RedPhantom opened this issue on Dec 07, 2012 · 181 posts
RedPhantom posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 7:56 AM Online Now! Site Admin
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CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 8:11 AM
The stuff you have marked is for IDL, so will only have effect if raytracing and IDL are enabled.
AFAIK (and I consider myself to be an absolute beginner)
Intensity - strength of the IDL effect. At 0.5 the IDL will be half as bright as at 1.0. This won't affect your render time.
Bounces - raytrace bounces for IDL. Increasing this will increase render times.
Samples - the number of IDL rays that are simulated. Increasing will increase render times, but if it is too low IDL will get blotchy.
Irradiance Cache - the scope of the IDL approximation. Another quality/speed trade off.
Precalculation Scale - at 1 the IDL precalc will be full size, at 0.5 it will be half the linear size (ie 0.25 the area). This will speed render times but the IDL will be less defined. For test renders I often take this down to 0.25 and still get decent results.
Hope this helps!
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 8:41 AM
It's worth noting that Irradiance sample size (above the area you have outlined) also has an impact on IDL.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
bagginsbill posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 9:59 AM
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.
Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)
monkeycloud posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 10:20 AM
Okay - that is interesting BB...
Damn... my dilemma is now, do I cancel this day long render, again, to try that, or wait till it's done.
I bet if I wait till its done there'll be some toe glow still going on in it. He he.
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 10:27 AM
Or, alternatively, you do what I do, and render direct light and IDL separately, and add them together in post. That way you can fiddle with their relative levels to your heart's content until it looks just right without loads of tedious test renders.
monkeycloud posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 11:09 AM
Quote - Or, alternatively, you do what I do, and render direct light and IDL separately, and add them together in post. That way you can fiddle with their relative levels to your heart's content until it looks just right without loads of tedious test renders.
Is that a case of doing a render with no IDL enabled, and then a render with IDL only then?
I fear that may extend my rendertimes even more if so...
Although it sounds like a good way to do it, to me, otherwise...
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 11:33 AM
Actually I can make a net rendertime saving.
Before final render I decide what is the most important component - usually direct light but sometimes for outside shots it might be IDL.
I render the least important component in half resolution, with a higher minimum shading rate, possibly with less bounces, less samples...
That component will clearly have lower quality, but in the final combined version I will not see a difference.
If I know it's going to be quieter in the mix then it doesn't need my best microphone.
The best bit is applying different filters to the two components, fiddle with contrast, saturation, diffusion, glow, whatever!
I originally tried the idea to (successfully) reduce render time (I'm an animator, so a small saving per frame can be of immense value). Then I saw the possibilities as I was comping the passes.
I even got away with a well dodgy IDL pass that was totally blotchy. Blurred the ****er until the blotches were gone, added in to the main pass, and nobody will ever know hahaha!
(and whatever you do, don't forget to add Z-depth to your LQ pass! Dead useful!)
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 11:36 AM
That is interesting bb.
Gonna have to play around some more, but it does explain some of the bizarre fiddles I've been doing to balance out direct light with the EnvSphere lately.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
WandW posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 11:37 AM
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The Wisdom of bagginsbill:
"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
WandW posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 11:38 AM
I should add that I didn't recalibrate the shadow catcher on the ground plane, but it would be hard to recalibrate under her chin...
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The Wisdom of bagginsbill:
"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 12:11 PM
Perhaps reduce the shadow of the sun?
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 12:20 PM
I'm going to suggest experimenting with a very simple scene to try out this new revelation - do look at the material option of reducing the diffuse value & increasing the light, and leave the IDL intensity as is.
I'm getting very interesting results just with an Environment Sphere - shading & contrasts seem just right now. Will post an example in a mo.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
WandW posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 12:27 PM
Quote - Perhaps reduce the shadow of the sun?
I don't know how to do that. I suppose I could try the atmosphere node, but doesn't that add a lot of overhead?
I could add an IBL... :tongue2:
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The Wisdom of bagginsbill:
"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 12:33 PM
Errrr, I think in the light parameters tab, you can turn down shadow for the sun from 1 to say, errrr, 0.8? Just guessing...
Actally for all lights I find a shadow parameter less than the default of 1 to be quite funky. Sometimes you can use it as a kind of "cheap idl".
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 12:44 PM
The first render uses typical settings:
Ball & backdrop - Diff 0.8, (ball has reflection) EnvSphere set to Ambient=1
Second render uses the revelation bb has just dropped on us:
Ball & backdrop - Diff 0.15 (ball has same reflection) EnvSphere 1 set to Ambient=8
What a difference. Even with just the EnvSphere as an emitter, in the first render too much light is reflecting from the diffuse material, interfering with the added reflection.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 1:15 PM
Actually, forget the second Environment Sphere - you can't seperate the IDL from the reflection (sure this used to work).
For the render above I just lowered the reflection value to account for the blown out reflection coming from the increase in ambience on the EnvSphere. Thought the double EnvSphere would work.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
FrankT posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 1:56 PM
#2 looks way better! Neat idea from BB
monkeycloud posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 2:12 PM
Number two does look way better Carodan.
So it was necessary to amp up the Envsphere light x 8 to get this result though?
We could really do with an option for Visible in IDL, to be separate to Visible in Raytracing eh? If that is something that would be logistically possible even... to program into Firefly's behaviour??
WandW posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 2:28 PM
DOH! Learn something new every day. 
Here it is with the shadow at 0.8, theshadow catcher recalibrated and the blur radius at 1.5. It's pretty good under the chin, but there seems to be too much shadow around the lips and eyes...
