Okay, it's ridiculously small because it's actually an area render (that nonetheless took a good long time, though I didn't check the clock - probably 15 minutes though, at this size).

That said, I'm very happy with the difference between this and what I had rendered in Poser Pro a couple weeks ago. Here I used one spotlight and one infinite. Render settings were relatively low.. was the time affected by the complexity of the surrounding scene? I dunno if that affects area renders or not....

Top image is a crop of my original Poser Pro render... settings were a lot higher, but render times can't be compared, as it was a full scene. Bottom image is the Poser 8 render with IDL. As you can see, the latter is darker, I've haven't played around enough to get it as bright as it needs to be (I had about 5-6 lights on it for PP).

Granted the difference in brightness (and the fact that the IDL image is a PNG; I had exported my earlier one as a JPEG - but I always export @ 100%)... I have to say that IMO, the realism of the IDL render completely blows the other one out of the water.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Excellent skin tones, much more alive - very nice. 

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Thanks, lmckenzie. I agree it's considerably more lifelike. More natural-looking.

Heh. Of course, it's only now - in the middle of a hi-Q render of the full scene - that I notice that I don't have the hair quite wide enough on her left cheekbone. :rolleyes:

Oh, well... I could probably tidy up the back of her hair a bit closer to her neck too.... I'll likely do some adjustments and do another area render after my big render is complete (it's been precalculating for close to an hour now, but it's a complex scene, I've ramped up the quality, and it's got reasonably hefty dimensions).

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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You're getting nice subtle variations in the skin and I like the way the eye makeup got toned down. The one problem to my untrained eys is that the neck is lost in the shadow and the dark line on her chest. I'm sure when you get the lighting lined out those will go away. I think dark skin is more challenging and you've gotten a very pleasing result. Looking forward to seeing the final version.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Hi...

I'm not altogether sure that lighting is the issue.

Did you use Tone Mapping HSV Exponential for this image? It has nice skin tones, but lacks the detail that you got from the PPro GC render in the darker areas.

Also, I'm wondering about that dark pointed shadow across her right shoulder and collar bone... what's causing that?

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

No, I wasn't using HSV there, I don't think. I had pretty low settings all around.

I rendered the full-sized image last night. I don't even know how long it took as I had to go to bed; it took about 2 1/2 hours to recalculate the IDL. Mind, the image was 1800x1330 px, and the settings were high. The first thing I noticed is that were all sorts of details in my positioning of objects that were awry and weren't as noticeable in the Poser Pro render. (I have a bad habit of using the main camera to zoom around and check everything; I need to get in the mode of taking advantage of the other cameras.) Note e.g.  that the plant isn't actually behind the couch, so it's floating in midair and casting a shadow on the couch... I didn't pick that up in my Poser Pro render. (One thing I should have noticed was the newspapers, which is floating above the desk.)

For the sake of file size, I've saved these as jpeg, saved at 95% quality to get them into the 500 kb neighbourhood. Click for full size. The cropped facial image, also provided for easy comparison to the above, is small enough to fit here in full, so clicking won't get you anything more.

In order, the pictures below are: (1) my original full image from Poser Pro; (2) last night's full image from Poser 8; and (3) a crop of the girl's face from last night's image.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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Wow, I just gotta add, I just went to fix her hair a bit - the new OpenGL preview is WORLDS better. I'll be able to adjust hair so much more easily now... in PP, it's hard to see collisions in preview a lot of the time.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Have a scene I was building a while back, that I hated the shadows using the lights that came with the product. I messed around with the lights to my ability. Still the scene looked flat. I parked the scene and told myself I would come back to it later out of frustration.

As a test I rendered it in P8 with IDL and messed around with the tone mapping a bit and yikes. Now have realistic shadows and a scene I plan to finally finish.

IDL is a major leap for Poser

Gary

"Those who lose themselves in a passion lose less than those who lose their passion"

Yeah it's a very major step forward.  I just wish they'd get the blotch artifact problem improved ASAP.

