only lights in the scene. Some apps also have tools that will set this up for you, based on your HDRI.

specular-only lights work. but not when you have a cloudy day. or when your light is big or square.

Biting my tongue, biting my tongue, biting my tongue.

Carodan - you read between the lines correctly.

Some of what is discussed on this page is coming. And there is a very important realism feature coming that nobody mentioned lately but I named it as my #1 desire last year and its here. Oww - my tongue.

"It would be nice if Poser had area lights"

Funny. I've been playing quite a bit with the Area Light in DS 3, which is applied as a material to any surface, similar to Poser's Gather node. However, DS seems to have improved it, at least in terms of render speed, and it works very well.

But as for Poser, lighting improvements may not be the big thing all users are waiting for. Personally, I'd prefer to see a lot of other things take precedence over lighting. And I'm sure every other user has their own 'To do' list which is different from mine.

mac

if we want to nitpick then IBL is also not perfect.  IBL is ignoring shadows.
not talking about AO. AO is a fast and cheap effect to get some ambient shadows.

Quote - Biting my tongue, biting my tongue, biting my tongue.

Carodan - you read between the lines correctly.

Some of what is discussed on this page is coming. And there is a very important realism feature coming that nobody mentioned lately but I named it as my #1 desire last year and its here. Oww - my tongue.

    ;) Now I can lean back and enjoy the summer.No need for panic.

Soft specular nodes that respect the environment sphere can be built. I know exactly how to do so.

The specular nodes should ask the renderer to calculate a specular convolution of the environment map. The exact convolution would be chosen on the basis of the algorithm encapsulated in that particular node. Then the node just does a lookup. If there are many different node settings (due to lots of unique materials  in the scene) then you may run into needing many convolutions. However, specular convolution is usually much cheaper than diffuse convolution, because specular does not need to convolve an entire hemisphere into each sample, the way diffuse has to. So these various convolutions are not so expensive to calculate. And, the more broad the convolution, the smaller the map size can be. You only need a detailed map if the convolution is tight.

It can be done - it is a variation on the mipmapping texture filtering technique. Don't say something is not possible in software - it is like claiming that something doesn't exist, solely because you don't know it does exist. Even if you are a software developer, there are others who know different things and can apply information you may not be incorporating into your analysis.

Quote - And there is a very important realism feature coming that nobody mentioned lately but I named it as my #1 desire last year and its here. Oww - my tongue.

you think i wont go now read every post from?

ohhh i will :)

Here's another technique to produce fast soft speculars from an environment map.

The environment map represents samples of the environment as a 2D spatial field. Convert this field to the frequency domain, using Fourier analysis or Laplace transforms or wavelets or any of a dozen other representations.

These frequency domain representations have interesting properties. First of all, you can reproduce the value at any point damn fast, not as fast as lookup it up directly in the spatial map, but fast enough. Second, the frequency domain representation allows you to selectively discard certain frequencies and re-compute any single point as if the high frequency components were removed - essentially a kind of blurring.

So - with this technique, it would be possible to dynamically generate different convolutions wihtout actually convolving the entire map. Only the points that are needed would be re-built in a blurred version, because you build them on the fly.

Quote - And there is a very important realism feature coming that nobody mentioned lately but I named it as my #1 desire last year and its here. Oww - my tongue.

the only thing that your number 1 could be in 2008 is SSS. but i think you said it wont be there.

the other thing you said you want is to make your own nodes inside the material room. but thats not an realism feature.
maybe something about the lighting but i think everything was mentioned here.

Quote - The specular nodes should ask the renderer to calculate a specular convolution of the environment map. The exact convolution would be chosen on the basis of the algorithm encapsulated in that particular node. Then the node just does a lookup. If there are many different node settings (due to lots of unique materials  in the scene) then you may run into needing many convolutions. However, specular convolution is usually much cheaper than diffuse convolution, because specular does not need to convolve an entire hemisphere into each sample, the way diffuse has to. So these various convolutions are not so expensive to calculate. And, the more broad the convolution, the smaller the map size can be. You only need a detailed map if the convolution is tight.