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The Wisdom of bagginsbill:
"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 2:33 PM
I think It'd be preferable to be able to seperate the IDL from the reflection pass - can't see why this wouldn't be possible - although if SM were to sort out the imbalance with diffuse reflectivity it wouldn't be an issue.
The above render utilises the second EnvSphere to render out the normal HDR scene. Marries in quite nicely.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
monkeycloud posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 2:39 PM
So, to get this straight in my head, the visible background scene of rocks and sea there is on the inner / smaller envsphere that has "cast shadows" and "light emitter" unticked...
...and the ambient light from the outer envsphere passes through that?
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:01 PM
Quote -
DOH! Learn something new every day.Here it is with the shadow at 0.8, theshadow catcher recalibrated and the blur radius at 1.5. It's pretty good under the chin, but there seems to be too much shadow around the lips and eyes...
Better, but looks like my guess was pretty rubbish.
Looking at the that, I'd now try shadow at 0.6 and blur radius at 5. (Maybe more shadow samples?)
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:02 PM
monkeycloud - Yes.
But I made a mistake in my description before - you also have to untick Visible in Raytracing for the inner sphere.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:05 PM
Quote - So I set up a very simple scene with a backdrop and ball prop, surrounded by two bb environment spheres with HDRs attached (note - one sphere supplies ambient light, the second (slightly smaller with shadowcasting and light emmitting disabled) is for reflections.
The first render uses typical settings:
Ball & backdrop - Diff 0.8, (ball has reflection) EnvSphere set to Ambient=1
Second render uses the revelation bb has just dropped on us:
Ball & backdrop - Diff 0.15 (ball has same reflection) EnvSphere 1 set to Ambient=8
What a difference. Even with just the EnvSphere as an emitter, in the first render too much light is reflecting from the diffuse material, interfering with the added reflection.
Very interesting!
I'll have to try this, together with my separate passes, and see the difference.
(Will have to wait though, animation rendering at the moment and gig tomorrow.)
monkeycloud posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:09 PM
Quote - monkeycloud - Yes.
But I made a mistake in my description before - you also have to untick Visible in Raytracing for the inner sphere.
Thanks Carodan
I think this is what is confusing me then... as I'd have thought, if Visible in Raytracing was unticked, then that inner sphere wouldn't reflect..
...your reflections will come from the outer sphere. Hence the need to take the reflection values down, to avoid blowing those out?
That means the inner sphere is just providing your backdrop...
...am I right in understanding that?
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:19 PM
monkeycloud - yes, that's it.
Problem with the reflections coming from an environment image highly increased in ambience is that the reflections can look off - need to play with this some more.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
Miss Nancy posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:28 PM
setting poser directional light shadows <1.0 not recommended: causes opaque objects to transmit directional light. take a photo of somebody standing in the sun and you'll see the shadows can really be dark in the photo, however with a blue sky they may look bluish to an human observer, which will interpret the scene differently from a camera AFAIK.
yes, monkey - same with hair. if "visible in raytracing" is unchecked for hair, one can still see the hair in a poser mirror ball, unlike dracula. however, carodan's two-sphere method (sIBL) may only work with the poser shadow-catcher and/or ground plane or other posersurface. it may not work with bill's refractive shadowcatcher, which is much better for hdri scenes IMVHO.
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:37 PM
Quote - setting poser directional light shadows <1.0 not recommended: causes opaque objects to transmit directional light.
Yeah, but if it looks right, then there's nothing wrong with it, right?
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:41 PM
Quote - if "visible in raytracing" is unchecked for hair, one can still see the hair in a poser mirror ball, unlike dracula.
Huh? Since when? I can clearly remember doing a render with VIT unchecked for hair (as somebody had advised me to do to save rendertime) and having a good laugh at a bald V4 reflected in a window.
WandW posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:45 PM
Here 'tis, Cap'n, with Shadow samples at 100. I didn't recalibrate the groundplane. The occulded areas on the face still aren't getting enough light...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Wisdom of bagginsbill:
"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
monkeycloud posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 3:50 PM
Quote - Huh? Since when? I can clearly remember doing a render with VIT unchecked for hair (as somebody had advised me to do to save rendertime) and having a good laugh at a bald V4 reflected in a window.
Yeah, I think the hair trick (to help IDL render times and avoid some artifacts, perhaps) is to untick the "Light Emitter" option for the hair, not the "Visible in Raytracing" option?
Miss Nancy posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 4:38 PM
when I was trying the sIBL technique, I put an hdri on a sphere at 102% size, then used an hi-res jpeg as background on a dome at 100% size (invisible in raytracing), and the result was that everything above the ground plane shadowcatcher looked o.k., but the groundplane showed the lo-res hdri instead of the hi-res jpeg.
Zanzo posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 5:16 PM
It's good to see other people realize how completely shitty IDL is in poser pro. Sure you can make it work and render nice but at what cost? Weeks & weeks of tweaking?
I should be able to simply drop a directional light, the bbenvsphere, turn on idl, turn on sss and get a kick ass scene.
I've been wondering about that stupid armpit glow.
Sorry I had to vent.
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 5:26 PM
Zanzo - It's all part of the fun. You find a sweet setup & save it for use later with other projects, and then another etc. I've spent just as long in 3ds Max tweaking settings & getting nowhere fast.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
Zanzo posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 5:41 PM
Quote - Zanzo - It's all part of the fun. You find a sweet setup & save it for use later with other projects, and then another etc. I've spent just as long in 3ds Max tweaking settings & getting nowhere fast.
I guess you're right.
Look man I actually got some decent results.
IDL intensity set to .5 with the directional light strengths increased:
This thread helped me ten fold. Thanks.