My Freebies

Yeah, the blotching is bad. Tho not as bad as the AO artifacting I was getting in PP.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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thx fr the excellent render, believ.  I like the composition. may i ask a few questions?

1. does any posersurface (e.g couch) have non-zero ambient, alt. diffuse or alt. specular?
2. did you use any render script(s)?
3. any AO nodes or displacement on any posersurface?
4. were DM shadows used?

The lighting works so much better.

Just one thing. Since there is no GC in Poser 8, it might pay to use Tone Mapping HSV Exponential - bagginsbill suggests using a value of 2.0 or 2.2 rather than the default 1.6. This would help to lighten the contrasty shadows, similar to 'proper' Poser Pro GC.

Tone Mapping won't add anything to your render time (at least, I have noticed no difference on my renders).

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)

Thanks, Miss Nancy. I actually set up this scene a few weeks ago, so I'd have to go through the scene to determine some of that. I probably did have DM shadows in the original Poser Pro render to avoid artifacting, but I redid the lighting for IDL, obviously, so no DM now.

No displacement or render scripts. I'd have to check as far as alt diffuse and alt spec, but I pretty much always use VSS, and off the top of my head, I think it does use those.

I'd have to look at the couch again... but it's the most glaringly in need of improvement (not sure why it's not interacting better shadow-wise with the guy sitting on it either).

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Thanks, IsaoShi. These overnight renders did use HSV (at 2.2); it was just the first cropped image at the beginning of the thread that I had lower settings.

I'm still trying to find my way around, though (I just installed P8 last night, and I don't consider myself expert with PP by any means)... so further hints are certainly welcome.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Another Poser 8 re-render.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Quote - Another Poser 8 re-render.

Outstanding. New realism issues move to the top. Needs a bump map, not just some cheat, but a really good one. The speculars are too smooth.

I'm assuming the skin is VSS. Turn down the SSS. Because this is not GC'd, the redness comes on too strong. HSV Exponential (I'm assuming) does a little too good a job of preserving the red hue.

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Hair shadows are a bit gritty and shadows overall are too sharp.  Nothing says CG like razor sharp vacuum shadows.

My Freebies

BB, yeah, I thought I had the skin redness issue looked after (it started out too red, as you may recall), but it's reappearing with P8. I'll turn the red values down a bit further in the shader... I thought I had already mellowed the SSS by making it a bit less red, but that may have been with another character.

I do indeed have more work to do on the bump map.

PJZ - you're right, I'm not satisfied with the hair at all.

Any suggestions on how to deal with the too-sharpness? Just more IDL passes? (I think this had two passes of raytracing; I didn't use the advanced script. IDL quality was set to 5, I think.)

Thanks to both of you. After hearing an "outstanding" from Bagginsbill (even with the further critique), I think I need to get a jack to prop my jaw up off the floor. :)

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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You likely have blur radius on the light(s) set to zero, which means no blur.  I like 5 degrees but that's not for any scientific reason, it just seems okay to me.

My Freebies

Mm... I thought the blur settings are only on DM shadows? how do I set them for RT? Or are those dials on the properties palette just indented badly, and apply to either DM or RT?

Edit: The key light was at 0, but I did have the rim light set at 2.6, but I didn't think it was doing anything... and anyway, the rim light isn't providing a whole lot of that light, just trying to get something going on the left side of her face and in her hair. Tho, it didn't work for the hair... can't quite seem to get the angle right for what I want.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Gah, my first crash. I've seen it reported elsewhere: selected V4, flipped to the Material Room, and I was gone.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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The number is tracked differently depending on which radio button is pressed (Raytraced or Depth Mapped).  You need to set the shadow type first, and then you can change the blur radius.  Shadow Min Bias also matters when you have very small geometry, imo 0.1 is a good working number.  Bagginsbill also suggested turning up the Pixel Samples setting in another thread to improve the smoothness of raytraced shadows through transparency.

