Mkay. Maybe I'm not doing this right, but I've run into a problem.

I snagged the Lake Water material from the Lux2Pose site, pasted it into a notepad and saved it with an .xml extension. I then proceeded to load it up into my L2P to export my scene. The export works like a dream when I use anything from the default "Water" section of the materials library.

However, if I try to export using the Lake Water material, I get the following:

Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:Program FilesSmith MicroPoser Pro 2010RuntimePythonliblib-tkTkinter.py", line 1345, in call
    return self.func(*args)
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2luxpro.py", line 6026, in ExportToLux
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2luxpro.py", line 3931, in ExportMaterials
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2luxpro.py", line 2720, in ExportLuxMat
  File "L:Poser developmentPloppose2luxpro.py", line 2784, in WriteMat
IndexError: tuple index out of range

I am without ze clue, and I need a Poirot-style reveal, if I could get one. Tips on anything else I can do to get muddy-looking/volumetric water would be fab, too (caveat: I have no effing clue what I'm doing, so I might need a step-by-step).

You're not doing anything wrong - this is a bug in Pose2Lux.

I'm not able to post a fix right now but will do so on Sunday, the earliest that I will have access to my files!

I'll see if I can upload some muddy water shaders too - I have some ready but they need some instructions written for them.

Is there a reason why one cannot type in numbers in  the emitter tab? I'm unable to reduce the Watt for a light to under 70 Watt. Does that mean one has to correct this with Gain and Effiancy alone? And is there an instruction which explains the effects of Gain and Effiance (best with pictures) and how they work together?

Thank you, Snarly! No rushes from me. I can be patient. ^_^

Attached Link: Pose2Lux Pro v0.6.3

Thank you! I'm finding it difficult to make time for Pose2Lux just at the moment, there's so many other things calling for my attention.

Here is version 0.6.3, which fixes the bug you found (I hope!)

You are a gem, Snarly!

Thank you for fitting it into your schedule. I know how it can be when everything needs to be done and there aren't enough hours in the day. Make sure you take some time for yourself, even if you have to leave some things (of lesser importance) to wallow for a little while, okay? I'm sure nobody here wants you burning out, especially after you've been so generous to us!

This is semi related to posts in this topic, so please bear with me.

Previous posters have mentioned using xml files to create groups of materials for pose2lux. I was wondering what xml editors they like to use/ think are the best/ easiest to use (preferably free, not only for creating files for pose2lux). I've never created or edited xml before, but would like to get started.

Thankyou

Well, I have Crimson Editor and Notepad++, both of which are capable. I use Notepad++ most of the time tho ;). Either one of them will format text to .xml

Laurie

Thanks Laurie

You're welcome.

And I guess I forgot to mention that those are both free ;).

Laurie

So what's the trick with lashes and brows? I used the hair setting in the exporter. Any tips on how to set them up both in the material room and the exporter?

The shadows, especially on the dresses, look very un-subtle. Is that a materials problem or a lights problem?

Are you talking about the Dynamic Hair setting in the Exporter, or the material setting for hair?  If the former, I doubt very much if the eyebrows and lashes are dynamic hair. 

The shadows are with little doubt because of the lights.  What type of lights are you using?  You might try a point light and scaling it up to 500 -1000 % to create a soft light.  Or use a spot light and define it as the sun and sky in the exporter. (Unless this is an indoor scene)

I never noticed a dynamic hair setting in the exporter... but I was only using the "Basic" intro option to begin with. You'll note that the issue is that the brows and lashes are white on two of the figures (some sort of transparency issue, or...?).

Lights - Outside I have one infinite light set to both sun and sky. Inside I have one (unscaled) point light over to the left of the image as seen, and one spotlight (colours are each set around .75 and intensity @ 64%). The point light has 100% intensity, but there's obviously not much light coming from that direction anyway. If it's a light issue, it's definitely the spotlight....

Yes, it's an indoor scene - see the chairs, tables... the walls aren't super obvious in the render, I guess.