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 5:44 PM
Quote -
Here 'tis, Cap'n, with Shadow samples at 100. I didn't recalibrate the groundplane. The occulded areas on the face still aren't getting enough light...
Well, you're going to have to increase IDL level a bit after all. Try an IDL only render with intensity=1 and see how much of it you have to add to the latest image in post. That way you'll get a guide to what IDL levels you can get away with in future.
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 5:47 PM
Quote - Look man I actually got some decent results.
That is certainly an awful lot better than earlier!
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 7:24 PM
On the subject of lowering diffuse values and raising lighting intensity, I'm not sure how well the scatter node will work with this technique. I get odd results in simple setups.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 7:33 PM
Odd in what way?
carodan posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 7:59 PM
I get all kinds of IDL artifacts - splotches, discolourations (probably due to the high emitter intensity) - and the skin tends to render very dark.
Tired now. Sleep.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
CaptainMARC posted Fri, 07 December 2012 at 8:10 PM
Been thinking about this, and this is just speculation, I haven't tried anything, but...
Might it not be interesting to use the Auxiliary Render Data. I'm not sure, but I think Custom1 delivers diffuse only, and Custom2 delivers specular only. I use the Z-depth option all the time and I don't think it adds anything to the render time.
It may be useful to take the diffuse only file, and subtract a bit of that from the master render. Perhaps you'd get the effect of reducing the diffuse value, but with the scatter node still working normally.
I've never tried this, so I don't know what the score will be with reflections. But when I render my next scene I'll give it a go. As I said, I don't think it adds anything to render time as Firefly is just spitting out some subtotals it has calculated anyway before summing for the master render.
Latexluv posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 12:00 AM
"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate
Weapons of choice:
Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8
Eric Walters posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 12:04 AM
Dang it! I get addicted to this sort of tweaking! Here I was just about to FINALLY spend some time with tinkering with SSS in Vue 11- and you guys had to bring this up! Now I will be compelled to go back to tinkering with PoserPro2012 again. :-)
Aside-I've long wished for some connection of light intensity in 3D to real world values.With some standard materials with albedo ratings for calibration.
"Set Light 1 to 10,000 Lux at 5500 degrees K at 2 Meters...."
Zanzo posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 1:42 AM
Quote - Takes some tweeking but I like it. This is IDL intensity set to .5. I've got a HDR image on the Envsphere that is 2.0 intensity and my main light is at 88%.
How did you set the intensity of the envsphere?
Man is there some kind of tutorial out there that goes over the basics of IDL for poser pro? There are so many little things which makes working IDL not worth it. I've wasted 3 days just experimenting when all I want to do is actually get some work done.
I can't find any tutorial that explains how to use IDL in a fast, efficient way for an indoor scene.
monkeycloud posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 2:06 AM
If there had been such a tutorial, it might very well now need to be rewritten ;-)
As I understand it the "intensity" of the envsphere can be adjusted via the "Value" property of the HSV node, in BB's default shader for it.
I've customised my copy of the envsphere, so that that Value property, of the HSV node, in the envsphere shader, is animatable (i.e. by clicking the little key next to the property in the mat room node)... making a dial appear in the Prop dials, which I've just named "Intensity".
The thing is most of this stuff is additional... add-on technique / knowledge / utility... to the actual Poser program, at present... the envsphere, EZSkin, etc...
But also, everyone is aiming for slightly, or completely, different results. So each person's workflow will likely differ slightly... no matter what.
Zanzo posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 2:17 AM
Quote - If there had been such a tutorial, it might very well now need to be rewritten ;-)
As I understand it the "intensity" of the envsphere can be adjusted via the "Value" property of the HSV node, in BB's default shader for it.
Thanks man, this works great. I'm wondering if it's better to increase the strength of a directional light or increase this intensity property.
Quote - I've customised my copy of the envsphere, so that that Value property, of the HSV node, in the envsphere shader, is animatable (i.e. by clicking the little key next to the property in the mat room node)... making a dial appear in the Prop dials, which I've just named "Intensity".
Pretty sharp man.
Quote - The thing is most of this stuff is additional... add-on technique / knowledge / utility... to the actual Poser program, at present... the envsphere, EZSkin, etc... But also, everyone is aiming for slightly, or completely, different results. So each person's workflow will likely differ slightly... no matter what.
I'm currently trying to come up with a poor man's solution for IDL. The absolute bare minimum so no matter what scene you have, you have core rules to follow for rapid content development.
monkeycloud posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 4:54 AM
What I think would be really useful is an advanced render script, presenting a GUI screen like the D3D one, but that allowed adjustment of the envsphere intensity, intensity of each light and maybe also the diffuse (adjusting this globally across all materials).
I guess at launch it could parse all the diffuse values and present some data, like max, min, mean etc of diffuse values... that sort of thing.
Maybe as well as the diffuse, speculars and sss scale?
Just thinking out loud...
...but I'm sure there is probably some way this could be figured into a pre-render adjustment / render settings script... if someone had the inclination to do so...
...possibly with some of the "balancing" equations (ideal diffuse relative to lighting, relative to IDL intensity, etc) figured into it as heuristics / suggested optimum values?
Anthanasius posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 5:17 AM
I think idl intensity depend of the scene. Indoor and outdoor lightning are completly different.
You cant set the same settings in all of your scenes. Each need adjustements.
Look here ( middle of post ) http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2860491
These settings look really good viewving the renders.
Now appli this to your scene.