My Freebies

Thanks, I have turned up samples - I used to only render at 2-3, to be honest.

Weird that they have the blur option indented in that way. Makes it look like the option isn't available to raytraced lights.

Just crashed again when trying to enter the material room, this time with something other than V4 selected. I'm not a happy camper about that. Edit: three straight times. I cannot enter the material room.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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During testing, the mat room crashed a lot more. Something is stuck or uninitialized.

One way I found to unstick it during beta was this.

Don't open the scene that crashes.

Open a new scene. Go into the material room. Leave.

Now load your scene. Go into mat room - should work.

Please report this to SM. All beta testers had this problem early on, and by release nobody could reproduce it with any scene anybody had.

SAVE YOUR SCENE. You may need to send it to SM for debugging. Please report this to SM.

support.smithmicro.com

Open a new incident report.

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Thanks. Actually, I just sent an incident report to Smith Micro.

I did notice that it only has occurred (so far) with previous scenes. I can create a new scene and load a figure (V4, in fact) and go to the Material Room without any problems so far.

I'd be interested to hear what happens if you have an old scene that you haven't opened in P8 and try to go into the MAT room, whether you'll crash again... I wonder if the reduction of crashes during beta was directly due to the fact that eventually people were just working with scenes created in P8, not before. (Just a question.)

Good to know that I should be able to go into my old scene again. I just spent this time working on the shader to tone down the redness both in the diffuse and the SSS. Will see what kind of colouring I get this time.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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No such luck. I crashed again. Unless it only works if I close the previous scene while in the Material Room (I was there, but was in the pose window before I closed).

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Hmmm. I'm just about stumped.

Try this. Open the old scene. Don't go into the mat room.

Save it under a new name.

Exit Poser. Start it again.

Open the new file. Now try going into the mat room.

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No, that didn't work. I didn't think it would, as the first thing I did when I opened the two old files was rename them. I'm always nervous about corrupting a good file when opening in a new version of software.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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Quote - During testing, the mat room crashed a lot more. Something is stuck or uninitialized.

I hadn't got any crashes in the materials room but it certainly has something wrong with it, even with a very very basic material (say something with one node) it behaves noticeably much slower from previous versions when dragging nodes around.

My Freebies

Two things that have worked for me when I get a scene "stuck" with the material room crash:

1.  Open the scene, move something in the preview window.  Select a light.  Use the advanced materials properties button on the properties palette to guide you into the material room.  Make your changes and save.

2.  Open a new scene, import your stuck scene.

3.  The problem seems to generate from the GUI.  Save a good UI memory dot.  Make sure the dot is selected before going into the material room.  (haven't had a crash since I've been doing that faithfully.... but it is random, so I don't have high hopes.)

For one fleeting second once I saw an error from Poser before the crash that Poser was unable to read the .pmd file.   Doesn't make any sense since I think the problem with the GUI, but I don't pretend to know much.  :)

Indi.

My hard drive was very close to full and Poser 8 was bogging down my machine something nasty last night. This a.m. I deleted a bunch of files, uninstalled a bunch of programs, including P8, then reinstalled Poser 8. I honestly don't know if I've got a rendering problem - the scene (a new one with Alyson) that bogged down P8 last night still won't render (I left it to render when I went to work this a.m., and got back and it was still supposed precalculating light - but it wasn't a complex scene, and the settings weren't high; P8 was frozen).

But on the other hand, when I open up the problem files I was crashing with yesterday, and then go into the material room, I don't crash. So hopefully, that problem is solved.

As for the P8 scene, it still functions other than on render, and other than the character, the scene is pretty simple, so I think I'll just save her to the library and recreate in a new file and try again.

But first I'll try yet another rerender of the last Sharon image I linked above, this time with a bit less red in the shader, and some softer shadows. PJZ mentioned 5%... what do you tend to use, BB? And what are the recommendations for bias for a scene like that? I don't have any particular small geometry there, will probably just set it at .3 or so for this particular render.

