Add a one sided square. Set its scale to 1000%. Set xScale to 600%. This makes a wall.

Apply this shader.

Add a ceiling, using another scaled square with a plain white material.

Render with no lights.

This done with Poser Pro 2010, with GC enabled.

So ambient_value at .5, ambient_color white appears to give off light. Light is reflected on the floor - I'm assuming no reflection is turned on for floor or ceiling? The figure appears to be illuminated by the wall "lights".
All just because you're using IDL. If you weren't, what, nothing would render except white squares where that wall is?
No even going to comment on the shader: it's just defining where the squares are going to be, is that correct?

Are speculars now aware of ambient, or does the figure have reflection on it?

Yet another reason for me to want P8 and a new computer to run it on.  :( 

Damn you, BagginsBill.  ;)

Quote - Yet another reason for me to want P8 and a new computer to run it on.  :( 

Damn you, BagginsBill.  ;)

I understand just how you feel. with the exception of Poser 8. I have that already., but a new computer would make it 100% better. lol

Frederick
Poser By Design

Flipside to FightingWolf.

New PC, No Poser 8.....(Sigh)

Quote -
So ambient_value at .5, ambient_color white appears to give off light. Light is reflected on the floor - I'm assuming no reflection is turned on for floor or ceiling? The figure appears to be illuminated by the wall "lights".
All just because you're using IDL. If you weren't, what, nothing would render except white squares where that wall is?
No even going to comment on the shader: it's just defining where the squares are going to be, is that correct?

Not .5, but 5. The luminance of the white rectangles is hyper-white 5.

The floor is a diffuse and reflect, which means you're getting IDL diffuse light coming from those rectangles, as well as some specular reflection of those rectangles. Because the reflection is very low, the luminance of the reflections is in the unit range, despite the fact that the rectangles are hyper white.

If I turned off IDL, we'd see the white rectangles and specular reflections of them, but everything else would be black.

The shader is not just hyper white. It also has ordinary diffuse in it. (Think about one of those panels if the light bulb blew out. It would be white plastic, illuminated by the other panels, so it would diffusely reflect some of that.) So my shader is white plastic (diffuse) plus in the rectangles some seriously bright self illumination.

Quote - Are speculars now aware of ambient, or does the figure have reflection on it?

The figure and floor have reflection on them. Specular nodes probably never be IDL aware. Specular nodes are just simplified models of reflection of traditional light sources.

I actually threw this together because of the node tut discussion in the other thread we're talking in.

What is a subtract node for? Here are two of them. One was used to calculate the complement of the V coordinate. Why? Because I need to know how far I am from the top and from the bottom. Whichever is smaller, is the nearer edge. That's the job of the Min - which is smaller?

The other subtract node was to take that distance (to the nearest edge) and subtract .15 from it so that if I'm closer than .15, I have a negative number, and if I'm farther than .15 I have a positive number.

I then multiply that by 100 and clamp it. This gives me a sharp gradient from 0 to 1 that begins .15 V units from the nearest edge.

So subtract is for finding nearest edges, or for finding distance from a known coordinate, or for a billion other things.

Clamp was used to limit value to 0 to 1. (Robyn, you and CobaltDream know that was to force it to be a PBUF. None of the people here know what a PBUF is, so I have to explain it in more words. Someday, everybody will know what a PBUF is.)

Anyway, that gives me a horizontal band of white that I multiply with the white vertical bands coming from the tile node to get the rectangles the size I wanted them.

Quote - Not .5, but 5. The luminance of the white rectangles is hyper-white 5.

Need to have my prescription checked. I could have sworn it said .5. Which didn't make sense.

Ambient_value of 5... does this make white a super-colour? Well, how can it? 1 x 5... what the heck colour is THAT? Or are we not changing WHITE itself, but the behaviour of that channel?
Opening a can of worms...

BTW, this is what I was talking about in that other thread about "Basic Poser Node Behaviour"... THIS needs to be accessible somewhere central...

[EDIT] Dang, cross-posted...

white is just 1,1,1. Multiply times 5 and it's 5, 5, 5. Yes, that's a  hyper color (or super color as you said). Means the same as far as I'm concerned.

You and I have talked about this for a long time now. Hopefully it's sinking in. We can work with luminance values that we cannot directly see, but indirectly the effects are felt. The floor reflections are very low at 10%, yet they are bright - because .1 * 5 = .5. So the reflections are about half as bright as the maximum our monitor can display. The directly viewed rectangles appear to be 1, but they are 5.

I would already have been doing a lot of tutorials about IDL, but these artifacts show up. I figure there's no use teaching all about IDL if it's going to change in order to fix this.

Um... where do I find that texture coordinate node?

Silly question but what is give the gray part of the walls (light between the lights) that slightly cloudy look?  Is that a part of the artifacts you were talking about?

Well, dagnab it. I don't know how you did it, Bagginsbill. I can get a reasonable facsimile of what you did above, considering I didn't get that texture coordinate node. But I can't get raytraced reflections without adding a light.

Quote - Well, dagnab it. I don't know how you did it, Bagginsbill. I can get a reasonable facsimile of what you did above, considering I didn't get that texture coordinate node. But I can't get raytraced reflections without adding a light.