Make art button dont exist ;)
Génération mobiles Le Forum / Le Site
richardson posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 6:09 PM
richardson posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 6:20 PM
I wanted to say, blotchies seem minimized with 8X. Lowering 8X to 1.5 really started the artifacts. This is nothing but a few tests so far.
and IDL intensity was at .15
richardson posted Sat, 08 December 2012 at 8:07 PM
This has one emitter as well. 6 Ray bounces. The rest was pretty draft. The specular and bump maps are matched.
bagoas posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 3:24 AM
Interesting discussion. Just a question:
What mapping do you people use? I found in previous experiments with (sun) lights set to values in the order of 10 to get some light in the corners of a room lit from outside that exponential HSV can make quite a difference in 'taming' overly dark shadows and washed-out lights.
richardson posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 3:54 AM
Hi,
Yes. HSV value upping the dome light to 8X or 800% depending on the HDR and scene, etc. But, Reducing IDL intensity in D3D rendersettings from 1.0 to as little as 0.1 to try to balance diffuse anomolies in Poser. That's how I understand it. I know something is almost always out of whack.
Zanzo posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 1:14 PM
Quote - Hi,
Yes. HSV value upping the dome light to 8X or 800% depending on the HDR and scene, etc. But, Reducing IDL intensity in D3D rendersettings from 1.0 to as little as 0.1 to try to balance diffuse anomolies in Poser. That's how I understand it. I know something is almost always out of whack.
Do you ever use more that one directional light indoors or outdoors?
richardson posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 1:53 PM
Do you ever use more that one directional light indoors or outdoors?
Nice hook. Sure. You can have 5 suns parented together pitched at slightly different angles or 50 point lights in a candleset... They cost you in rendertime, though. This above is set up to test some ideas based on bb's idea. I have more than one light. There is an emitter and the sphere
shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 1:54 PM Online Now!
Doing what BB mentioned with the IDL intensity works extrememly well in indoor scenes that have a lot of shadows from external light.
I was getting the dreaded red bleed on this one, and it is gone now that I turned down the IDL intensity to 0.1 and turned up the emitters in the scene to add more light.
(Bigger version in my gallery)
Everything in the scene is visible in raytracing and set to cast shadows. I have not found a need to hide the hair, or anything else for that matter. Ezskin is applied to the hair and the body, using the sweaty effect on the skin. I did have to turn down the eye relfections, they were so reflective it hid the iris texture. Cant really see it in this render, but I noticed it in a few test renders I did from different angles.
I am still experimenting to see what other things need to be changed when doing this. I did notice that there can be a color shift when doing this, but it is not that drastic. There is also a small difference in the shadow edges based on what the radius blur is set at. I had to turn the shadow samples way up to compensate.
Doing all of this does raise the render time a tad, but the results are more than worth the wait.
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richardson posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 2:02 PM
Doing all of this does raise the render time a tad, but the results are more than worth the wait.
I'd have to agree. Why no reflect on anything? Hust to speed up the test?
Zanzo posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 2:05 PM
Quote - Doing what BB mentioned with the IDL intensity works extrememly well in indoor scenes that have a lot of shadows from external light.
I was getting the dreaded red bleed on this one, and it is gone now that I turned down the IDL intensity to 0.1 and turned up the emitters in the scene to add more light.
(Bigger version in my gallery)
Everything in the scene is visible in raytracing and set to cast shadows. I have not found a need to hide the hair, or anything else for that matter. Ezskin is applied to the hair and the body, using the sweaty effect on the skin. I did have to turn down the eye relfections, they were so reflective it hid the iris texture. Cant really see it in this render, but I noticed it in a few test renders I did from different angles.
I am still experimenting to see what other things need to be changed when doing this. I did notice that there can be a color shift when doing this, but it is not that drastic. There is also a small difference in the shadow edges based on what the radius blur is set at. I had to turn the shadow samples way up to compensate.
Doing all of this does raise the render time a tad, but the results are more than worth the wait.
That looks great, do you have any similar scenes where she is nude?
Quote - Do you ever use more that one directional light indoors or outdoors?
Nice hook. Sure. You can have 5 suns parented together pitched at slightly different angles or 50 point lights in a candleset... They cost you in rendertime, though. This above is set up to test some ideas based on bb's idea. I have more than one light. There is an emitter and the sphere
At the most basic level, I think IDL with one directional light is complete garbage. Does everyone agree?
The above does not work well from my experiments. Maybe I'm supposed to turn on gamma correction? I'm trying to get IDL to look good at the most BASIC of levels.
shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 2:14 PM Online Now!
There is reflect on just about everything, but they are turned way down because the ceiling of the room is the main emiiter. I need to redo it with a plane and hide it from the camera.
Basically you hit the nail on the head, this was more of a test then anything else.
BB is definently onto something here. If I posted the before version with all the red bleed around the shadows on her from the blinds you would see a drastic difference.
They looked awful, lol...
Just to clarify the lighting, there are 2 lights in this scene. a spot light just outside the windows, and a point light in the floor lamp. The rest of the light is emitted from the cieling, both bounces are set at 2.
I will work with it a little more and see what I come up with. Looks like we have to rethink Poser lighting again. The results are getting to the point that using other render engines may not be nessasary at all to achieve stunning results.
Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store -> <-Freebies->
shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 2:23 PM Online Now!
Quote - That looks great, do you have any similar scenes where she is nude?
Not yet, but I wanted a lot in the scene to see how it all worked together.
Quote - At the most basic level, I think IDL with one directional light is complete garbage. Does everyone agree?
It depends on the scene, and how complex the emitter setup is. I rarely use the enviroment sphere now. Don't get me wrong you can get stunning results with it, just not so much in a room.