I will be doing more bump and spec map work for this character, as eventually I hope to make her a product... but not for this render. I wanna see P8 go thru the paces on the reinstall and see what happens.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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Ray bias is not a performance issue - it only has to do with whether you get artifacts or not. Too high, and shadows break away from small crevices. Too low, and you get black spots or visible lines along polygon boundaries. I usually use .1 inch.

The shadow blur, for raytraced, is I think in degrees. I usually use 3 degrees for a small light source and 6 to 10 degrees for larger. By that I mean, is it a tiny spotlight, or a big one with a shade.

The long render times are usually caused by transmapped hair. I can get a high quality IDL render of a figure in 30 minutes without hair or other significant transparency. With hair, or with the visor on her helmet (used in SM promo renders) it went 7 1/2 hours.

Of course my laptop is lame. People with lots of cores on high-end current machines get renders 20 times faster.

Sometimes I skip a bump map altogether and just let VSS supply bump via the Turbulence node. I think we discussed this months ago. Unless you're doing an extreme closeup, the Turbulence pattern is very good, better than most bump maps. It's also more consistent, because bump map pixel density varies from one body part to another. The node produces uniform scale tiny features automatically.

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Thanks, BB. No, I didn't think ray bias was a performance issue; I was harkening back to earlier in the thread with realism. I think I played with it a wee bit when I first started using Poser, but then I thought those settings were only for DM, and I stopped looking at them altogether.

I guess I had the blur thing backward... though I thought I got the impression from Birn's Digital Lighting & Rendering, but maybe not. It was my understanding that you want the softer shadows on the smaller light source (or shall I say, the lower intensity source), so that the effect is more subtle.

I can certainly see using Turbulence for more distant shots. But for close up, I like to have a map to help define lines, wrinkles etc, especially since I'm mostly working with  more midlife characters. I'm kinda looking it as my niche to develop for the moment. I don't think there's really much out there for 35-45ish women, in particular. (Probably not much market either, but oh well.)

Anyway, Poser 8 doesn't look like it's choked on my re-render of Sharon, though I upped the quality settings (finally went into that D3D python window for special settings). I don't expect it to get rendered in less than 3-4 hours... but I'm starting to breathe a little more easily.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Well, this is quite interesting. First IDL render with soft shadows turned on and the quality cranked a bit. It took six hours; mind you, I was using my computer for other stuff, including having Morphing Clothes and Poser Pro running much of the time.

A big improvement, but I still don't like the hair. And now I'm getting some visibility with what the bump map is doing and where I need to make some fixes (that gash on the cheek, in particular). But I've solved the redness, at any rate, and I think the shadows look more natural.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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When you say "soft shadows" do you mean depth-mapped shadows?  I ask because that render shows one of the common problems of depth-mapped shadows, at the hair, where there are parts of the character's skin that did not get any shadow applied.  You can improve that by reducing shadow min bias, maybe to the point where it isn't visible any more at your chosen camera angle, but you can never really get rid of it (taking Jeremy Birn's word for that).  Depth-mapped shadows have another conceptual problem in that they don't do blurred shadows very convincingly; no setting will work around that, it's fundamental to depth-mapped shadows (at least the way Poser and most other apps implement them).

The bright line on the cheek maky be another aspect of the light leak problem (depth-mapped shadows).

My Freebies

Yep - the things you worked on are clearly better.

Realism is like whack-a-mole. Something else always pops up as the new "biggest departure".

The geometry of the figure itself is now starting to bother me. The shape of the space between the knuckles is jumping out at me. I may be a bit more fat than this pretty girl, but I don't have deep creases between my knuckles (first set, the part you punch with). Take a jab at that with the morph brush.

I have never seen a trans-mapped hair that can match the realism you've got on the figure now. Good luck with that.