All of which is irrelevant, since 'asking' the renderer for baked maps at rendertime, is yet another feature that poser doesn't have. You may as well talk about using lightmaps for SSS, or brickmaps for AO or whatever for all the good it does. It's not doable in poser without a major overhaul of the rendering system.

Quote - These frequency domain representations have interesting properties. First of all, you can reproduce the value at any point damn fast, not as fast as lookup it up directly in the spatial map, but fast enough. Second, the frequency domain representation allows you to selectively discard certain frequencies and re-compute any single point as if the high frequency components were removed - essentially a kind of blurring.

It's not a bad idea, but IIRC the larger bottleneck in specular convolution is the fact that specular convolution requires calculation of a virtual phong specular for every single pixel in an HDRI (you cant do fast phong either because you run into problems with accuracy) This is in addition to the overhead of the convolution itself, and all of it calculated multiple times per pixel. Plus remember that this is firefly we're talking about, which is absolutely horrible at hemispherical sampling: just look at how crappy the AO and IBL are. Not really a practical approach.

Quote - Don't say something is not possible in software - it is like claiming that something doesn't exist, solely because you don't know it does exist. Even if you are a software developer, there are others who know different things and can apply information you may not be incorporating into your analysis.

Except that this particular feature indeed does not exist, or at least not in any kind of commercial software, which is what i believe Carodan was referring to. You may have a bunch of theories on how to do it, and that's cool, but without a decent proof of concept, they may as well be theories about unicorns and flying pigs.

Of course the easiest way to prove it would be to add it to poser 8. That would sure show me a thing or two, yeah :-P

Quote - Biting my tongue, biting my tongue, biting my tongue.

Carodan - you read between the lines correctly.

Some of what is discussed on this page is coming. And there is a very important realism feature coming that nobody mentioned lately but I named it as my #1 desire last year and its here. Oww - my tongue.

Well, I'm not much into the guessing game, but it's cool to get a sense of some positivity about what might be coming. The idea that we can expect little more than an improved library system (or something of that nature) is pretty depressing to me. I want at least some kind of  improvements that I can see in my renders for me to fork out for a new version - not such an unreasonable expectation for a 3d app I feel.

Ghonma, I'm confused about this conversation.

Your answers now seem to be in response to the idea that Poser can do these things now, whereas I was talking about what software in general could do if it were written a different way.

Specifically, what caused me to write about how to do soft speculars was when you said this:

Quote: It's not possible in any software.

You didn't qualify that by "any software that exists today". I can only respond to what you say, not what I think you meant to say.

Quote - All of which is irrelevant, since 'asking' the renderer for baked maps at rendertime, is yet another feature that poser doesn't have. You may as well talk about using lightmaps for SSS, or brickmaps for AO or whatever for all the good it does. It's not doable in poser without a major overhaul of the rendering system.

It does not require a major overhaul of the rendering system. Have you written a renderer? I have. It is not a major overhaul to add convolution.

Before Poser 7, mip-mapping did not exist in Poser. It was added, but the renderer did not change in any way.  Similarly, I could add a specular convolution module to Poser and consult the resulting map as a lookup, same as is done with the Sphere_Map node.  Ice-boy is doing this by hand, but it works. He makes a specular convolution corresponding to a particular sharpness of specular. He loads the resulting image into a shader, and connects a Sphere_Map node to it. This works already, in today's Poser. The only problem with it is that he has to make and load the convolved image manually, and the Sphere_Map node does not pay attention to any other objects that might be occluding it's view of the specular convolution map. It would be a simple matter to write a new version of the Blinn node that does include shadowing, but instead of simply delivering a fixed amount of specular with a fixed color, would look up what to deliver from the specular map.

I'm sorry if this is not clear to you, but it is clear to me and other people who know how to write 3D software, and I wish you'd stop claiming that stuff is impossible and not doable. It's very distracting. Please don't keep repeating it.