If I turned off the floor lamp in that scene, which is just a point light, there would only be one light left.
There is obviously more that we can learn about how to set up IDL to get the best results, we just have to mess around with it and find what that is.
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Zanzo posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 2:27 PM
Quote - There is obviously more that we can learn about how to set up IDL to get the best results, we just have to mess around with it and find what that is.
That's the problem, I don't want to mess around. I want to get some work done. All this experimenting is getting old. I want a solid workflow & methodology so I don't have to worry about this crap and just focus on content creation.
Smith Micro is fail.
I expect IDL at the most basic of levels to just look great, then from there if I want to tweak stuff so be it.
Quote - Just to clarify the lighting, there are 2 lights in this scene. a spot light just outside the windows, and a point light in the floor lamp. The rest of the light is emitted from the cieling, both bounces are set at 2.
See that is confusing. I would expect a directional light instead of a spot light no? You've achieved great results but the methodology is unorthodox isn't it? Letting a ceiling light your scene? Why can't it be simpler? Having to go through each item in your scene is too time consuming.
richardson posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 2:27 PM
ust to clarify the lighting, there are 2 lights in this scene. a spot light just outside the windows, and a point light in the floor lamp. The rest of the light is emitted from the cieling, both bounces are set at 2.
Did you notice any artifacting issues? I was wondering if raising emitters and lowering IDL intensity is really increasing Ray success. I mean, it's missing the target less and not leaving blanks/splotchies.
Cannot wait to post my next render... sheeez
The spheres I was using was for exterior shots but I tried to bounce it into the room with 6 or 7 bounces. It's just easier to do it with a spot We still need a way to emit light and still be able to be selected invisible to some other selective surface. This was what carodan was after, I think. Reflections in the eyes are a perfect example when using hot emitters.
shedofjoy posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 2:45 PM
Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.
Zanzo posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 3:13 PM
Why does BBEnvsphere make such a huge difference? Is IDL in poser pro broken by default?
carodan posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 3:23 PM
Quote - The spheres I was using was for exterior shots but I tried to bounce it into the room with 6 or 7 bounces. It's just easier to do it with a spot We still need a way to emit light and still be able to be selected invisible to some other selective surface. This was what carodan was after, I think. Reflections in the eyes are a perfect example when using hot emitters.
Yep, that's the problem. Reflections go out of whack with the powerful emitters.
There's such a variance in HDRi quality & setup too. I have some that almost don't require a shadow casting light at all, some that do but don't need anywhere near as much power as you'd think
I'm also starting to wonder about specular & fresnel reflection strength - find I'm really lowering those values a lot. Not being the scientific mind, I'm almost certainly getting a few things mixed up here & there.
I was wondering though how people were setting up their Environment Spheres or emitters. On bbs EnvSphere I've tried varying HSV values but also messed with the incoming gamma (using the nodes he included). Also gone for the raw HDRi straight out of the Ambient channel. All give ways of balancing out the final strength of the HDRi.
Hopefully bb will cast his wisdom among us again soon - great fun floundering about in his absence.
PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.
www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com
monkeycloud posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 3:33 PM
That render of mine is almost done... and there was blinking toe glow. He he.
Not to worry was planning to post-work the hell out of this one anyway.
About 5 more buckets of that render to go and then I can have a play myself with this new IDL lighting paradigm... :)
shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 3:42 PM Online Now!
Quote - Smith Micro is fail.
Feel free to set your scenes up in Houdini, Blender, Max, or any other 3D app, and you will find that it takes just as long if not longer to set them up. You will have to set up network nodes out the wazzu in Houdini for both the scene, and the textures. If your using a render engine other than Mantra you will have to set the textures up for each additional engine. Blender can be set up for tons of render engines, that require different texture setups for each one. Max can use tons of render engines as well.
I don't think Smith Micro is fail at all. It does an excellent job for pennies on the dollar compared to other applications. Price out a Houdini or Max suite and you will quickly see what I mean.
(Houdini can easily hit 7 figures with just a small render farm. Queue manager that comes with Poser Pro supports 9999 simultanious nodes at no additional cost.)
Show me another application that comes with a full fledged render engine. Before you say Daz, keep in mind that the version of 3Delight it comes with is nerfed compared to the full version you can buy. Blender is the only free program that can hold a candle to Poser in money spent vs what it can do. Blender is free... Cycles (Blenders new render engine) is still in developement, and changes constantly. Scenes set up for earlier releases sometimes need adjustments to work with later versions.
If you want a setup that is click and go, good luck with that. Movie studios don't sell those to the public simply because it takes way to much cpu power to do much of anything in them once you click render.
Quote - See that is confusing. I would expect a directional light instead of a spot light no? You've achieved great results but the methodology is unorthodox isn't it? Letting a ceiling light your scene? Why can't it be simpler? Having to go through each item in your scene is too time consuming.
I used a spot light to simulate a light that was right outside of the window. I would use a infinite for daylight.
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Zanzo posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 4:01 PM
Quote - Feel free to set your scenes up in Houdini, Blender, Max, or any other 3D app, and you will find that it takes just as long if not longer to set them up.
That's the point, why do you think I'm using Poser Pro? I'm using a "LIGHT" 3d application to increase my productivity with LESS downtime.
i'm purposely avoiding applications like houdini, blender and max so I can avoid all the BS that I'm not interested in.
Houdini, Blender, Max, Maya = LOTS of downtime.
Poser Pro = Zero downtime before SSS & IDL was introduced.
Smith Micro is fooling themselves if they think that poser is going to compete with the big boys. Smith Micro needs to realize what Poser Pro is. A LIGHTWEIGHT 3D app for beginner to intermediate level users.