The part of the bra being pulled away looks CG. It doesn't fold and curl like real cloth.

The textures on the chair and curtain look blurry. Texture filtering? Also, they need some bump.

Keep going.

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Also there's that bright rim lighting around the character's left profile (most obvious at the nose and left corner of the mouth) that appears to come from nowhere.  Is that a light in the upper right rear that has shadows turned off?

My Freebies

Quote - Also there's that bright rim lighting around the character's left profile (most obvious at the nose and left corner of the mouth) that appears to come from nowhere.  Is that a light in the upper right rear that has shadows turned off?

 

A lamp behind the chair (off screen) would do that in real life.

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Sure, but it would also throw shadows through the hair and probably be occluded in at least a couple of spots (I'm thinking the mouth).

My Freebies

I think the biggest problem with that light is that the hair is NOT picking it up, only the skin is. So it looks out of place. The hair tells us there isn't a light source in that direction, while the skin says otherwise. The contradictory cues are confusing.

Here's a photo I took of a friend while we were messing around with the Nikon creative lighting system. (Two flashes, one on camera, one positioned as a rim light from behind left of the "figure". LOL)

Look at what the rim light does to the hair.

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Here is a similar composition and pose, but without the rim light.

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While I'm posting photos, just for reference here is a 100% crop showing the importance of bump to make the specular look like skin. The smooth stuff we see in all these Poser renders is - lame.

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Thanks, guys.

PJZ: I'm using raytraced lights only, and shadows. I'm sure texture filtering is off.

BB, this is the issue I referenced earlier with the rim lighting... it just doesn't seem to be working with the hair as I was attempting. Still not sure how to solve it. Part of the problem with the lack of occlusion from the rim light is that I have the shadow settings too soft? (They're not THAT high, tho - about 7%, IIRC.)

If I'm understanding you right, I think the creases you're seeing on the fingers is misplaced knuckle lines on my bump - they never really showed up until I got this level of render quality.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Oh, and my present issues with the hair are not general realism, but blotchy shadows in a couple places. They were always bugging me, but are even more noticeable now that the other shadows are getting so nice.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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The hair needs Blinn specular to get rim lighting.

Blur radius 7 could cause individual hairs to not appear to cast a shadow but they wouldn't in real life either, if you have a big lamp with lampshade close by.

Attached images shows the crease I'm talking about.

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Here's a zoom and highlight showing problems in the cloth texture.

Looks like it is too low resolution and that there are JPEG artifacts from it being over compressed.

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Let's face it. The new IDL sucks.

The following image looks a lot better.

Quote - Let's face it. The new IDL sucks.

The following image looks a lot better.

Sigh. I disagree completely.

IDL doesn't suck. And that image is clearly inferior to the other one.

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I wouldn't say it sucks, I think it can give really excellent results if you push the settings high enough.  The problem with that though is the speed is terrible when the settings are pushed that high.  I'm sure this will improve as Stefan puts more work into the renderer.

The thing with the hair is probably that it is set to be exempt from raytracing, a lot of vendors do that with hair to make it render faster.  This means that it will cast shadows with depth-mapped shadows, but not with raytraced shadows.  I've seen a whole lot of hair items that have wonky specular settings as well (black specular color e.g.).

My Freebies

Quote - While I'm posting photos, just for reference here is a 100% crop showing the importance of bump to make the specular look like skin. The smooth stuff we see in all these Poser renders is - lame.

but without SSS the skin looks dry .
i think if we dont use SSS then we have to be very careful how bump we use. to much bump on a skin shader without SSS and it will look to dry. plus i think the bump should not be to sharp.

Actually IDL can look fabulous, it just can take a very long time to render. I had other things to do so I pulled an old pz3 file into Poser 8 and let her rip. The GI pass took just over 3 hours. Admittedly, my Toshiba needs a ram upgrade, but that was quite a while and GI seems to hate transmapped hair.But the final result hours later is fantastic.

