Get it here:
http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/tutorial-scenes/poser-8-soft-studio-lighting

I'm trying something new - instead of writing how to do something, I've already done it. Just download the scene, study how I configured stuff, and we can talk about it here.

This is a scene showing how to do soft studio lighting using IDL.

In a photo studio, you have total control of lighting, and can use things like umbrellas and sheets to bounce soft light around on your subject. I've set up a scene like that, and you can just play with it. It includes a VSS PR3 control prop already configured to work well with IDL.

Figure not included, of course.

Note: The first version I uploaded was right after I deleted the figure, which changed the light positions and orientations. I forgot that the lights were set to "Point At" the figure's head. If you got the first version already, download again. After loading your figure, set each light to "Point At" the figure's head or neck or chest.  That is something that can't be saved without the figure in place. Sorry.

The glow box is parented to the Main Light, so feel free to move that light around and see how it affects things.

Load a stock M4. Make both lights "Point At" his head. Use the Face Camera and render. This is what you get.

Oh. goodie!  Just what the doctor ordered!   I've been wishing for something similar to work with Poser and here you offer it up! 

Thank you very much this!! Can't wait to try this out.

Your renders look amazing by the way . I´ll comment more when I've done a few renders...

Whew! 7 hours without anybody saying anything, I thought I'd posted my first dud. LOL Looking forward to see what you do, V.

Beautiful renders! But, with P7, all I can do is watch...

I wouldn't worry BB.  People will jump on this like most everything you do ;)

This might just inspire me to break out Poser 8 again... been working mostly in Poser 7 since I have everything set up in that environment, but this looks mouth-watering!

What? P7? Heretic!

Wow, ghelmer, that's beautiful. GI Studio, eh? Hm. I never looked at that before now. It promises "stunning" renders, but the promos look quite ordinary to me.

Did you use VSS, too? I'm assuming you did. The RDNA promo pictures clearly didn't, and that's why they fall short. You have to GC the skin and eyes or it just doesn't get you there.

Lighting is the left front wheel, shading is the right front wheel. If you're missing either, you can't steer.

I tried rendering without the boxes and man, do they make a difference!!  I haven't looked at their materials yet (still rendering) but this is really interesting.

But I am still completely unable to render transmapped hair with 'Visible in Raytracing' checked.  If I check the renderer grinds to a halt (or at least past my patience) Do you have tips on rendering trans mapped hair with IDL?

Hi BB!

Thanks but the thanks need to go to yourself!!!  :)

Yes, using YOUR VSS too so all in all IMHO my best Poser 8 output so far is all due to your ingenius techniques!!!  As for GI Studio which I was led to believe was "teh awesomez" for $9 and your free VSS and Poser 8 Soft Studio Lights with IDL is priceless!!!!

I haven't had much time until now (just got laid off) to play much with Poser lately but I know I'll be incorporating this lighting technique and VSS into everything I do that needs genuine AWESOME!!!

Thanks bagginsbill!!!! 

Gerard

The retarded thing about the RDNA GI Studio (no offense to Colm, who has a big brain and all) is that it is shown to be an un-enclosed environment.  It's nearly a waste of time to render with IDL/GI if the environment is not fully enclosed with geometry, whether a "room" (my preference) or an environment dome like BB prefers.  If you don't enclose the environment, light will hit one surface, bounce, and maybe hit a second surface, maybe not - then will vanish off into the unverse.  If you're rendering outer space where your characters are standing on a platform with infinite vacuum around them, maybe that's a good setup - otherwise no.

The promo pic where the light is coming from the right and the dark sides of the spheres are all black - that is primo example of light not taking advantage of GI.  Surfaces should just NEVER be that black unless their diffuse color is totally black, they are not getting any light at all.

Ah, but doesn't BB's SoftStudio show that you don't need enclosing environment?  He uses the Glowboxes to bounce the light around and  it makes all the difference.  The GI Studio uses the same concept but unfortunately it sucks (with respect).  I fell into the  trap of buying it and gave up on getting good results without extremely high render settings.  Bagginsbill setup, however, shows that you don't need extreme render settings to get good results.

