I don't know why I could not get this to work yesterday but today I opened Poser, put IDL intensity at .2, added one of my favorite Saint Fox light sets which I tweeked, and rendered. I am using a HDR on BB's EnvSphere, but I have it conservatively set at 2.5 intensity.

Congrads. I think this is my favorite by you in light quality*.*

And carodan, I'm with you. I think it's getting confusing because it's evolving. Plus we have different light tests going on. Outdoor with envsphere, indoor with emitters. Indirect light from an outdoor source with emitters,,, etc. *

Thank you richardson! I think her skin is still a little too shiny. I'm still tweeking the SSS and specular settings.

I think that someone who's industrious should make a couple of small test pz3, one outdoor with envsphere, an indoor one with emitters, an indoor with ensphere maybe. These would be the starting point so we're all on the same page? Links to hdr images on the envsphere would be good too.

Quote - And carodan, I'm with you. I think it's getting confusing because it's evolving. Plus we have different light tests going on. Outdoor with envsphere, indoor with emitters. Indirect light from an outdoor source with emitters,,, etc. *

yeah, I hear that. Not always easy getting a gauge on what various people are really doing either. I went back to a simple setup with primitives to try out some variations quickly. 

Hey Latexluv, that last render does have a nice balance to it.

BB, quick question for you.

Is there a way to turn off (or on if it is off) Include IDL in SSS pass in Firefly?

That might shed some light on what is going crazy when using both together.

Quote - First time I'm saying this. Been meaning to write a whole tutorial on it but I have no time. I'm leaving for the airport again in 5 minutes.

Here goes:

Diffuse reflectivity in Poser is out of whack. Our light sources are meaningless units - 100% of what? But we need to get a handle on this. We all know Diffuse_Value is not supposed to be 1 (i.e. it's impossible to reflect all the light that arrives). So we've learned to drop it to .85. But that isn't realistic either. In real life it's closer to .1 or .15.

But - if we start using Diffuse_Value = .1 instead of .8, we're going to have to set our lights 800% brighter just to get the same reflection. 800% is still meaningless, but what happens is it balances with the diffuse indirect light.

So - we have a problem. Indirect light is unbalanced with direct light. We notice this because we see glowing armpits, right? It's been in the forum over and over for weeks. Complaints that IDL causes armpit glow. It's not IDL fault. It's that you have Diffuse_Value set to .85, which is about 8 times more reflective than reality.

So - we could go back through every material and drop the Diffuse_Value again and also go through all the lights and raise them 8x brighter. Or...

(and here's why I'm writing)

Set the IDL intensity to something in the range .1 to .15. Try your renders again. Tell me what you see?

In all my renders, the occluded areas are suddenly looking right.

Gotta go.

Do you still approve of using your light meter in IDL + SSS scenes given the current dilemmas? So far they've still been working great, just curious on your feedback.

in most shaders I use now, diffuse_color and/or diffuse_value channels are zero, as in bill's light meter.  it's usually just bump, displ, alt_diff, and even alt_spec is less often used.  hence my feeling is that the light meter may still be useful, just that bill recommends much more attenuation per bounce of indirect diffuse light in the latest poser version(s).

Quote - BB, quick question for you.

Is there a way to turn off (or on if it is off) Include IDL in SSS pass in Firefly?

No.

Quote - That might shed some light on what is going crazy when using both together.

But - I don't need any more info on the matter - the amplification of light in crevices is due to IDL and an effective diffuse reflectivity that is way too high. There's nothing else to say about it. Skin does not reflect 80% of the light that hits it - it absorbs at least that much.

Quote - Do you still approve of using your light meter in IDL + SSS scenes given the current dilemmas? So far they've still been working great, just curious on your feedback.

Yes. The light meter contains a Diffuse node and a Specular node and is configured for showing you how those two react, using the typical settings I use in shaders.

If we were switching to low (.15) diffuse value everywhere and then increasing lights by 800%, we'd still use the light meter. I'd just change the sensitivity in it as well to .15.

The light meter is a proxy for skin shaders - it just displays its outcome differently - in a way that is easier to read than looking at skin.

See that node called "Sensor"? That's where you plug in whatever sensor you want.

See next to it, plugged in, is a Diffuse node with Diffuse_Value set to .8? That's the diffuse lighting sensor.

Switch to the rim, and you'd see a Specular node there instead.

If you wanted to change the meter to be a scatter sensor, you'd replace that Diffuse node with a Scatter node.

Quote - ....the amplification of light in crevices is due to IDL and an effective diffuse reflectivity that is way too high. There's nothing else to say about it. Skin does not reflect 80% of the light that hits it - it absorbs at least that much.

Skin probably reflects even less light that. If Firefly is reflecting 80%, that will present a problem in the direction I was thinking about addressing it.