"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

 

 

Holy cow, LL, that is fantastic.

I do see a bit too much inter-skin glow and redness, caused by the GC shader with GI. But this is easily fixed. I'll be publishing a new VSS control prop optimized for P8 GI + Tone Mapping.

I also see the extra occlusion caused by using the AO in shader along with GI. Another thing easily fixed (pretty much press the delete key on the AO node).

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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 make the new Prop, I'll use it! Got VSS in my Poser 8 python library, ready to go.

"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

 

 

BB, you said before that I couldn't use both turbulence and a bump map... is that a limitation in Poser, or were you referring specifically to VSS? What I would like to do is depend on turbulence for general skin texture and a bump map for details such as wrinkles. It would be ideal if Poser could do a blend with bump like it can with diffuse.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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You can combine them. You can add them, blend them, whatever. You can also create a map to control the procedural bump parameters so they vary across different parts of the figure.

However, any of that tricky work will require editing the skin shader - the default VSS shader doesn't have provisions for combinations. Poser does, just not the shader I supplied.

I can help with that if you like.

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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)

To be honest, I used your VSS system as the basis for this character, but she's long since detached from the prop... it never occurred to me to save my iterations of the prop until I was completely done working with her. Live and learn - with new characters from now on, I'm going to put everything into my own Believable3D runtime - morphs, maps, VSS prop etc. (I can do that, right? the prop can be in my own runtime, it's just the python script that has to be in the main program runtime?)

I don't suppose there's a way to reattach, huh?

At any rate, is the node setup tricky? If you gave me some guidance to get me going in the right direction, I'd sure appreciate it.

As for your other comments - duh, Blinn. Yes, I need to do that. I suppose that hair room hair would catch rim lights much better than transmapped. But I've never attempted the hair room... it looks pretty daunting (not to say tedious).

I was aware that the scene textures (curtains etc) weren't very good... I've used the scene before and it's fairly noticeable. It was probably a freebie, and it's a handy little setup for an everyday sort of setting. Someday I'll graduate to those sorts of issues, but I want to get character realism as good as it can be first. I suppose simply using higher quality products for final renders would be a good start though....

Thanks for clarifying on the finger creases. Now I understand why you were talking about the geometry. I have creases something like those myself, tho V4's are a bit exaggerated. Actually, I think the worst part about them is that they should have a bit of a "web" on the bottom (i.e. palm side); these just do something funny.

PJZ, thanks for the clarification on the hair re the vendor exempting it from raytracing. For some reason I had to read your note a second time in order to catch what you're saying. I'll have to check those settings; now that you mention it, that's probably the issue why it's not casting any shadows at all from that direction.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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Quote - To be honest, I used your VSS system as the basis for this character, but she's long since detached from the prop... it never occurred to me to save my iterations of the prop until I was completely done working with her. Live and learn - with new characters from now on, I'm going to put everything into my own Believable3D runtime - morphs, maps, VSS prop etc. (I can do that, right? the prop can be in my own runtime, it's just the python script that has to be in the main program runtime?)

Yes you can save a VSS prop anywhere.

Also, VSS itself does not have to be in the main runtime. That is true of most Python programs, but I figured out a way to make VSS work from anywhere, even if it isn't IN a runtime at all. You could put the VSS folder on your desktop and it still would work.

Quote - I don't suppose there's a way to reattach, huh?

Any VSS prop will work on any figure, even one that has been set up by some other VSS prop. The issue is only whether you changed the settings from the defaults. If you load the default settings as I delivered them, it can't read back what changes you made to the shaders. However, if all you did was tweak the PM: or PMC: nodes, then you can get back to that state. Load the same kind of VSS control prop you used before. (there are several) Click on any skin material of the figure while in the material room. Examine the values in its copy of the material. Then select the VSS Control Prop's Template Skin and examine those values. If any were different on the figure, its because you changed them way back when, so just re-enter the same values back into the template. Once you get the template parameter nodes back to how you had them before it will produce the same again. If you made any changes to other templates, examine those materials, too. Iris, eyewhite (or sclera), etc. Make the shader in the control prop look the same as that on the figure. Then this prop will re-produce those same values. From there you can save the prop and use it anytime as a new starting point. If you make changes, save the modified prop. The prop is like a material collection or mat pose.