Smith Micro should have SSS & IDL solutions so people can get straight to producing content instead of messing around constantly.
Quote - I used a spot light to simulate a light that was right outside of the window. I would use a infinite for daylight.
Wouldn't you use an infinite at low strength for night light? You're the expert btw, I'm just trying to adhere to a standard that makes sense instead of doing shortcuts and unthordox methods, why? Because then I'd be spending far too much time in each scene.
richardson posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 4:16 PM
Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2392902
I'm kinda blown away by that. Not sure yet what the settings did for it but I add them here to show it was no big deal,, samplewise. I wanted to do this in a nice planned way but got distracting results like link...;) I'm done polluting the thread now so, thanks and let's see what happens.
shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 4:39 PM Online Now!
Quote - Smith Micro should have SSS & IDL solutions so people can get straight to producing content instead of messing around constantly.
If SM figured out how to make a one click solution to SSS and IDL it would put the big boys out of business. The big boys have not figured out how to do it.
There is no such thing as a one click fits all in anything 3D. Not from SM, Side Effects, Autodesk, nobody...If you use any of those apps you would know what I mean.
I have Houdini 12, and it doesn't have a one click solution for anything unless someone else did the ground work for it. There are a few nice presets available for it to get you real close, just like there are for Poser and other 3D apps. But they are far from perfect out of the box 99% of the time.
I have Blender, same deal. There are presets that will get you close, but thats about it.
I don't have a newer version of Max, but I doubt it has anything better than the next program when it comes to one click solutions.
Quote - Poser Pro = Zero downtime before SSS & IDL was introduced.
If you had no downtime without using SSS and IDL, then stop using it and go back to the way you did it before with zero downtime. All the stuff that was there before, is still there now.
The downtime you have now is self inflicted, by your own statement. If you can't get it to work, just don't use it. If you use it for a production enviroment I can understand why you would not want to waste time trying to figure it out. If you are a hobbists, you are like a lot of others that just want to get closer to a one click solution.
We will get closer, but a one click solution wont happen anytime soon.
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Zanzo posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 4:54 PM
Quote - > Quote - Smith Micro should have SSS & IDL solutions so people can get straight to producing content instead of messing around constantly.
If SM figured out how to make a one click solution to SSS and IDL it would put the big boys out of business. The big boys have not figured out how to do.
There is no such thing as a one click fits all in anything 3D. Not from SM, Side Effects, Autodesk, nobody...If you use any of those apps you would know what I mean.
I have Houdini 12, and it doesn't have a one click solution for anything unless someone else did the ground work for it. There are a few nice presets available for it to get you real close, just like there are for Poser and other 3D apps. But they are far from perfect out of the box 99% of the time.
I have Blender, same deal. There are presets that will get you close, but thats about it.
I don't have a newer version of Max, but I doubt it has anything better than the next program when it comes to one click solutions.
Quote - Poser Pro = Zero downtime before SSS & IDL was introduced.
If you had no downtime without using SSS and IDL, then stop using it and go back to the way you did it before with zero downtime. All the stuff that was there before, is still there now.
The downtime you have now is self inflicted, by your own statement. If you can't get it to work, just don't use it. If you use it for a production enviroment I can understand why you would not want to waste time trying to figure it out. If you are a hobbists, you are like a lot of others that just want to get closer to a one click solution.
We will get closer, but a one click solution wont happen anytime soon.
Wait, do you work for Smith Micro?
On a side note, I'm almost finished with a methodology that will work on a basic level for indoor & outdoor scenes. So instead of dicking around rendering over & over again, I can reliably take 5-10 VERY VERY SIMPLE steps (starting from an empty scene) and crank out something nice to look at.
Here is what I expected from Smith Micro.
Empty Scene
Add Figures & Props
CLICK - SMITH MICRO'S IDL OUTDOOR SOLUTION - Click (Automatically adds lights & sphere for outdoor) and expects you to aim the primary light at your figure.
SMITH MICRO'S SSS SOLUTION FOR SKIN - Click (Applies SSS to skin with whatever settings you want)
Render
DONE with a basic, nice looking scene with IDL & SSS. From here I can tweak it if I want.
I almost have the above working but it took 4 frickin days which sucks. If a complete noob like me can figure out a basic methodology think what the big boys at smith micro could do if they actually put the time in.
HERE IS WHAT I AM TRYING TO AVOID:
"The scene doesn't look right and I have no idea why. Let me do some realy weird out of the box BS.. render.. tweak.. render.. tweak.. render.. tweak... render tweak...."
2 days later
"MAN the scene finally looks great but what I did makes absolutely no sense!!!?!"
monkeycloud posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 6:12 PM
Two V4 based figures with Syyd Raven's Oxygen skin shaders and Zev0's Vascularity applied.
2 x Envsphere with the same texture I rendered in Vue - the Outer with HSV value boosted to 2.0, inner with Visible in Raytracing off.
1 x Infinite Light at 88%
Various Dreamland items, and Catbot, with Bagginsbill shaders as a further benchmark.
Rendered with IDL = 0.5
hborre posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 6:18 PM
You didn't figure in that a good deal of content out there are incorrectly set up. Even if your methodology works with your set up, would you be willing to test several different models and textures to validate your findings?
CaptainMARC posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 6:26 PM
Bwah bwah mommy! This guitar sucks! I want to sound like God even if I play shit! The designer is a moron! Gibson and Fender - fail!!!
I don't know about anybody else, but I have always found such childish moaning to be entirely tedious.
On the other hand, I do enjoy discussions about how we might all improve our art.
