Have played with the render settings per the suggestions in this forum, (shading rate down, sinc instead of box, gamma correction off, HSV, upping pixel samples, etc. etc.) and I can't seem to get the finished render to look as warm an real as the preview render!

Does anyone have render settings that approximate the preview?  Then presumably I could make improvements from there.

Its going on nearly a week twiddling around with this!

Thanks

Danborn

Some pics showing exactly what is wrong might help.

I'm afraid you'll have to rethink your lighting and make changes there.   Whatever you knew about lighting in older versions of Poser is now useless.    Most times I find that if I'm using a dome (for outdoor scenes) only one infinite light is necessary for shadows and that at about 50% intensity.   If I do add another light, it most probably is specular only.

For indoor scenes I usually use a point light adding more spots/points depending on where my lighting sources are in the scene (i.e. overhead bulb, candle, fireplace, etc)   You'll have to experiment till you find what's best for you but rest assured that gamma correction in Poser Pro 2010 is not to make your renders washed out but more realistic.   It's up to you now to find what lights suit your scene best.  Generally, preview mode should be darker than what you intend for your final image.

One final tip, don't bother with pre-made light sets.  Adjusting your own according to your needs is much simpler than trying to get a pre-made set to look good.

OP said GC is off. I suspect IDL is off as well. OP wants something that looks like preview. PP2010 does not look different than P6 if the new features are not turned on. I suspect a shader is at work but we see/know nothing.

Quote - OP said GC is off.

Oops, just simply passed that by.  I guess I don't see the point of using PP2010 if you're not going to GC.   And that, my dear Baggins, is your doing :)

What are the gamma settings for your non-colour image maps: like bump, spec, displacement and transmaps? If you do use renderer GC (and why have PP2010, else??) they need to be set to 1 in the Texture Manager dialogue:

Or, you can use that changeGamma script in Menu -> Scripts -> MaterialMods and change them all in one fell swoop.

If you are using lights that were designed for pre-PP2010, your renders will look like poo. If you are using shaders on skin designed to overcome pre-PP2010 shortcomings, your renders will look like poo.

I have found that whilst in P7, I was doing a lot of fiddling with shaders and lights and stuff to get render to look decent, I'm finding that PP2010 requires a lot MORE fiddling, particularly with content that was developed for that P5 - P7 era.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful comments.  I don't do this full time, what little creative time I have to work on Poser has been sucked-up the past two weeks by this infinite rendering do-loop:

Read forum => Tweak settings => Render => Come back later => Render still sucks

Repeat until insane! LOL

The tip about setting GC to 1.0 in the custom IBL settings is a new one I'm trying out now.  Perhaps when I get this figured out I'll start a thread entitled 'Successful PP 2010 Lighting/Render Settings", and make a record of my successes, encouraging others to contribute theirs.

Thanks again...

Danborn