When I get home I will play around with some of the setups I figured out that can render without any lights or ambient at all. Don't know if you can address it that way or not... There shouldn't be any diffuse reflection at all if there are not any lights in the scene. There may be a way of addressing it with negative lights as well.

I break this scene up into a few separate catagories;

Indirect light (the envsphere, SSS, reflection{not shown} and other bounced light sources).

Direct (sun)light . Also Artificial Light (not shown).

And then, the emitter which in Poser is used mosty to amp up and correct the light emitting effect of the object to its effect on the receiving surface. There is a void here, imo. Once the ambient of a wall, for example starts to emit correct indirect light, it is too bright to use in the scene. I think this is similar in reflection. I mean, the corrected indirect light cooks the reflection as well. So,,, Poser has no radiosity, alas

1st pic: Env @ 1.00 value RT @ 200% .. "indirect light" just seems too dark. The sky seems right. Outside needs some nodework but is ok.

Notice "Indirect fill" seeming to behave. This is all envsphere. The sky is shot. That's why we were messing with 2 spheres... one to cook the light, the other to produce correct reflection. But I do not know how to emit without being visible in RayTrace and hence,,, cooking the reflections.

Not sure where I'm going from here...;)

Faye Dunaway in the Thomas Crown affair...  Waited a long time for that turkey.

Quote - The sky is shot. That's why we were messing with 2 spheres... one to cook the light, the other to produce correct reflection. But I do not know how to emit without being visible in RayTrace and hence,,, cooking the reflections.

No way to do that at present I don't think. The best the inner envsphere will achieve is a backdrop.

The reflections have to come from the ramped up outer envsphere. In which case they'll probably start to blow out.

I'm starting to think just lowering all the diffuse would be better and less trouble...? ;-)

But if I lowered all the diffuse values, do I ramp up lighting to compensate.

Could I just lower diffuse to 0.15 and just up my IDL Intensity a little?

I'm tempted to try that next...

Could I just lower diffuse to 0.15 and just up my IDL Intensity a little?

I'll try it but I think old code is ghosting us. I thought IDL might bridge that light gap and it certainly is improving,,

Quote - > Quote - Do you still approve of using your light meter in IDL + SSS scenes given the current dilemmas? So far they've still been working great, just curious on your feedback.

Yes. The light meter contains a Diffuse node and a Specular node and is configured for showing you how those two react, using the typical settings I use in shaders.

If we were switching to low (.15) diffuse value everywhere and then increasing lights by 800%, we'd still use the light meter. I'd just change the sensitivity in it as well to .15.

The light meter is a proxy for skin shaders - it just displays its outcome differently - in a way that is easier to read than looking at skin.

Wait, in order to get the best results with that light meter the diffuse value for every material in my scene has to be .85 instead of 1.0 ?

Yep. Forgot to kill the blue.

Quote - I was already at diffuse 0.00 and IDL intensity 0.15 on the earlier skin shots. This one really lets SSS rip. I kinda like hot red scatter. It's not always correct but no surprise. We are not mapping it. At least I'm not. The backlight on this is just way off. Should have used a straight fill light, I guess. This one was 2.5 IDL intensity.

Yep. Forgot to kill the blue.

That looks really good man, the only thing missing is the skin naturally having a little wet to it.  You're really on to something though, nice.

Quote - Wait, in order to get the best results with that light meter the diffuse value for every material in my scene has to be .85 instead of 1.0 ?

Regardless of how you meter, the best results for bounced light means you must have less light leave than arrived. You can't have all the light bounce. And you seriously can't have more light bounce than arrived. Assuming your object has at least one color component of R, G, or B set to 255, it follows that your Diffuse_Value must be less than 1.

There are exceptions, however, and the problem in understanding arises from trying to make a simple one-sentence statement like you did. (CG is not simple. It starts with physics, and physics is among the hardest subjects. I know you want everything to be simple, but it just isn't. The material room gives too much freedom, and the history of its use by uneducated content providers means you have a mess to deal with.)

The potential amount of diffuse reflection is the mathematical product of Diffuse_Color and Diffuse_Value. When combined with a light source this is also mutliplied by the color of that light source, the intensity of that light source, and decreased by the cosine of the angle of incidence of that light source.

So there are actually 5 terms in the direct diffuse lighting equation. If the product of these exceeds 1, you get clipping, and the image will look wrong. If the product of these is much less than .1, you get a dark image, and that may be wrong. (Black pants are supposed to be dark, so it's impossible to say, without context, what is too dark.) To properly answer your question regarding "best results", one would have to examine all five of these factors that go into the equation.

As a general rule of thumb, it helps avoid problems if you keep your Diffuse_Value below 1. But having it at 1 does not automatically mean you have a problem. It depends on the other four factors, particularly the Diffuse_Color.

