pp2012

I have seen many fantastic renders using IBL and decided that I'd fool around with it for use in promos in the future.  Problem is that no matter what I do - everything is dark.  Even with IBL sets that I have purchased in the past, where it shows that it should be a fairly well lit scene I wind up with barely visible characters.  

Is there something that I am missing here?  I almost wonder if it is my moniter settings but then - why would I see the icon so brightly.  

Any tips or pointing to tutorials on these lights will be helpful.

Thanks.

maybe there's some confusion between IBL (poser 6) and IDL (PP2012).  e.g. IDL, when enabled in render settings, can use image based lighting (IBL) on bill's envsphere, which can produce nice renders.

I am sure you mean;

"I have seen so many wonderfull renders with I D L."
Not with IBL

In Direct Light = is good, is what gives all this wonderfull renders.

Image Based Light = OLD, is BAD, is the Light to kill realism.
Should be removed from Poser is you ask me... Old left over from a forgotten past.

And? Ask Capt Kirk; There is NO image on the sun.

That has been confirmed.

Yes yes I did mean IDL.  Typing dyslexia I guess : /

Quote -

Image Based Light = OLD, is BAD, is the Light to kill realism.
Should be removed from Poser is you ask me... Old left over from a forgotten past.

And? Ask Capt Kirk; There is NO image on the sun.

That has been confirmed.

*Vilters? why don't you LEARN what IBL does and its for or shut the fuck up? you have NO idea and you rant every time it's mentioned. do yourself a favour and READ some tech papers on it. or try makings of for movies like MOON where IBL was used to match the lighting on the CG computer to the set. thats what it is for. *

matching. lighting. to. the. background. image.

*got that? do I ahve to hammer it into your skull with a hammer? or are you going to carry on with the rants?

 and yes. complain if you want to. I swore at you and treated you like yuour a baby. maybe it'll get through to you after being reasonable failed every time.

Hello Khai, nice to hear from you

Unfortunately, I live in 2012.

Middle ages are some time ago; I am afraid.

:-)

Well no I guess after reviewing my thought process I was actually just mixing the two up completely.  Good job me...

Wow... Holy Cow... lmao... Someone forgot to take their happy pill today.  I have coffee... and I will most certainly share!

Quote - Hello Khai, nice to hear from you

Unfortunately, I live in 2012.

Middle ages are some time ago; I am afraid.

:-)

middle ages? so you really don't know what your talking about?

good to know that http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/fullcredits#cast who made MOON are working in the middle ages..

no... I think it's you that are wrong here and hanging on to a rant where you have no idea what you are actually talking about.

so. just ignore vilters on tech. got. it.

Quote - Wow... Holy Cow... lmao... Someone forgot to take their happy pill today.  I have coffee... and I will most certainly share!

naw nothing to do with that. Viters has a habit of ranting about IBL, Model Density etc... I finally got fed up with him. sorry about that.

OK, guys... let's play nice.

jj, ignore the trolls here.  at least one of them doesn't use poser AFAIK.  users here can help with plenty of tips on IDL, and why pp2012 renders may sometimes seem too dark.  it may involve adjusting gamma settings.

....Miss Nancy, I DO use Poser. you keep telling ppl I don't?

would you like my Product Catalog I put out as Khai? if that will prove to you I DO use poser... I had to set them up IN poser. seriously. the offer is on the table.

i still have a lot of love for IBL  :)

Please, folks... I don't want to lock this thread. Can we get back to answering the OP's questions?

Well preferences aside.... I'd still love some info on using either or with good results.  I'd love if some merchants would put render settings they used for promos up with the product.  I know my comp is capable and I'd like to just set it at ridiculous settings with great lighting and see what happens.  

jj...

The best way to discover what IDL can do is start by dling BB's envdome, and snarley's ezskin.

Load a figure. Load a really good texture into it.

Run ezskin.

Load the envdome.