On the lashes and brows: as long as the transmap is plugged directly into the transparency node, the trans shouldn't have a problem. The closer your Poser materials are to Poser 4 simplicity, the easier they transfer over on export.

Laurie

Heh. I never used P4 (started with Poser Pro). I did simplify the materials as much as I could think of for this render though.

Maybe I've accidentally got transparency maps plugged into diffuse. Will take another look.

No, that's not it... could the problem be that Diffuse_Value is set to 0 though?

Quote - Heh. I never used P4 (started with Poser Pro). I did simplify the materials as much as I could think of for this render though.

Maybe I've accidentally got transparency maps plugged into diffuse. Will take another look.

P4 Materials means that the textures are connected the more directly possible to the Poser node and not through a large bunch of mysterious nodes

Quote - No, that's not it... could the problem be that Diffuse_Value is set to 0 though?

Try setting it to black 1.0.

Laurie

maybe the pattern is a small tiled picture, check the U_Scale and V_Scale in the image node, if they are less than 1.0 this is a tiled pattern.

Quote - maybe the pattern is a small tiled picture, check the U_Scale and V_Scale in the image node, if they are less than 1.0 this is a tiled pattern.

Rj... no they both are at 1.0 in the uv scale, for all the bump maps... Maybe I'm not setting things right in P2L?  Maybe I should set the displacement setting a little higher in the export panel?

Quote - So what's the trick with lashes and brows? I used the hair setting in the exporter. Any tips on how to set them up both in the material room and the exporter?

The 'Hair' shader in the bulit-in library is designed to be used with hair textured using an imagemap. If an imagemap is not available then the results are unlikely to be what you expect.

Personally, I just use the 'Other bits' shader from the People library, but one of the matte or glossy variants will propbably do too.

I downloaded the prop and found that there are no displacement maps (just bump maps) so changing the displacement settings in Pose2Lux will have no effect.

I exported it with no changes and assigned a 'Smooth glossy' to everything. Probably not the best material choice, but it sufficed for the test.

It came out fine, with bump effects where you'd expect them to be (pic attached).

I can only assume you have made some changes in the material room? 

Note: if you used a metal shader for the gold ark, then the bump maps will be lost as the metal shaders do not support bump maps.

Laurie

Okay, that explains it, Laurie! I have been attempting to use the metal shader in P2L. Hmmm... Wonder if it's time for me to open up the old notepad +++ and fudge about again... What's the setting in there again?

The metal shaders setup is different from that of the other materials. Your best bet is to use a glossy material and maybe add a value to the u and v roughness so that it's not a mirror and has a slightly blurred reflection. Make sure the bumps in the parameters line in the xml is yes. If you're going to edit the luxrender file after export, what you want is to edit the u and v roughness parameters. Try like .25 or something. If that's too much, try .15, .05, etc.

Laurie

Thanks... will take a look at it

Feature request: pause/cancel export. Handy if one can see that e.g. subdivision is going to bog down the program.

Attached Link: Pose2Lux Pro *draft* user guide

The attached link is to a DRAFT version of the forthcoming user guide.

As well as a description of all the main functions in Pose2Lux it contains some artwork contributed by Pose2Lux users because I suspect some people will look at the manual first just to see what can be done with P2L, and pictures will help more than just words can. Advisory: Some of the artwork includes mild artistic nudity.

I welcome any comments about the content of the user guide and will consider incorporating any of your suggestions. I hope to finalise the guide within the next week.

Also, if anybody wants to design the front cover I'd be pleased to see your ideas!

NB: The user guide is in PDF format, and is intended to be read as two-page spreads. Viewing it as single pages will work fine though.

I like it! The artwork could be the p2l icon in the corner. Simple but elegant, almost like a scriptbook.

Due to a sudden barrage of spammers attacking our website, I've invoked Captcha (thanks for the suggestion, Kai!) on the registration form. Not sure if it is working correctly but it should stem the tide, anyway. Hopefully.

If you have dramas trying to join, please sitemail me on here, and I'll give you a login as quickly as I can. Thanks for your patience.