Heheh. And now you see first hand why I have written over and over and over again:

Uncheck REFLECT_LITE_MULT - it is bad - makes no sense - never let it be on
Uncheck REFLECT_KD_MULT - it is also bad

The v_texture_coordinate node is New Node/Variables/v

Quote - Uncheck REFLECT_LITE_MULT - it is bad - makes no sense - never let it be on
Uncheck REFLECT_KD_MULT - it is also bad

The default for this should be off if it's never useful.

Quote - > Quote - Well, dagnab it. I don't know how you did it, Bagginsbill. I can get a reasonable facsimile of what you did above, considering I didn't get that texture coordinate node. But I can't get raytraced reflections without adding a light.

Heheh. And now you see first hand why I have written over and over and over again:

Uncheck REFLECT_LITE_MULT - it is bad - makes no sense - never let it be on
Uncheck REFLECT_KD_MULT - it is also bad

I saw your reference to that above, but I had no idea where these parameters even are.

Quote - The v_texture_coordinate node is New Node/Variables/v

Ah, thanks. Makes sense, but not obvious. :)

Quote - Uncheck REFLECT_LITE_MULT - it is bad - makes no sense - never let it be on
Uncheck REFLECT_KD_MULT - it is also bad

I saw your reference to that above, but I had no idea where these parameters even are.

They're on the root PoserSurface node.  Reflect_Lite_Mult is on for every material by default.

Quote - > Quote -

Uncheck REFLECT_LITE_MULT - it is bad - makes no sense - never let it be on
Uncheck REFLECT_KD_MULT - it is also bad

I saw your reference to that above, but I had no idea where these parameters even are.

Nevermind. Don't know why I couldn't see them earlier. Guess I was expecting them in a different place.

The KD_MULT was already unchecked... I'm guessing it's just REFLECT_LITE_MULT that is checked by default.

Yeah, caught it, pjz, thanks. I must have been looking for them either on the reflect node or right together with the reflection value on the Surface panel.

Er... I take it having that checked by default is a new wrinkle in P8 or PP2010 Beta? because I just realized that I never had to go looking for that in the old Poser Pro and I got reflections fine....

I don't think it mattered until you got into P8's tone mapping or gamma correction.

Well, when I used Poser Pro, I used GC. Is there a different GC setup with the 2010 version, I wonder?

Quote - > Quote - Uncheck REFLECT_LITE_MULT - it is bad - makes no sense - never let it be on

Uncheck REFLECT_KD_MULT - it is also bad

The default for this should be off if it's never useful.

If it should default to off, why does it default to on?

Dumbness.

it's been checked by default since day 1 (poser 4).  old habits die hard.  back in those days all they had were refl. maps.

Strange, usualy you always use Alt_Diffuse ... Why not in this case ?

Quote - Strange, usualy you always use Alt_Diffuse ... Why not in this case ?

I usually have to do GC in the shader, which means I have to take over what the root node usually does.

The root nodes does not let me add GC to it after. There is nothing I can do to add anything after the root node.

So ... I usually do not use anything built into the root node. I use the Alternate_Diffuse channel, which is pretty much a channel that exactly defines the output, without any more interpretation by the root node. When you see me use the Alternate_Diffuse channel of the root node, and pretty much nothing else, you can assume I'm doing that because the Root node is useless to me, is no advantage, and I wish it were gone in that case.

However, with Poser Pro 2010, I do not need to do GC in the shader. It will be done after the root node automatically. Which means the Root node math is very helpful. It contains, built in, a Diffuse node, a Specular node, and lots of other things, and it adds them all together.

Do I need the root node to provide all these things? No - I can do them myself and add them together. But when the root node does the job of 5 other nodes, (so long as GC is taken care of by the renderer, not the shader) then I use the full features of the root node.

And What grreat fun this is to experiment with.

I have a question or two for The Jedi Master of Poser Nodes.

Is it possible to have something like a Wall texture surrounding the White Light Panels?

Is it possible to use something like the 3d Clouds Node for the White Panels?

I tried using Blender or the Ambient Color with limited sucess.

Thanks

I'm assuming is that what it comes down to is whether the mortar is tweakable.

I'm assuming one could plug texturing nodes into the Mortar_Color parameter (on the Tile node), no?

(I don't have time to open Poser @ the moment to test, but it sounds doable to my very limited knowledge.)

This looks pretty bad, because I just threw a node on the Mortar_Color and didn't do much tweaking. But just had to make sure it could be done. :)

You are most correct.
Something like Wall paper or Paint that one would see in and Airline terminal.

It would also be most interesting "IF" the White Areas could having something like clouds or an Outdoor scene. Something like one may encounter when traveling through the terminal.

Cheers
DR

I really like how these panels work with a Character.

Aging Mike.

Hm, I guess that blue was doing something, but I'm guess it was acting in greyscale (?). Anyway, lots of fun to play with.

Quote - Hm, I guess that blue was doing something, but I'm guess it was acting in greyscale (?). Anyway, lots of fun to play with.

you use a math_function replace with a Color_Math the math_function_4

Thanks. That's not working for me so far. Only colour I'm getting is what I set the Ambient_Color at.

Sweet

Could you show a capture of the Material room for this?

Thanks

How about a Caustic or Gel?

Quote -
maybe this, plugged in the Diffuse_Color

I think rjjack just means that's an image map plugged into Diffuse_Color.

However, mariner, I thought your question had to do with placing images on the light sources, not the "wall/mortar" sections - like the lit billboards in public places.