My compliments...
monkeycloud posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 6:31 PM
Quote - You didn't figure in that a good deal of content out there are incorrectly set up. Even if your methodology works with your set up, would you be willing to test several different models and textures to validate your findings?
In terms of my own methodology, I was planning to start with a benchmark of BB derived shaders... i.e. the Syyd Raven Oxygen skin sets I've started with use EZSkin shaders as their basis.
I'm currently doing another version of my test render, this time with IDL lowered to 1.5 and the IDL-illuminating envsphere amplified, in the HSV node value, to 6.6666667 (or thereabouts).
Infinite light the same, at 88%.
Once I see what that looks like, I will maybe try some other skins I have... fed through EZSkin2 probably - but with the defaults for EZSkin2 perhaps... as I expect Syyd has fairly tweaked those. So it would be good to see how the default EZSkin settings perform I guess??
Will maybe see how Blackhearted's Tyler, GND4, Anastasia and Shae textures perform too, I reckon...
EDIT: At the moment I'm going with the goal of not adjusting the shaders. Only IDL intensity and lighting...
shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 6:32 PM Online Now!
He is looking for the same thing a lot of us are. The elusive Make Art button...
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Zanzo posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 6:38 PM
Quote - You didn't figure in that a good deal of content out there are incorrectly set up. Even if your methodology works with your set up, would you be willing to test several different models and textures to validate your findings?
I have no choice, that's what I'll be doing for the next few days. I'll be converting all my my pre-SSS, pre-IDL scenes.
Soon enough I'm going to make a thread that shows generic SSS & IDL lighting setups for outside (daytime), inside (daytime) & indoor (night). But I'm no expert, so I'd look forward to any help! :)
Quote - You didn't figure in that a good deal of content out there are incorrectly set up. Even if your methodology works with your set up, would you be willing to test several different models and textures to validate your findings?
I have no choice, that's what I'll be doing for the next few days. I'll be converting all my my pre-SSS, pre-IDL scenes.
Soon enough I'm going to make a thread that shows generic SSS & IDL lighting setups for outside (daytime), inside (daytime) & indoor (night). But I'm no expert, so I'd look forward to any help! :)
Quote - He is looking for the same thing a lot of us are. The elusive Make Art button...
Empty scene
Add IDL Lighting (Night)
Add BBenv
Add Props & scene, position.
Add V4 (Turn on bblight meters)
Pose
Move point light to optimum spot (there are other lights in the scene that I move into a default position no matter what the scene).
Click three times for SSS skin setup
Render
Review
3-4 more renders and adjustments. Do any props need AO to ensure contact is made between objects?
Final Render
Once scene = 3-4 hours tops.
The above is always my goal, if I go outside of that it means I'm doing something wrong. You have to give yourself limits.
monkeycloud posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 6:58 PM
Definitely going to be necessary to get into adjusting the reflectivity in shaders at these levels, I guess...?
Catbot's colour was changed to Pink Flamingo Candy Satin Flame just for the sake of confusing matters, by the way... ;-)
WandW posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 7:07 PM
I don't recall having problems with glow in occulded areas in Poser 8 and PP2010 (of course, I wasn't using the shaders I am now). Is is this new to P9/PP2012?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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monkeycloud posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 7:11 PM
Quote - I don't recall having problems with glow in occulded areas in Poser 8 and PP2010 (of course, I wasn't using the shaders I am now). Is is this new to P9/PP2012?
SSS is involved, as I understand it, with the glow thing... not just IDL.
shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 7:29 PM Online Now!
MonkeyCloud, I turned the reflection on the corneas way down.
Poser Surface reflection value to .01, and Anisotropic Specular value to .01. I am sure I could go higher, but I still need to experiment with it.
If you do any of the FX in Ezskin, there is a bunch more that needs turned down on them as well.
I think that 4 is about the max emitter level that will work without washing things out and creating artifacts. If you need more IDL light adding more emitters looks better than turning one up and blowing out the calculations.
Keep in mind that any calculation that is out of range (0.0.0 - 255.255.255) is doomed from the start.
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monkeycloud posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 7:41 PM
Which reminded me... I need my base benchmark. Here's my quickie scene with the defaults of IDL = 1.0 and Envsphere HSV value = 1.0...
...oh... hang on a minute... no glow. Hmmm, I need to start again with a test scene with some glow in it. He he.
Actually, personally, I think this version looks the best??? Even with my fairly lo quality settings here of shading rate = 0.7 and Irradiance cache = 20...
monkeycloud posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 7:44 PM
Quote - MonkeyCloud, I turned the reflection on the corneas way down.
Poser Surface reflection value to .01, and Anisotropic Specular value to .01. I am sure I could go higher, but I still need to experiment with it.
If you do any of the FX in Ezskin, there is a bunch more that needs turned down on them as well.
I think that 4 is about the max emitter level that will work without washing things out and creating artifacts. If you need more IDL light adding more emitters looks better than turning one up and blowing out the calculations.
Keep in mind that any calculation that is out of range (0.0.0 - 255.255.255) is doomed from the start.
Thanks Shvrdavid...
...not sure now even how good a test this outdoor scene is even. Maybe I need an indoor... or partly indoor scene...
But I might just try this one again with IDL Intensity = 0.25 and Envsphere value = 4, just for kicks... ;-)
The issue is to avoid blowing out the other elements in the scene too... compare the colours between that last baseline (IDL Intensity = 1.0) with the reduced IDL intensity renders and the colours definitely start to wash out... I think? I think even at IDL Intensity = 0.5? Or is it my eyes and the late hour here?