Go into the materials room and set both GC in and GC out to 1.0.

Delete all the standard lights.

Add one single point light.

Position foir the shadows you want.

Drop the intensity of this light to about 10%.

The scene will be very dark.

Go to render settings:

Check:

Cast Shadows, SSS, Raytracing, Use displacement Maps,Gamma Correction, Indirect light.

Raytrace bounces to 4

IR Cache to @50

IL Quality to 12-15

Pixel Samples to 5

Min shading rate to .25

Render

This will get your feet wet, and you'll see how it works. These are my starting settings. Obviously, you'll have to experiment.

To to an indoor scene, just place point lights wherever you think a lightbulb is, and drop them to about 10% each.

You're gonna love it!

YES!  Useful info!  Thank you very much.  I'm going to get on that right away and see what happens.

Quote - Go into the materials room and set both GC in and GC out to 1.0.

Could you explain the purpose of this step?

If the ensphere gamma settings remain at default with render gamma @ 2.2, you will blow out the image; making it too bright or simulating a final render gamma of 4.4.

Interesting. I hadn't noticed. Why is that?

Um, not why is it that I hadn't noticed, I mean why is it that the gamma doubles?

@ jjroland

Allow me to add some info to the exellent explanation Basicwiz gave
As he said the preview will look dark.

Bb's sphere is self lit with IDL but will be pretty dark in preview with your point light (or infinite light) at only 10%.
The preview will stay pretty-pretty dark and this makes posing sometimes difficult.

Solution; add a pose light.

Add a second light; That can be a infinite of point light, that u use only ONLY to illuminate your preview.
To do that, goto the mat room for this second light, and set Diffuse and Specular to true black.
And turn shadows for this second light OFF.

That way, your second light will NOT influence the render but only light your scene preview.

The rendering will use the IDL from the sphere, and the light of the first light at 10%.

For PPro, set gamma in and gamma out on the sphere at 1.

I usually use the sphere and one infinite light at 50% (anywhere from 10 to 65% depending on the amount of light you want in the final render) => There is only one sun out there.
That is all I use for outside renders.

For inside renders never forget that the more lights you add, the light adds up.
Look around in your room and try to reproduce what you see.
Spotlights and point lights for inside renders. (at reduced settings)

Happy posering.

Constantly correcting these points and constantly seeing the misinformation anyway.

If you have Poser Pro, not Poser 9, and you enable render GC, and you plan to use linear adjustments inside the envsphere shader, then and ONLY then must you change the gamma in and gamma out to 1.

If you make no internal adjustments (such as with the HSV node) then the in and out gamma don't matter since they cancel. You could even set them to gamma = 14354 and it would still look the same.

Is this understood yet?

Gamma In is to get your image data ready for linear workflow. Such as, for example, doubling the brightness of your environment image, using the multliplier you expect, i.e. 2.

If render GC is enabled, Poser is already doing that and so you would be using render anti-gamma 2.2 and shader anti-gamma 2.2, resulting in a total incoming anti-gamma = 4.84. This is not what you want as it will result in non-linear values in the middle. The goal is linear values.

But, if you don't actually make a change in the middle, the total equation is:

((Image ** (1/2.2) ** (1/2.2)) * 1) ** 2.2 ** 2.2 = Image

That's right - if you do nothing in the middle, between gamma-in and gamma-out, then the two values cancel out completely AND IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT VALUE IS THERE.

Second correction, which I have made several times already and it's getting mighty tedious.

(Thanks for trying, Khai)

IBL + IDL WORKS GREAT

IBL + AO DOES NOT WORK GREAT - BUT NOBODY SAID TO USE IBL + AO HERE

I HAVE DEMONSTRATED IN ANOTHER THREAD THAT WITH A CORRECTLY MADE IBL IMAGE, RESULTS ARE IDENTICAL TO ENVSPHERE AS FAR AS THE AMBIENT LIGHT IS CONCERNED.

THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT THE ENVSPHERE ALSO PROVIDES SOMETHING TO SEE, DIRECTLY AND ALSO IN REFLECTIONS, WHEREAS THE IBL DOES NOT - IBL IS INVISIBLE AND JUST SUPPLIES AMBIENT LIGHT.

I AM SHOUTING ON PURPOSE - READ THIS THREE TIMES OR UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I SAID, WHICHEVER TAKES LONGER. IF YOU THINK YOU GOT IT IN TWO READS, SORRY READ IT AGAIN 

THANK YOU

BB:

:-) WHAT? :-)

I got it! I did! I already knew-but I read it thrice out of respect.

JJRoaland:

BB is in large part responsible for creating shaders that let us get the most out of SSS with P9 and Pro2012 (Among numerous other MAJOR contributions), so he gets to SHOUT from time to time. :-)

Another great trick is to do a search on HDRI. You can find threads by BB or mostly explained by BB on using Panoramic images to apply to the inside of BB's Envirosphere.

Go to Materials, and go to the Image panel in the shader- find a panoramic image-I prefer High Dynamic Range Images, myself (HDR or HDRI)

As BB has explained- you CAN light your seen entirely with IDL and an image applied to the Envirosphere. Or you can add other lights for artistic reasons.

Quote - Second correction, which I have made several times already and it's getting mighty tedious.

(Thanks for trying, Khai)

IBL + IDL WORKS GREAT

IBL + AO DOES NOT WORK GREAT - BUT NOBODY SAID TO USE IBL + AO HERE

I HAVE DEMONSTRATED IN ANOTHER THREAD THAT WITH A CORRECTLY MADE IBL IMAGE, RESULTS ARE IDENTICAL TO ENVSPHERE AS FAR AS THE AMBIENT LIGHT IS CONCERNED.

THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT THE ENVSPHERE ALSO PROVIDES SOMETHING TO SEE, DIRECTLY AND ALSO IN REFLECTIONS, WHEREAS THE IBL DOES NOT - IBL IS INVISIBLE AND JUST SUPPLIES AMBIENT LIGHT.

I AM SHOUTING ON PURPOSE - READ THIS THREE TIMES OR UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I SAID, WHICHEVER TAKES LONGER. IF YOU THINK YOU GOT IT IN TWO READS, SORRY READ IT AGAIN 

THANK YOU

Quote - If you have Poser Pro, not Poser 9, and you enable render GC, and you plan to use linear adjustments inside the envsphere shader, then and ONLY then must you change the gamma in and gamma out to 1.

If you make no internal adjustments (such as with the HSV node) then the in and out gamma don't matter since they cancel. You could even set them to gamma = 14354 and it would still look the same.

That does explain things.  Thank you.

Went through BBs site to find the envsphere... Is it just me or does that guy make other people feel simple too?  Reminds me of a quote from GoodWill Hunting "He's wicked smart".   I actually think BB is THAT kind of smart.

Anyway now with my eyeballs popping out of my head from trying to comprehend all the material - (I read through the whole site) - I have my envsphere.  Woot!  Just gotta find those snarley's ezskin.

Thanks for all the tips!

lol I know who BB is.  Yes he can shout all he wants, hell I'm happy to see his input however it comes.  Feel a little sheepish that I didn't see his posts in the thread before I went posting GoodWill Hunting references though.  At least it's a compliment :)

I think I understood the second CAPS post after 3 reads, but I will have to read the first one over about 50 times before I understand what all that linear business was about.  I'm kinda hoping that one will sort itself out once I actually get the envsphere loaded and start setting these lights up.

• side note nostaglia - BB helped me get water right for an image I did like 4 years ago, called Conjugal Visit.  It is probably the best render for fun I have done yet.  One day I will hunt down that thread and resave those water settings 

I'm not nearly as smart as the Will Hunting character. Nevertheless, I did go to MIT. I was one of the dumbest there.

lol ^^

Found the EZ Skin too.  I got the new beta version and although I swore I distinctly remember it saying it ONLY works for Poser 9 and PP2012 it is telling me that it doesn't work on "my version of poser" when I try to run it.  Which is PP2012.  I will ask about that in his thread tomorrow.  Unless sleep fixes the problem first.

I have the new GND4 with SSS so I will just use that for now to set up the sphere and scene and get some testing started.

EZSkin wants you to have SR2.1. SR2 will not suffice. SM did not label SR2.1 clearly - a lot of people have stumbled on this. They come into this forum because EZSkin won't work for them and they think they are up to date. They are not. EZSkin is telling the truth.

Ahhh thank you.  I will update.

On the left is a single infinite light with a white IBL light.

On the right is a single infinite light and IDL enabled.

The IBL renders faster, has no artefacts and is excellent for "empty" scenes.

The IDL is more accurate, but the color bleed can be overwhelming. In the example, the super-blue sky really drains the other colors.

So, both have their uses to me.

The only thing I don't use anymore at all in PP 2012 is Ambient Occlusion.

Need to find the hotdog vender on that beach Stat.  j/k

Thank you for the comparison, I was just seeing this same sort of result in my renders and wondered if I was blind or something.  

Thank you for the note about AO

jj, sorry for any chaos in this thread - it's not usually this bad.  it's true that IDL can render slower than non-IDL, but IDL renders can be sped up when totally enclosed, e.g. using bill's envsphere.  if any questions about IDL or IBL, don't hesitate to ask.  one may wish to avoid AO on lights or materials, unless using a pre-IDL version of poser.  for this reason, AO on materials was disabled by default some years ago, but check lights for AO, just in case.

Well I did get the envsphere going.  Set all the render settings to what basic suggested.  Only 1 light at 10% and it is crazy bright now.  Gone from too dark to too bright lol, I guess I can at least say I've made progress.  I tried to reduce the light to 2% and still seems just as bright.  Maybe I need textures on the sphere>?  Or maybe adjust some settings for the sphere.

The good news is my comp handled the render just fine so I can even go up still in settings I believe.

yes, one would suggest an hdri on the sphere, e.g. bill's free linked file called "doge.hdr".  as you learn how to do these IDL renders, be of good cheer, as they are rumoured to have speeded it up a bit for the next release.

in addition, good IDL settings can be useful, and these can be done using the poser FFRender script in partners/dimension3d.  if the scene is rather bright, certain render settings or envsphere settings may need to be changed.

I will look for that doge.hdr  Thanks for the tips!!

The sphere is not to be used without an image unless you know what you're doing. Its default is white, and an entire universe glowing at maximum 255 brightness is not going to give you useful lighting.

At the bottom of my EnvSphere page are useful sub pages. One of them is instructions. Another is resources to get you thousands of useful images. Another is the quick start guide where I give you a ready-to-use scene.

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere/quickstart

Thank you BB, I was coming up short on my Google hunt for that file.

Here is an IDL render using BB's EnvSphere without a picture but just a mid-grey color in the HSV-node + a single infinite.

Same infinite but the IDL was disabled so you can see the difference.

One infinitive + a white IBL.

"Proper" IDL with pic attached to the EnvSphere.

I like the all grey background, I wish I could get mine to look like that.  I crashed Poser last night just switching mats on the envsphere so I decided to stop for the night and get the update this morning.  Hopefully the update helps with my crashing issues.

After I get it all going again today I am going to try to get a result that looks like your grey.  I'd like it to be closer to white on the spectrum but still grey.  

Quote - I like the all grey background, I wish I could get mine to look like that. 

After I get it all going again today I am going to try to get a result that looks like your grey.  I'd like it to be closer to white on the spectrum but still grey.  

Check "Shadow_Catch_Only" for the ground material, choose the shade of grey for your background and your'e done.