Thanks Robyn - very much needed and very much appreciated! Kudos to Kai too for keeping things neat and tidy until now.

Yay Kai...aka The Banhammer ;)

Laurie

i'm getting those jaggy edges in the shadows of my latest render--i know there's a solution/workaround, does anybody remember it?

I'm not sure that a definitive solution has been found yet, but subdivision often makes a difference. It seems to happen most often when there's only one light source and it's a sun or distant light. using area lights and/or fill lights (or having plenty of nearby geometry to reflect light) has helped me overcome the problem in the past, but the whole issue definitely needs looking at more closely.

thanks, snarly--if i re-render i'll try some subd on the figure or different lights.  i usually just postwork it out but this time it's way too pronounced.

I don't get those if I use fill lights such as point light or a mesh light. They give soft shadows whereas infinite lights and spot lights give harsh ones.

Laurie

thanks, laurie.  i need to experiment.

Attached Link: Pose2Lux Pro v0.7

This update is still being tested, but could benefit from more feedback so I'm making it available for those of you want to try it out and provide feedback.

I'm hoping that this version will be ready for an 'official' release in a couple of weeks - you can help make that happen by testing the current build and reporting any issues :-)

There is a bug report thread on the Pose2Lux.com site. The bug report thread will also be used to notify you about bug fixes and new builds during testing. If you are not a member at www.pose2lux.com then you can PM me here with feedback or post to this thread, of course.

Version 0.7 is WIP and may be buggy. Moreover, its data files are not 100% compatible with previous versions so if you do test the new version be sure to retain a copy of the v0.6.3 version too. 

This version is compatible with Poser 6 , 7, Pro, 8, Pro 2010, 9 and Pro 2012 (except Mac 64bit version).

Version 0.7 is also open source, made available under the MIT licence which is included in the distribution zip.

Thank you,
Snarly

[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 2 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 4 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 16 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 35 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 4 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 11 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 1 triangle
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 22 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 2 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 203 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 6 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 41 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 14 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 15 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 1 triangle
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 10 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 11 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 29 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 1 triangle
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 2 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 4 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 16 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 35 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 4 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 11 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 1 triangle
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 22 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 2 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 199 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 6 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 41 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 14 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 15 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 1 triangle
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 10 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 11 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 28 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 1 triangle
......
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals
[2011-08-10 15:32:06 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals
[2011-08-10 15:32:07 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals in 3 triangles
[2011-08-10 15:32:07 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals
[2011-08-10 15:32:07 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals
[2011-08-10 15:32:07 Warning: 43] Inconsistent shading normals

.......

(there's more of the same for about 50 statements with the same inconsistent shading normals, then the rest normal logging info about rendering)

What the heck does this mean? I have been rendering, the above. This is not the first time either. There's a single infinte light, an environ done with HDRI, a backdrop, the K4 with clothe and hair and shoes (Well, you see the picture). I usually ignore it since it does work but if someone could explain to me what this means, maybe I can do something to avoid getting this the next time. P2L 0.6.3 is the version used but I've been getting it in the earlier version as well.

Thanks!

ah ignore those. just minor glitches that won't affect the render.

Oh, ah... Okay, will do...

Hi all,

Will future version of Pose2Lux run in poser 7 or only new version 9 only?

Thanks in advance

Poser 7 will continue to be supported.

Great!

Attached Link: Update to v0.7 build 0029

Attached Link: Pose2Lux Pro v0.7 build 0042

This build includes a few more bugfixes found in testing, but also includes a first draft of the custom material editor. This isn't the official release version yet, but do feel free to give it a bash and let me know if anything needs fixing when I get back :-)

Au revoir :-)

Snarly

@ Robynsveil - we've probably reached the point where this version should feature on the downloads page of pose2lux.com. Ta!

Happy Birthday to you and have fun

Lucky guy!!! Happy BD, Snarly!!! Have fun... Get some photos, wine, cheese and S - E - X!!! :b_funny: