Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: Any advice on lighting in Poser 9?

dasquid opened this issue on Nov 23, 2012 · 21 posts


dasquid posted Fri, 23 November 2012 at 1:20 PM

Yeah I just got Poser 9 this month, after keeping to Poser 7 all this time, Well that and DS4 but that is neither here nor there.  I need to figure out the new features  but I have not used Poser 7 for over a year. I kinda forgot a lot of what I used to know so I don't remember what is what anymore. lol

 

I am trying to do renders but I think I am not getting any good results, hell I may be doing no better than I was before. Somehow I think there may be too much SSS and I Just realized I forgot to turn the skydome back on lol.

Anyway here is what I have so far.



Miss Nancy posted Fri, 23 November 2012 at 2:53 PM

eyes and skin are glowing, hence one may wish to adjust those.  post light and render settings, that they might better advise you.



hborre posted Fri, 23 November 2012 at 3:15 PM

Yep, glowing could be an indicator that an ambient channel might be active or both Diffuse_color and Alt diffuse along with SSS might be causing light emission.  As suggested, a screencap of the mat room would be in order.  Also, get a hold of Snarly's EZSkin which works better for skin under P9/PP2012.


LaurieA posted Fri, 23 November 2012 at 5:10 PM

You can also use SceneFixer to turn off just ambient and translucence channels. But I think what you wanna do is make a really good SSS skin. In that case, EZSkin is they way to go. And it's free...the best price. LOL. Just use it with the V4 textures of your choice.

Laurie



dasquid posted Sat, 24 November 2012 at 1:12 PM

Sorry about the delay in my replying, I posted before going to bed and then had to go to work and was busy  most of the time after work... I'll try to post what I can, though I'll have to post a new render , since I have no clue what the settings were for the original and I have changed the settings many times since then.

ANyway here is the render and the settings I used on it.

 

 

EDIT: Oh her eyes are glowing on purpose, though I may have them a bit too bright.



dasquid posted Sat, 24 November 2012 at 1:12 PM

Ok so HERE is the settings.



dasquid posted Sat, 24 November 2012 at 1:21 PM

Just to be sure here is the light settings, both tabs.



dasquid posted Sat, 24 November 2012 at 1:22 PM

And the other one.



Miss Nancy posted Sat, 24 November 2012 at 1:36 PM

 

change shadow blur to 2.0 and atten. to inverse square. use d3d's renderFF script to change IDL bounces to 4 and HSVTM to the above settings, which simulate renderGC.  don't try (bounces=16, IDL IC=100, samples=4096) until final render.



dasquid posted Sun, 25 November 2012 at 8:46 PM

Ithink I got most of those settings but I only have Poser 9 so some I don't have. but here is what I got when I used the ones I could find. Going to work now so Ill be back in the morning.

 

I like it so far though the SSS seems to show up in odd places.



hborre posted Sun, 25 November 2012 at 9:03 PM

We are going to need a screencap of the skin texture material room setup.  There is serious glowing to areas around the folds and creases.  That is partially due to SSS and perhaps interacting factors which are active on the PoserSurface.


Miss Nancy posted Sun, 25 November 2012 at 11:25 PM

set IDL intensity <=1.0, to avoid light-amplification in areas that should be occluded.  in good P9 shader, sum(diff+spec+trans+refl+refr)<=1.

if they want you to use ezskin, maybe one of them could show you how to use it, other than the usual links.  I haven't actually seen anybody demonstrate it here, step-by-step.



LaurieA posted Mon, 26 November 2012 at 5:35 AM

Yeah, her skin is seriously glowing. You may have some translucence on somewhere.

Laurie



monkeycloud posted Mon, 26 November 2012 at 6:23 AM

I've just got similar glowing, in skin crevices, without any skin translucence being on.

Just with SSS (applied via EZSkin) and using IDL, in test renders I've been doing for a scene over the weekend.

Been fiddling with the SSS group numbers and intensity of a spotlight, thinking that might resolve it... to no avail.

But I think it must indeed be the IDL intensity in my case... I realised I have it at 1.0... so thanks for the reminder Miss Nancy. I will turn that down.

Looks to me like the exact same thing that is showing in dasquid's render?

;-)


Plutom posted Mon, 26 November 2012 at 9:24 AM

One other thing to consider, every light has specular switched on by default.  You can turn off each specular by changing the specular color to black in the materials room.  Or you can reduce it by selecting any shade of gray between black and white or you can experiment with any of the 16 million color variations etc.   Jan


bevans84 posted Mon, 26 November 2012 at 10:18 AM

I've played around with setting light specular to black, but came to the decision that specularity level and characteristics are set in the surface shader. Setting light specular to black just removes the possibility of specular highlights from that particular light.

I've since formed the opinion that light specular color should be white and specularity should be controlled with the surface shader. JMO

With EZSkin, something seems to happen sometimes around the center of the scene where parts of the figure will develop a red glow and other parts will pick up a strong blue tint. I've spent hours trying to find where it comes from, but the only cure I've found is to move the figure towards the camera a couple of feet or so. That seems to cover the problem up.



dasquid posted Mon, 26 November 2012 at 12:40 PM

Ok I looked in the material settings for her skin and it had ambient at 1 with the color black, so I set it to 0.

Also I turned IDL intensity down to .5 from 1.

 

I'll have more time for this tomorrow since I am finally off work then.



Zanzo posted Fri, 30 November 2012 at 8:16 AM

Quote - Ok I looked in the material settings for her skin and it had ambient at 1 with the color black, so I set it to 0.

Also I turned IDL intensity down to .5 from 1.

 

I'll have more time for this tomorrow since I am finally off work then.

  1. Turn off shit surface scattering and add some specular to her skin instead. Each body part do like a dark grey at 10%.

  2. Delete all the lights.

  3. Add two directional lights.

  4. Have one directional light at strength 40% facing directly at her. No shadows or ambient occlusion on the light.

  5. The other directional should point directly at her left side with a strength of 40%. No shadows or ambient occlusion on the light.

  6. Add a point light and set the distance end to 15 and light strength to 100. Then position it in front of her in a way that covers as much of her body as possible. Turn on ambient occlusion on the light and shadows on to a strength of .5 (raytrace)

  7. Add an IBL light. Grab an image off the web of a well lit nightclub scene outside. Set the IBL strength to 45 and add this image. Shadows & Ambient occlusion off for this light.

Then do a re-render and let's see how it looks!


LaurieA posted Fri, 30 November 2012 at 9:24 AM

What is the scale on the SSS node on each body part? Is each body part in a different SSS group? Material room screenies please.

BTW, the SSS is not "shit", maybe only perhaps by those that have no clue how to use it ;).

Laurie



bevans84 posted Fri, 30 November 2012 at 11:00 AM

Zanzo,
Abrasive tone and SSS comment aside, those light settings aren't half bad. Only thing I added was an edge light directly opposite of the point light.
At least it looks pretty good to these old eyes.



Zanzo posted Fri, 30 November 2012 at 11:23 AM

Quote - Zanzo,
Abrasive tone and SSS comment aside, those light settings aren't half bad. Only thing I added was an edge light directly opposite of the point light.
At least it looks pretty good to these old eyes.

Can I see it?

Also, I hate SSS, it takes too long to render and 90% of the time it sucks. oh look a new shader that makes you render wax figures!! THIS IS AMAZING!