Just remembered...  GI Studio doesn't use lights!!  except for specularity.  It only uses the ambient channel for luminance.  So no real shadows (that should make some of you experts happy :) That's probably where it fails...

Great discussion - just what I wanted to explore.

My Soft Studio is a void also. There is only one wall, on the left, which bounces light from the glow box.

Also, my main light is neither a normal light, nor a specular only light. It is in-between. Look at its shader. The Diffuse_Color is RGB 96, not 255, nor 0.

Clever? Eh? Eh?

Yes I invented it. What shall we call this sort of light?

The sample scene that you guys are looking at in this thread is not enclosed - while you can get results you like, it still has the syndrome of having almost all light after the first or second bounce disappear into nowhere.  Since the render options are only set to 4 bounces anyway, this isn't a really big deal.  This isn't what I would consider a good "general purpose" GI setup but I'm sure BB is already aware of this.  A whole lot of people are not though, and I think it's something folks should keep in mind.

A good example of the down side to this kind of setup is the M4 renders - note the top of his head is almost completely black.  This is because there's no ceiling to bounce light down onto his head from above, there's just infinite black emptiness.  Fine if you're aware of this and you want this effect, but let it be your choice rather than just not knowing how it should be.

Quote - Also, my main light is neither a normal light, nor a specular only light. It is in-between. Look at its shader. The Diffuse_Color is RGB 96, not 255, nor 0.

Clever? Eh? Eh?

Yes I invented it. What shall we call this sort of light?

I see that you did this although the light's color comes in at 94/94/94 for me.  I think the effect of this would be a much higher specular effect than with a white light at lower intensity, right?  Did you pick 96 (or whatever) out of a bag, or is there a specific meaning for it?

ps: and yes that's a good trick, I have been doing things like just turning up spec values on each material, this is a lot simpler and should have occurred to me.

Quote - Ok this is pretty cool!  For a start I´m really pleased with how fast it renders.  It took a while to get the bump setting right for this character but I´m really pleased with how the eyes come out.  Did you change something in the VSS setup regarding the eyes?

Yes a little bit. I reduced some of the eyewhite coloring and changed the gamma.

Quote - I tried rendering without the boxes and man, do they make a difference!!  I haven't looked at their materials yet (still rendering) but this is really interesting.

Yep, the boxes are important.

Quote - But I am still completely unable to render transmapped hair with 'Visible in Raytracing' checked.  If I check the renderer grinds to a halt (or at least past my patience) Do you have tips on rendering trans mapped hair with IDL?

Since SR2, it's a lot faster for me. Are you using SR2? Remember the 8-minute render challenge? That was transmapped.

What I find interesting about this setup is how it mimics a real photostudio.  So I see no reason why you couldn't place this light setup inside a room with glorious results...

...and where was I when this whole Artistic Lens went down?  Can't wait to try that one out too.

Thanks bagginsbill !!

Quote - > Quote - Also, my main light is neither a normal light, nor a specular only light. It is in-between. Look at its shader. The Diffuse_Color is RGB 96, not 255, nor 0.

Clever? Eh? Eh?

Yes I invented it. What shall we call this sort of light?

I see that you did this although the light's color comes in at 94/94/94 for me.  I think the effect of this would be a much higher specular effect than with a white light at lower intensity, right?  Did you pick 96 (or whatever) out of a bag, or is there a specific meaning for it?

ps: and yes that's a good trick, I have been doing things like just turning up spec values on each material, this is a lot simpler and should have occurred to me.

I thought I clicked on the Windows color picker for 96. 94-96 doesn't matter. I simply experimented until I felt the ratio produced nice results. It didn't "derive" the value in any way other than eyeballing it with test renders. Anyway, yes it produces a much higher specular ratio for that light. But when you add the glow box into it, the overall ratio is about the same. My goal was simply to soften the terminator, while still having a light that was basically 75% intensity of a normal light.

