When doing test renders in the preview window, things look good.  However that same file sent to the Que renderer comes back with darker shadows.  Every time.  Almost a blue tint to the shadows.

What causes this?  Settings are identical. 
Examples:

Image on the left is on the host machine, rendered in the preview window.  Image on the right - same thing EXACTLY rendered in the Que Manager on another machine. 

Post a "bug" report to Smith-Micro.

If its a bug they can kill it before Service Release.

What version of Poser? When asking for help, always say what version of Poser, and what OS.

I am aware of bug reports on the subject of obvious differences between ordinary render and queue render, but the status of this depends on which version. I don't want to go research and talk about several bug reports when only one is appropriate.

Oh - and in the case of queue render, you need to specify the version of queue manager as well, and the OS on the queue.

How silly of me.  Poser Pro 2012.  Windows 7. 

I did open a support ticket at smith micro.

Every other aspect of the program is superb, and far superior to all previous versions.

I found a bug report about scatter data not being passed to secondary renderers. It was marked fixed, but maybe it is not fixed in all cases. Is this isolated to SSS materials in your case? Do things that have no scatter render the same? Looking at your images, I was not sure if it looked like missing scatter, or missing a light.

Looking again and thinking about your noticing the blueness, I am almost sure the scatter is missing. Scatter is more red. Its absence emphasizes blue.

@Psychonaut: I have the same issue with a huge differerence between the results rendered directly in Poser on my main computer and what the queue renderer gives me. I sent a ticket to SM and at the moment we try to figure out where the problem is. Same about the blue shadows, especially where surfaces come close together (fingers on an arm and such). I am subscribing to this thread to find out what I am doing wrong. At the moment I am trying my luck with Antonia and materials created after the example for James that you, BB, posted at RDNA.

Hello SaintFox. I have seen your report in threads, but it was somebody else I read of in the bug tracking system. Your report was on queue render in general, whereas the one I looked at was specifically a difference in SSS only.

That's why I wanted to know if it was only scatter, or everything, that is different. If it is just scatter, then it is not the same problem as you have.

Ifreely confess that it is not easy for me to write about technical things that I do not fully understand (yet - I am still learning) in a foreign language. But I try it anyway: I am just rendering lots of tests to find out what may cause the blue shadow. Definitly the blue gets far stronger in the queue manager but when I look closely it is there in the renders I do in Poser as well. Do you have a suggestion what I can do to get rid of it?

At the moment I am trying to create a render where I can show the effect - while on the other hand I do my best to eliminate anything that can cause blue tones in the scenery.

I will post the render as soon as it's ready.

You will have to show me what material you have and what you see in render. I do not see blue except when I use a custom scatter and an extremely red or yellow scatter color, and I see exactly the same in the scatter of the program Blender. If you are talking about what I see with red or yellow scatter color, then I would have to explain how the scatter algorithm works, and why I think it is wrong. Then we would have a discussion of how a famous professor of computer graphics could be so wrong.

If you need more informations please ask and I post them.

...Sorry, I have a problem posting the screenshot, I had to resize and compress it massivly. I hope that you can read and see everything anyway.

SaintFox -

I don't see anything out of place or set wrong.

Are you using PP2012, not P9? Are you enabling render GC at 2.2?

Edit: here's the scene with SSS and Gamma Correction.

That doesn't look like it is lit right. The light is equal in all directions and there is no specular effect. I'm guessing that you are only using the glow sphere, and there is no picture? The glow sphere should be providing only a fraction of the light with this shader. If you want to go without ordinary lights, then we have to have a blurry reflection shader and something to reflect.

Meanwhile - the blue is less visible now. I think it is actually a combination of the strange nature of this type of scatter algorithm, and artifacts in IDL crevices, which Poser has not yet got rid of.

I've tright many different lights and always have the same effect, sometimes more stark, sometimes less. I even used your lights (called rim+ibl+main, I think), deleted two of the three lights and took care that the one left (once main, once rim) has raytraced shadows enabled.

I used your sphere and connected a panorama image from cgtextures (a very cloudy sky with good contrasts in it) for all examples, so this can not be the problem. But maybe you can simply tell me a setup that should work (an image for the environment sphere and some parameters for a light) and I see what I get when using it?! This way you have an idea what I should render and we can see what Poser will give me.

One thing just came to my mind: I switch off the "light emitter" option for everything ( figure, hair, clothes and everything else in the scene) but the environment prop. May this be wrong?!

That will matter. It should be on so that skin interreflections will be used.

That's the problem when you have to translate technical things. "Emitter", when translated to german is "thing that sends light". So I turned it off - a first test that was far, far too bright made me think that the figure may glow because of the emitter checked on... I am just rendering two tests with emitting on and off... and with a different spot light.

It does mean that. It was called something else earlier during testing, but users were unclear what it meant. I don't remember what it was called. The switch actually means "Visible to IDL". I don't know why this is not the name.

I will post new results soon, maybe they are helpful if someone else runs into the same problem. I will do some more queue renders as well to see if there is a difference now.

But before I post images I wanted to say thank you that you checked my settings and materials so that I could stop tinkering with them and finally find the real reason. I mean: Making a mistake with lights, materials or render settings is far more familiar to me than unchecking the wrong thing.

Although I prefer only one additional light to go with IDL I might have needed one more because to me the eyes look a bit dull - but that's not the problem here (or may I ask how you use SSS on the eyes? I saw your male portraits with this amazing soft sclera).

But the main problem is solved, I am happy. Now I can concentrate on the queue renderer problem (if still there).

I am attaching a comparison that is pretty close to the result that psychonaut posted (the one with "Andy" in it).

so, the light emitter checkbox is needed only if you have the IDL render setting checked?

when i first saw the light emitter checkbox, i thought it was to turn something into a light source.  was ready to churn out some light sabers.

This was what I thought as well. I am unsure how to deal with the box in Non IDL scenes (as I actually did not do one since a while). Maybe you are in the mood to try it out?

hmmm it's as iff your shadow lights were turned off in the first test render then added in on the second render....

Sorry, I've got no ebot about your reply. Meanwhile I found out that the Queue Renderer handles IDL perfectly - SSS is the problem and causes a more or less remarkable colorshift from warm to cool tones. Under specific lighting and with pale skin the result can look almost sky-blue. I am discussing the issue with Smith Micro at the moment, they are very helpful. Hopefully a Fix will get rid of this problem.