For example, I often make a wood shader with some dark wood texture, and I lighten it in the shader by increasing the Diffuse_Value - perhaps way past 1. This is not wrong, because I'm trying to take a texture that is far, far below 1 (very dark) and make it lighter. The shader could do texture adjustment and then do diffuse reflection as separate factors, but the reality is that, for example, .85 * 2 is 1.7 and separating those into two discrete steps doesn't make the 1.7 more or less right or wrong. What matters is how I arrived at the number.

One has a diffuse value of .7, the other 1.4. The colors are different as well.

Which is "best results"?

...

If you picked either, you failed the test.

Quote - > Quote - Wait, in order to get the best results with that light meter the diffuse value for every material in my scene has to be .85 instead of 1.0 ?

Regardless of how you meter, the best results for bounced light means you must have less light leave than arrived. You can't have all the light bounce. And you seriously can't have more light bounce than arrived. Assuming your object has at least one color component of R, G, or B set to 255, it follows that your Diffuse_Value must be less than 1.

There are exceptions, however, and the problem in understanding arises from trying to make a simple one-sentence statement like you did. (CG is not simple. It starts with physics, and physics is among the hardest subjects. I know you want everything to be simple, but it just isn't. The material room gives too much freedom, and the history of its use by uneducated content providers means you have a mess to deal with.)

The potential amount of diffuse reflection is the mathematical product of Diffuse_Color and Diffuse_Value. When combined with a light source this is also mutliplied by the color of that light source, the intensity of that light source, and decreased by the cosine of the angle of incidence of that light source.

So there are actually 5 terms in the direct diffuse lighting equation. If the product of these exceeds 1, you get clipping, and the image will look wrong. If the product of these is much less than .1, you get a dark image, and that may be wrong. (Black pants are supposed to be dark, so it's impossible to say, without context, what is too dark.) To properly answer your question regarding "best results", one would have to examine all five of these factors that go into the equation.

As a general rule of thumb, it helps avoid problems if you keep your Diffuse_Value below 1. But having it at 1 does not automatically mean you have a problem. It depends on the other four factors, particularly the Diffuse_Color.

For example, I often make a wood shader with some dark wood texture, and I lighten it in the shader by increasing the Diffuse_Value - perhaps way past 1. This is not wrong, because I'm trying to take a texture that is far, far below 1 (very dark) and make it lighter. The shader could do texture adjustment and then do diffuse reflection as separate factors, but the reality is that, for example, .85 * 2 is 1.7 and separating those into two discrete steps doesn't make the 1.7 more or less right or wrong. What matters is how I arrived at the number.

 

I appreciate the explanation. 

I went ahead and got scene fixer and had everything set to .85 which did not make the scene look right. But then I set all the diffuse to .98 which seem to give nice results.  The one thing that stood out from your explanation is that when light bounces the strength should be going down.  With a diffuse of .98 the wall got slightly darker, ever so slightly which made the entire scene look more appealing.

Which one did I change?

Quote - I copied the shader of one to the other and render again.

Which one did I change?

I don't think there is any difference between both images. I put them both in photosohp and did a subtract (hopefully that would show any difference right? I got all black).  I don't have an eye for these things, although i try.

Right - there is no visible difference, but the Diffuse_Value was doubled. And the Diffuse_Color was halved. The net change was ... no change.

Quote - Right - there is no visible difference, but the Diffuse_Value was doubled. And the Diffuse_Color was halved. The net change was ... no change.

aaah i see......

I used an Environment Sphere with two point lights (the one behind the figures at 10%, the one in front at 20%) and IBL, using the same HDRI image I used on the environment sphere. Reflections in the mirror took many hours to render, even with Raytrace bounces set at 2.  All the texture maps are set at .85, but the dress patterns are still nicely visible.

Quote - Did this one yesterday. May still do something more with it but I'm liking the results. This is done at point 2 on the IDL strength and the envsphere's intensity at 3.0. Three lights.

No glowy armpits for you!  :)

There's a bit of a mish-mash of shader, lighting and IDL intensity value changes. Hardest thing is finding the right setup to get the best of the HDR and direct lighting, while avoiding the diffuse glow problem. Strictly speaking there should be more fresnel reflection coming from the white backdrop, but it's a compromise to avoid blow-out from the reflection coming from the EnvSphere.

EnvSphere intensity =2

1xInfinite light intensity = 90

IDL intensity 0.4

Fresnel reflection dropped to 0.4 (I'm not using EZskin here, it's a much simpler setup)

Can we see the whole setup? Is there any enclosure over and behind camera? HDr must have a large shaded area...

I have not got up to .4 yet.. nor can I get a forced arm glow now that I want it. I think some random light setups are avoiding the problem, too.

Backdrop... I reread it. Nevermind

I should have added, the HDRi (and the lighting in general) is that of an outdoors scene on a sunny day (late afternoon), some cloud cover but clear sunlight.

Just finished this one, in which I was setting out to test a lower light, interior scene.

IDL Intensity set to 0.4, ambient emitters from the room light prop shaders, with maximum emitter value of 1.15... plus low intensity Point lights embedded in those room light props too. The Point light in the ceiling has intensity at 36%, the one in the mirror light 8%.

Couldn't resist adjusting the colour tone in Photoshop though, just a tad... so probably cheating ;-)

There's a little too much blueness to the skin shadows from the SSS I suspect...? Although I reckon there should be a touch of this...

Pretty nice monkeycloud. Love the little 'grey' detail - heh.

I dunno about the skin shadows - they look ok to me. The scene marries quite well. Only thing I'm not sure about are the mirror light - I'd expect it to have more influence on the figure. I'd probably move both lights out of view of the camera.

Quote - Pretty nice monkeycloud. Love the little 'grey' detail - heh.

I dunno about the skin shadows - they look ok to me. The scene marries quite well. Only thing I'm not sure about are the mirror light - I'd expect it to have more influence on the figure. I'd probably move both lights out of view of the camera.

Thanks Carodan... yeah I thought that about the mirror light too. I could up the intensity of the embedded point light there certainly.

I was keen to try using the "actual" lights in the room prop... largely so that any reflection of the lights is then realistic... and because it is quite a small room too, it was hard to hide extra emitters anywhere. Behind the door, where the camera POV is was about the only spot, but that created undesirable reflections in the visible scene.

I could ditch the mirror light. But I was hoping for some backlight on the figure. So I might go with upping the point light a bit... or perhaps make those light props visible in camera only and add a brighter emitter just inside of their geometry...

...the two round bathroom lights being visible in the scene kind of reminded me of flying saucers too ;-)

Quote - Just finished this one, in which I was setting out to test a lower light, interior scene.

IDL Intensity set to 0.4, ambient emitters from the room light prop shaders, with maximum emitter value of 1.15... plus low intensity Point lights embedded in those room light props too. The Point light in the ceiling has intensity at 36%, the one in the mirror light 8%.

Couldn't resist adjusting the colour tone in Photoshop though, just a tad... so probably cheating ;-)

There's a little too much blueness to the skin shadows from the SSS I suspect...? Although I reckon there should be a touch of this...

OMG man, that is censored nice.

How did you achieve that breast action? Is that V4.2?

Quote - OMG man, that is censored nice.

How did you achieve that breast action? Is that V4.2?

Thanks Zanzo, the body morph, including the breasts, is a mixture of Adam Thwaites' Lucija character's Full Body Morph, mixed with some dialling of the V4 ++ morphs. Basically I dialled up the values on the BreastNatural and BreastDroop morphs a little bit.

I then did some vertice tweaking and smoothing in ZBrush, via GoZ. But that was mainly on the arms... don't think I brushed her norks ;-)

Quote - How did you achieve that breast action? Is that V4.2?

I want to know what bathroom that is...

The bathroom set is from Poserworld WandW... but I replaced all the mats with ones from the BB / Dreamland furniture sets... likewise with LaurieA's shoes and with the Daz basicwear bikini bottoms...

;-)

I have that bathroom somewhere but have never tried it.  Thanx! 

@monkeycloud your render look unwashed :blink:

BTW, Poser dynamic hair works a lot better now that I have a more robust machine, but I'm still struggling with styling. :)

So, you are married to a Natalie Portman lookalike... how tragic.  LOL I like the paleness of her skin. Most of out textures are just bursting with information saturation, imo

Oh, and btw, how about attaching a few magnet groups to do some quick styling? You can do some actual curls with magnets. I've only experimented a bit in all honesty.

Quote - So, you are married to a Natalie Portman lookalike... how tragic.  LOL

Heh. Not really. My wife has a wider, flatter face. (But yes, in my eyes, she's lovely.) :) I'm trying to get the morph back to more resemblance again.

Quote - I like the paleness of her skin. Most of out textures are just bursting with information saturation, imo

I was looking at it and thinking it too pale, but I think you're right. It's not unrealistic; just not really what we're used to looking at.

Quote - Oh, and btw, how about attaching a few magnet groups to do some quick styling? You can do some actual curls with magnets. I've only experimented a bit in all honesty.

Good idea, I think, but on the couple occasions I've made the attempt to use magnets, I have had no sense I had any facility with them. I really do hope that hair styling capabilities receive considerably more focus from SM in the future.

Quote - @monkeycloud your render look unwashed :blink:

He he... thanks Anthanasius, I guess I was kind of going for that look... I don't think she has had time to run her bath yet ;-)