Quote - > Quote - Ok this is pretty cool!  For a start I´m really pleased with how fast it renders.  It took a while to get the bump setting right for this character but I´m really pleased with how the eyes come out.  Did you change something in the VSS setup regarding the eyes?

Yes a little bit. I reduced some of the eyewhite coloring and changed the gamma.

Quote - I tried rendering without the boxes and man, do they make a difference!!  I haven't looked at their materials yet (still rendering) but this is really interesting.

Yep, the boxes are important.

Quote - But I am still completely unable to render transmapped hair with 'Visible in Raytracing' checked.  If I check the renderer grinds to a halt (or at least past my patience) Do you have tips on rendering trans mapped hair with IDL?

Since SR2, it's a lot faster for me. Are you using SR2? Remember the 8-minute render challenge? That was transmapped.

Yeah I'm on SR2.  8 minute render challenge?  Rings a bell but I don't fully remember it...
I might also just be impatient.  When you render transmapped hair, does the progress bar stop when it hits the hair?

How fast transmapped hair will render, at least for me, varies immensely depending on the geometry of the hair.  Stuff with lots of layers of geometry takes huge time, but simple stuff like Kozaburo's models tends to render a lot faster.  Part of the problem has been that some hairs have their specific min shading rate set to zero, which I turn up to 0.5 or 1.0; I think I've gotten some speed improvements from disabling texture filtering for all maps on the hair materials also.

I can't make any sense of why Colm modeled those GI disks. See how they are contoured? What's the point of that? The shape totally doesn't matter at all, and especially the variation in normals doesn't matter. I just used Poser boxes.

Even if a round shape did somehow matter, why model it? A flattened Poser low-res sphere would serve just as well.

My glow box is no great technical feat. It's just a box with ambient = 2.

The reflector box shader is - wait for it - nothing but the standard white/1 of the poser box. LOL

There is absolutely nothing useful about the GI studio components, versus my Poser primitives. The trick is combining them correctly with a light and then you still have to know how to position it for best use.

I think you should carry your tutorial a little further and show folks the difference between this setup, and one enclosed and with higher # of raytrace bounces.

Well he probably modeled it that way so dumb blokes like me would look at the promos and go "Wow that looks professional!  It has to be good!"

Quote - The sample scene that you guys are looking at in this thread is not enclosed - while you can get results you like, it still has the syndrome of having almost all light after the first or second bounce disappear into nowhere.  Since the render options are only set to 4 bounces anyway, this isn't a really big deal.  This isn't what I would consider a good "general purpose" GI setup but I'm sure BB is already aware of this.  A whole lot of people are not though, and I think it's something folks should keep in mind.

A good example of the down side to this kind of setup is the M4 renders - note the top of his head is almost completely black.  This is because there's no ceiling to bounce light down onto his head from above, there's just infinite black emptiness.  Fine if you're aware of this and you want this effect, but let it be your choice rather than just not knowing how it should be.

I'm not seeing it black. He has dark hair, but on my monitor I see all parts of his head as being brighter than the black background. Is your monitor different?

Maybe.  There is a big difference between your first M4 render with the stock shader (whatever that is in your case) and the VSS shader, which evidently is pulling a lot more brightness around the back of the head and the side of the face, however you're doing that (specularity I suppose).  The first pic, the top of the head is nearly completely black - not quite though.

There is a bit more fill lighting from the room on his face. I've lost some of the drama.

My initial setup was intentionally a void, as if the studio was painted black, so you have total control. Introduce a room, and you don't have total control. Well, not total direct control. You have to understand IDL a lot more to know what to do with the floor color, the ceiling, etc. I wasn't going to post tutorials on that level of detail until the rendering artifacts are solved. I simply don't want to bother with fine tuning something that may change in ... well a relatively short time interval that I cannot say in public.