A customized VSS control prop can be used on any figure at any time. The important thing is to make sure you always have a copy saved of whatever instructions you put into it.

Quote - At any rate, is the node setup tricky? If you gave me some guidance to get me going in the right direction, I'd sure appreciate it.

Well if you just wanted to add them together, its pretty simple. The problem is only that the Template Skin shader is huge and made of twisted spaghetti. You have to tease a few things apart to find the pieces you need to rewire. But the wiring is simple. You need a new Math:Add node. Plug the Bump Map into Value_1. Plug anything else such as Turbulence into Value_2. Plug this Add node into the Bump channel. But, VSS handles bump a bit more complex than that. The Bump Map that's in there is connected to a Math:Sub node that offsets the bump map so that mid-gray means no bump. So what you really want is to connect that ... sigh this is complicated without a picture. Even then you could make a mistake.

Maybe I should just build it for you. I dont' build it by hand - I use matmatic to generate the shader. Hmmm - do I even have that script around with me? Not sure. It might be at home. I'm on the road during the week as I work in another state most of the time. I have an apartment and my laptop during the weekdays. That's why I'm online so much weekdays but not on the weekend. I don't do Poser like a madman when I'm home with the family. Anyway, my home desktop has all the good stuff on it so it may have to wait till the weekend.

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

Thanks, BB. Yeah, that's what I meant by saving the prop in the future - using it like a material collection until the character was absolutely finalized.

I think the reattach is probably a no-go. I did some pretty major changes. Probably some of it isn't even doing anything by now, who knows? :-p (Truthfully, most of it is still there, but after detaching and then having to copy settings from one material to another, the nice handy VSS names got lost, which is a PITA.) If you want, I could attach it as a .txt file (right?) and you could see what a mess I've made of your shader. :-p

Anyway, I'm gonna take the info you gave me here and go into the material room and have a look. Gonna have to do in Poser Pro, though, cause I'm doing my first Alyson render with P8. (The result won't be a pretty girl, but she's got character....)

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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There's another way to recover your modified Template Skin.

Pick a skin zone on the figure. Save it as a material file.

Go into the control prop Template Skin. Load the file you saved.

Now go through and on all the image maps, set the selected file to None.

This is not a perfect replica of the original template, because some decisions were made when it was applied, and some unused optional stuff got removed. But it would work for your specific character.

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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)

Ah, good idea. I'll try that.

Edit: I assume there's a step missing in your post. That would be copy from my material file and paste to template skin, right?

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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You could do that.

What I said was save and load. It amounts ot the same thing, with one crucial difference.

If you copy/paste then edit (badly) and then synchronize, you may find you screwed up, at which point all your copies are toast.

But if you save, load, edit, and synch, you can recover, because you SAVED.

You're still not thinking along the right lines. Save each step! Then you can back up.

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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)

Everything is already saved. I always save my changes as a new MC. But what I wasn't getting from your previous message was how I was getting the MC info into template skin. I guess I'm missing something.

My Alyson render is taking forever. I rebuilt the scene that was giving me grief the other day. I would have thought it was no more complex than the Sharon scene we've been looking at, probably less. And the size is smaller, and I think my quality settings are lower.... But right now it's like 10% of the way showing on "Precalculating Indirect Light," and the render started exactly two hours ago.

Have you tried rendering from two versions of Poser simultaneously? (I want to test my turbulence/bump map mix to see what I want for numbers.) In theory, it ought to work, since Poser Pro can do a queue render at the same time as a regular or background render... or maybe I can only render in queue? Hate to just try it and have my Alyson render crash, though I'm tempted to give up on it, as it's being rather ridiculous....