Quote - It's not a bad idea, but IIRC the larger bottleneck in specular convolution is the fact that specular convolution requires calculation of a virtual phong specular for every single pixel in an HDRI

Sigh. First of all, I just got done explaining in my previous posting that unlike diffuse convolution, specular convolution does not have to use data from an entire hemisphere of the map from each point. Since the specular "cone of influence" is much smaller than 180 degrees, the cost of each point is orders of magnitude less work.  Suppose you're using a 2 megapixel environment map. For the diffuse convolution, fully half of that, 1 megapixel, must be consulted for every single point in the map. But consider a specular effect that has only a 60 degree cone (the coefficients outside the cone are 0 and can be ignored.) Instead of 1 million pixels, this only requires adding up the values of 111 thousand pixels. Further, we don't actually need the full resolution and we can mip-map this down to 10,000 pixels. That is 100 times faster than the diffuse convolution. If we're talking about a tight specular with a 10 degree cone, then it would be 10,0000 times faster. There is no bottleneck - you made that up.

Furthermore, Poser is already doing this optimization. Did it never occur to wonder why HDRSHOP needs hours and hours to compute the diffuse convolution of a diffuse IBL map, but Poser does it in a fraction of a second just before rendering? The reason is because when the cone of influence is large, you do not need the detail provided by the map. That's why in HDRSHOP they tell you to drop your image size to something like 200 by 100 pixels. You don't need resolution for a 180 degree convolution cone.

As the size of the cone drops, you need more resolution, but the zone of influence correspondingly drops in exactly the same proportion. So you do more iterations on the one hand, but less iterations on the other. The upshot of this is that the time it takes to produce a convolution, of any size, is pretty much a constant.

I don't even know how to use the program. I loaded an environment image. I did not add reflection to the material. It is a gray plastic with a specular effect enabled.

I rendered with ordinary ray-tracing, no radiosity or photo mapping or anything slick that Poser doesn't have.

Observe the specular effect of the entire environment sphere. Nicely convolved. This render took 8 seconds. I'm sure if I learned to adjust rendering quality I could make it look better.

Kerkythea's material system calls this feature "Specular Sampling". It samples a convolved copy of the environment sphere. It is not ray-tracing reflections.

this is what i cal la smart software.

not everything needs to be raytraced IMO. bravo.

Quote - > Quote - And there is a very important realism feature coming that nobody mentioned lately but I named it as my #1 desire last year and its here. Oww - my tongue.

the only thing that your number 1 could be in 2008 is SSS. but i think you said it wont be there.

the other thing you said you want is to make your own nodes inside the material room. but thats not an realism feature.
maybe something about the lighting but i think everything was mentioned here.

hmmm maybe layers in the material room :) 

Quote - Here I made it less sharp. The render still took nine seconds. That shows that specular convolution is cheap.

Kerkythea's material system calls this feature "Specular Sampling". It samples a convolved copy of the environment sphere. It is not ray-tracing reflections.

Yes, but ... you used a kitchen counter.  Everyone knows that sampling from the kitchen counter is not allowed.

Quote - Observe the specular effect of the entire environment sphere. Nicely convolved. This render took 8 seconds. I'm sure if I learned to adjust rendering quality I could make it look better.

Try reading the drat tooltip next time. That feature has got nothing to do with specular convolution, it's just your basic soft reflections that you can do in every app. It's fast because kerky is a pure raytracer and rips through reflections. You're just proving my point:

Quote - Everyone knows that sampling from the kitchen counter is not allowed.

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH:laugh:  That tears me up.  People do sample where they can!  So do renderers. :lol:

I wish Poser had a dialog box like above!  You either ray-trace or not, there is no options, save in the materials, themselves. @____@

Well kerky is awesome at raytracing and will raytrace anything and everything, WHETHER YOU WANT IT TO OR NOT, PUNY KERKY USER :lol:

i just got an email telling me D|S 3 Advanced has

• Caustics
• SSS
• Area lights
• Fog & smoke
• Color bleeding

and other rendering effects.  i hope Poser 8 is competitive.  i really don't like the D|S model for several reasons, but, imho, caustics, true SSS, and area lights alone account for everything i feel a need to have added to what i can do now in Poser. 

Quote - i just got an email telling me D|S 3 Advanced has - Caustics

• SSS
• Area lights
• Fog & smoke
• Color bleeding

and other rendering effects.  i hope Poser 8 is competitive.  i really don't like the D|S model for several reasons, but, imho, caustics, true SSS, and area lights alone account for everything i feel a need to have added to what i can do now in Poser. 