Quote - Maybe.  There is a big difference between your first M4 render with the stock shader (whatever that is in your case) and the VSS shader, which evidently is pulling a lot more brightness around the back of the head and the side of the face, however you're doing that (specularity I suppose).  The first pic, the top of the head is nearly completely black - not quite though.

Not specularity - gamma correction. Remember, without GC, a 10% linear luminance (RGB 26) appears to be .64%.  That's an apparent luminance increase of 15X.

Nobody can properly judge the subtle effects of indirect lighting by looking at uncorrected renders.

I understand that GI needs an enclosing to bounce the light around but I don't care if the image is  "technically wrong" if it looks good.

Yeah I knew you were aware of this, just thought it was worthwhile to make others aware of it too ;)

Lookin forward to when that artifacting problem is resolved.

Well here it is inside a room. I don't think it's glorious yet, but it's pretty good. Way better than Poser 7, that's for sure. Check those soft shadows.

That's the big reflector box on the left. It probably isn't needed since I'm in a room. Just need the glowbox and the semi-specular light.

I was lazy (or keeping it simple) and didn't make a glowbox for the rim light. I'll do that.

Quote - I wasn't quite pleased with the overall reddish appearance to the skin.  I went back into VSS and changed the SSS color to something more suited and closer to the skin tone.  I found the second render more pleasing and perhaps more accurate.  This is just preliminary and may be worth pursuing to fine tune settings.

That looks strangely dark - the eyes are wrong. Did you set the lights to point at the head?

Quote - > Quote - What I find interesting about this setup is how it mimics a real photostudio.  So I see no reason why you couldn't place this light setup inside a room with glorious results...

Well here it is inside a room. I don't think it's glorious yet, but it's pretty good. Way better than Poser 7, that's for sure. Check those soft shadows.

That's the big reflector box on the left. It probably isn't needed since I'm in a room. Just need the glowbox and the semi-specular light.

I was lazy (or keeping it simple) and didn't make a glowbox for the rim light. I'll do that.

Impressive.  Have you tried it with more bounces and samples?

By the way, I tried the Artistic Lens and since I didn't have 'visible in raytracing' checked on the hair it didn't show up in the render.  It rendered without saturation though (I used HSV) so it works, I just won't be using it with trandsmapped hair and IDL :)

Do you see anything fundamentally different? I don't. I don't think a rim light needs a glow box.

edit: Oh - doing a flip test comparison to the previous head shot in room, the ear is not lit as well. The reflector box was doing that. Well - that's why you use reflector boxes, isn't it. To bring some very soft fill light to the side.

Good observation, BB.  And thinking back, I did point lights to the Miki 2 model but forgot to reset them for the V4.  Definitely, I will repeat this several more times under different conditions.  Thanks.

Quote - Impressive.  Have you tried it with more bounces and samples?

I have done very little with bounces more than 4. Is that helpful? And I've found that additional samples are only needed when you're trying to accurately pick up on a very small, bright object. Since the glow box is big, more samples are not needed.

Quote - > Quote - Impressive.  Have you tried it with more bounces and samples?

I have done very little with bounces more than 4. Is that helpful? And I've found that additional samples are only needed when you're trying to accurately pick up on a very small, bright object. Since the glow box is big, more samples are not needed.

Well I was thinking about the artifacts on the walls behind him.  Wouldn't more samples clean that up?

No this is the problem pjz99 and I have been discussing for months. The artifacts are due to a geometry interpretation difference between the part of Poser that deals with ray-tracing and the part that deals with rendering.

We've found it possible to get rid of them using the artistic lens, because that makes prevents Poser from using its REYES renderer for anything.. The whole render is a pure ray-trace.

Using more samples would only make it track those internal discrepancies with more precision. Which is ironic.

I didn't notice it was rotated. That was not intentional. But it hardly matters.

It occurs to me that it would be cool if I had a real model of a photographers reflector umbrella.

You up for modeling that Paul?