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

I didn't say anything about saving a material collection. I said select a single skin material - "a" material - and save it. Doesn't matter which, because the different skin zones have the same nodes, just different texture files.

Pick, for example, the face. Save that material. Now load that material into Template Skin.
Go from there.

The saved material collection is no help because you can't load a single material in that collection into the control prop. The names don't match, and there's no way to load just one.

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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, right. But I still wouldn't be losing information is what I'm saying about the MC.

What I didn't realize was that I could simply load a material file into template skin. Never done that before. That was the missing link in my mind. :)

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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I'm off to bed, ridiculously late. I never did get that to work the way I wanted - by loading my material file and then changing the image map info to none in Template Skin... that followed through when I synchronized... i.e. all my map info got deleted on the character. So oh well... I made the changes manually. I have to say I've never liked horizontal scrolling in the MAT room, and P8 seems worse than PP.

I'll post a render of my turbulence + bump map results, probably tomorrow. Thanks for your help.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

I checked the settings on the EveryDay Hair I'm using in the scene I've been posting. Odd. It was checked to show visible in raytracing and to cast shadows. It almost feels like something's broken. I mean, it's obviously not working at all. (I'm rerendering at the moment, but I unwisely fired up the settings ridiculously high and it's taking forever....)

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

Well, I have promised a render of a starting point with a blend of bump map and turbulence, but I got caught in other stuff in the time I had today. (It was also my Mom's 83rd birthday, so that called for supper out.)

Here's a new render. I'm using IDL, but there's nothing else in the scene, not even the environment sphere. The hair is Ali's Hr-041 and I managed to get it, at least, to cast shadows. It also seems to render fast. (My settings were reasonably high here, and full render was less than 8 minutes.) Fabulous looking hair, and quite real from the front (though I probably have the Blinn a bit too exaggerated?), but when you look at the side, it obviously goes a bit flat.

You can see my problems with raytracing on the lip line clearly in evidence here again.

But I think the bump + turbulence combination looks pretty good (though obviously I still need to improve the map itself; haven't done anything with that). What do you think, BB?

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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Whoops, I didn't post the image.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

please tell me you didnt use the default 3 lights? 

I can't really tell much about the bump at this size/magnification.

I think some of the issues are because your main light is coming from too low an angle.

It is shining into the nostrils, and the upper lip is not casting a shadow on the lower lip as we usually see. This may have some impact on the way the lip crevice appears to us.

As PJ noted, I see a hard line inside the nose from lit to black. With the light being low, it illuminates the bottom of the nostril, but the nostril material is painted dark, so we see a disturbing hard-edge at the boundary between face material and nostril material.

 

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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 htink the best way to show bump is with one light. you get  a good contrast of dark and bright.
plus more specular to see it.

Naw, this isn't a lighting issue. I can put the lights anywhere I want and get this. (See the image earlier in my other thread: two lights both squarely in front of her face.)

I'm actually beginning to wonder if these problems are triggered by my sculpt. These are just guesses: The issues at the lip line may be because I altered the mouth and triggered a bug. The issue in the nose is that somehow I managed do something radical in the geom when I did my sculpt. That's kinda hard to imagine, but I gotta test why this character is getting it and other folks don't seem to have my problems.

My next test will be to pose default V4 in exactly the same spot and hide Sharon and see what happens. That'll have to wait until after work.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3

But note that whatever I've done, it's only triggered by raytracing. Neither the nose nor lip issue shows up with DM shadows. Nor does it show up in DAZ Studio.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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Thanks for the tip about checking bump, ice-boy. Will have to try remember incorporating that into my workflow.

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

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i google images with dramatic lighting for skin. one spot light. so that the skin is also in shadow. then i see on the edges how much bump there is on skin.