I was just having similar thoughts.

oh, and GI.  i forgot to mention it has GI.  looking at their promos, i'm pretty sure they haven't accounted for GC.  but frankly, i'd rather have SSS that really works, and have to color correct the render.

Some of their promo renders are really pretty impressive. I'm still not sure I like some key aspects of D/S, but it sure looks more interesting than it ever has to me before.
Just how functional some of the advanced features are remains to be seen.

well, from their attribution to omnifreaker, most of them had already been done as plug-ins.  and since having to chose between Poseworks tools and omnifreaker tools given pretty rave reviews about both was one of my problems (in other words, no standard solution for basic features), i'm guessing they're pretty decent.

Uh oh. That's my wish-list, too. Damn. 

I still can't quite get over the feeling that it'd be like moving over to the dark side - silly though that is.

Quote - i just got an email telling me D|S 3 Advanced has - Caustics

• SSS
• Area lights
• Fog & smoke
• Color bleeding

and other rendering effects.  i hope Poser 8 is competitive.  i really don't like the D|S model for several reasons, but, imho, caustics, true SSS, and area lights alone account for everything i feel a need to have added to what i can do now in Poser. 

before anyone goes WOW.... consider this.

the render engine DS has 3Delight, already had those functions for a couple of versions. they've now been turned on for DS.
(I've been using pure 3Delight with trueSpace via Dribble and using a lot of the functions above already)

Quote - Uh oh. That's my wish-list, too. Damn. 

And, the difference between your wish list and everyone else's is--

Well, better not go there until the release, I'm guessing.

i don't feel like it's the dark side, but...  the cloth dynamic plugin they just released with so much fanfare for "only" about $20 on sale (if you're a PC member) only lets you change settings.  and it's regularly $50.  i can't imagine how much they'll charge for the actual ability to make clothes, and how that might limit me in terms of modeling.  on top of that, the feature of a construction like real clothes that they say Poser clothes don't have and imply that the engine doesn't support is completely untrue.  that's how i started learning to make clothes.  i'm pretty sure i could do everything they've shown so far in Poser with the right dynamic groups, except i don't know how to make gathers (yet), because i don't understand how they work in real life.  so they're also kind of misleading about their stuff and its exclusivity.  combined with how much trouble it is to keep reinstalling all the plugins every time the base program updates, keep up with whether there's been a change to the rendering engine requiring an update to the plugins, whether the plugins have been updated or not  yet, it's just not at all optimal.

but i mentioning it here, because i've read the remarks about there being no market for these features.  DAZ is king of marketing to this community, and they not only see the demand, they're feeding it.  Poser will quite simply die off if it's about 5 features behind in terms of rendering.

Well, the dynamic plug-in is useless for those of us on OSX, so between that and the whole plug-in nonsense means that it is a non-starter for me.

ohhhh holly s...

if D|S 3 really has SSS and area lights they won. color bleeding is just a bonus. amazing if it is true.

dammit grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Quote - ohhhh holly s...

if D|S 3 really has SSS and area lights they won. color bleeding is just a bonus. amazing if it is true.

dammit grrrrrrrrrrrrr

it had them all along.
they were just not coded on the Daz end.....

Quote - Some of their promo renders are really pretty impressive. I'm still not sure I like some key aspects of D/S, but it sure looks more interesting than it ever has to me before.
Just how functional some of the advanced features are remains to be seen.

where are the promo renders?

I'm surprised that Daz is selling a pay for version of D/S, I thought they had purchased Carrara for the purpose of having more functionality with Poser Figures and environments.  Yes, a lot of the features had been available as plugins, like Global Illumination with the light studio plugin, and ambient occlusion with another.  I wonder if the "new features" will actually be integrated into the program, or whether they will just be plugins that they threw in for the higher price.

I was tempted to get Poser Pro 7, but I'll wait now for Poser 8--a lot of the "pro" features are stuff I'd never use anyway.  I was going to buy Poser Pro 7 when they were including the Quidam add on, but that fell through :0( .

Attached Link: D/S3 forum thread with sample renders

I do hope amidst the oohs and ahhs that people keep an eye on their checkbooks - $200 for Poser 6, $200 for Poser 7, $400 for Poser Pro, several hundred dollars for D|S and all the associated plugins .... hmm, you just bought 3ds Max only in a lot of little low-function increments.

impressive. lucky DS fans. poor poser fans.

This big switch may be here for me. Too much pain with no gain in P7. Real sss? Why do I bother to type.

...another alien interface though. Shader trees seem straight forward. Thanks for the link

it had them all along.
they were just not coded on the Daz end.....

the renderer having features for them isn't at all the same as the software having them.  iirc, there's a lot of stuff Firefly can do (like true SSS) that Poser doesn't support.  that said, there are multiple forms of SSS and translucence for D|S.  in point of fact, that was what turned me off.  there's pwSurface, the Elite Human Surface System, and at least one more (iirc).  

the heart of the community is building on what others have done.  it's really hard to do that if most people don't have the same tools, and the ones that do and have more knowledge  have paid a great deal for access to said knowledge.  for instance, i think they've made it free to develop for D|S recently, but making people pay for the SDK for so long has created a very mercantile system where in depth information isn't shared as heavily.  commercially it's a smart move to separate the average users from the pros, and keep your average users totally dependent and unable to grow without literally buying into your system.  i'm just personally not someone who can afford to make this into a business, nor am i interested in never being able to actually make anything unless i make an merchant-sized investment.

carrara has GC, and one of the reasons daz bought carrara was to get the rendering engine AFAIK.  however, users should be warned that caustics, GI, and some of those other items are still gonna slow it to a crawl, hence default users will skip them, just as they skip the cpu-intensive features of poser, even unto such basic operations as shadow-casting.

actually, just about all the D|S images i've seen not only have shadows, they've all had some form of skin shader.  the soft look of their SSS has almost become how i can spot a D|S render.  but i'll check the D|S gallery more closely.

yeah, that's true. one can often spot a vue or poser render by the nostril glow.  d|s renders may sometimes be head shots of dead-doll zombies, but they do get good shadows by default.  I have been hoping since poser 5 that default users could get good shadows by default.  unfortunately, shadows and AO are two big reasons why this forum is necessary.

Quote - carrara has GC, and one of the reasons daz bought carrara was to get the rendering engine AFAIK.  however, users should be warned that caustics, GI, and some of those other items are still gonna slow it to a crawl, hence default users will skip them, just as they skip the cpu-intensive features of poser, even unto such basic operations as shadow-casting.

GI,caustic will render long.

but casting shadows? in 2009? we rae talking here about renders under 1 hour. only shadows is even under 30 minutes.  i dont think poser users dont use shadows because it takes to long to render. whats this 1999? they just dont want them. and maybe i would understand if they would use 15 or 20 raytraced shadows. but the default shadows? 
sorry but no.

actually, i think lots of people don't use shadows because they have to work hard to get good ones.  i'm sure i just need to upgrade, but I use P6 and i get bias errors on just about all dynamic and draping clothes.  and sure, a lot of people are on P7 and Poser Pro, but a lot aren't.

oh, and it's a lot longer than an hour if you use raytraced shadows and some of the most popular hair.

I find a lot of people are clueless about shadows. It's all very innocent. They just want the power to create images like never before. This software gets them there with a few clicks. Bagginsbill gets them over the top with advanced shaderwork. There's a lot of power in Poser to the casual user. 
Can't draw? Cannot see a scene in your head? A few minutes you are up to your neck in mesh.

great cheap creative pastime. Bad for your back

It doesn't take hard work to get good shadows.  The work is learning what good shadows ARE (i.e., not depth-mapped, and not razor-sharp raytraced without blur, and not a big gritty AO stain).  I may misjudge my own shadows' quality but I think they're certainly a lot better than average - not saying they're perfect or even ideal, but "a lot better than average" takes me no special work to set up now that I realize how terrible some of the "not" methods I named really are.  People dumping heaps of pics in the gallery here with shitty shadows  (or no shadows!) , well, as long as that kind of thing is nailed to the top of the art charts/top 9 page, a lot of people will keep right on doing it regardless of how bad it looks.

Hmm I guess since I've cancelled my file locker service here I need to move my sample light setup to the new file host.
http://cid-b233dcaeefa9709c.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Poser%20Freebies/Studio%20Lights/PJZ%20Studio%20Lights.zip