...not sure the emitter light sources should be exactly doubled, just because IDL Intensity is being halved... I am wondering if the mathematical relationship between these two isn't more complex perhaps???
shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 8:15 PM Online Now!
It probably is a little more complex that simple math. I don't know the formulas used in some of this so figuring that all out would require a little digging on what they actually are.
This is promising thou, I just a few hours of experimenting I am getting very good results with 1 light for shadows, and 2 emitters set to 4 amb. IDL level is set to .1
I am up to 1.2 on the saturation of the textures as well. When this one is done rendering I will post it and the settings I used for it. I am using on of my textures with lots of tattoos to see if it works with them as well.
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shvrdavid posted Sun, 09 December 2012 at 10:04 PM Online Now!
Ok, this is what I have come up with so far.
These are the render settings I used.
And this is what I got.
The hair needs still needs some work thou. Parts of it are blown out.
Scene has one infinite light set to casting shadows set to 66% intensity and 3 planes. 2 of the 3 are set to 4 ambient and are white for IDL lighting. The top plane is all but as big as the ceiling, right up against it, and the other one is about the size of the character slightly in front of her at an angle facing out the rear window. The plane with the background on it is set to 6 ambient to self light it.
Skin is set to 1.2 sat with standard Ezskin, but main bump is turned up to 0.01 (my units are in inches) Cornea reflections and anistropic specular are turned down to 0.01 as well
It took about 8 min to render.
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Believable3D posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 1:39 AM
Hm, something else seems to have changed too. It used to be that increasing IDL bounces greatly increased light spread, so that you didn't need extra intensity to lighten up dark areas. My initial testing indicates that may no longer be the case.
Anyone else checking in this area? Maybe I don't have a complex enough scene to make a different yet, I dunno....
______________
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Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3
Zanzo posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 3:05 AM
Quote - Hm, something else seems to have changed too. It used to be that increasing IDL bounces greatly increased light spread, so that you didn't need extra intensity to lighten up dark areas. My initial testing indicates that may no longer be the case.
Anyone else checking in this area? Maybe I don't have a complex enough scene to make a different yet, I dunno....
I've wondered about this too. If you use a single directional light, the edges of the figure are black. This is why I always say one dir light is crap, but then other people seem to be making it work somehow?
monkeycloud posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 3:12 AM
I'm going to try an indoor test scene next I think.
shvrdavid posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 6:12 AM Online Now!
Quote - Hm, something else seems to have changed too. It used to be that increasing IDL bounces greatly increased light spread, so that you didn't need extra intensity to lighten up dark areas. My initial testing indicates that may no longer be the case.
Anyone else checking in this area? Maybe I don't have a complex enough scene to make a different yet, I dunno....
It must be that having the IDL intensity to 1 is just as BB stated. It is way to much and adding bounces just compounded the problem, increasing the brightness to much with each bounce.
With the intensity turned down, the light still bounces, but it doesn't drastically increase the brightness with each bounce.
I real world lighting each bounce should only increase the brightness by a small amount off of most surfaces anyway.
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bevans84 posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 9:27 AM
Been lurking here with great interest. Now keep in mind I'm wrong a lot (really, you can ask my wife), how I interpreted Bagginsbill's post is that he didn't say anything about increasing ambient to get the brightness back. I read that you should just lower IDL strength to .1 or .15 and see how the render looks.
What I'm thinking is that he is saying that too much of the scene brightness is coming from IDL, and that we should be lowering IDL level, then tweaking the lights for the correct levels.
Doing this with render gamma at 2.2 seemed to result in marked improvements to the test scene, like an improved VSS render.
Anyway, that's my take on it.
Image at
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2393107
Believable3D posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 10:22 AM
bevans: increasing ambient in a scene with no lights is analogous to increasing light brightness. If it's a "no lights" scene, obviously tweaking the lights isn't an option. :)
Even if there are lights in your scene, if you're using objects as light sources, upping their ambient value would also be analogous.
So it really depends on the scene setup.
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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM
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monkeycloud posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 10:33 AM
Quote - Been lurking here with great interest. Now keep in mind I'm wrong a lot (really, you can ask my wife), how I interpreted Bagginsbill's post is that he didn't say anything about increasing ambient to get the brightness back. I read that you should just lower IDL strength to .1 or .15 and see how the render looks.
What I'm thinking is that he is saying that too much of the scene brightness is coming from IDL, and that we should be lowering IDL level, then tweaking the lights for the correct levels.
Doing this with render gamma at 2.2 seemed to result in marked improvements to the test scene, like an improved VSS render.
Anyway, that's my take on it.
Image at
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2393107
If you're reducing the IDL intensity and your light balance was otherwise good, when IDL intensity was set at 1.0, then you're surely going to need to add some more light, to rebalance it?
That will either mean increasing the Poser lights... effectively meaning you're just using less IDL, in the overall mix, and more Poser (Infinite, Spot, Point) light.
Or it means increasing the IDL lighting (which might be all the lighting you have in a scene anyway, if you're not using Poser lights).
But that might just be at the level of "tweaks" rather than any more dramatic increase...
Certainly, from my loosely structured experiments so far, it seems that if you divide your IDL of 1.0 by 6.666..., to take it down to 0.15... it isn't then just a case of multiplying the ambient lighting by the same, 6.666..., to rebalance the lighting... far from it.
The increase needed in the lighting, ambient or Poser lighting, to compensate for the reduced IDL, seems to be much smaller than the increment IDL has been reduced by...? Sound right...?
Of course this must be likely to vary, possibly substantially, depending on the scene... I guess.
bagginsbill posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 10:59 AM
Keep going. bevans84 was right in that I didn't say to increase the emitter lighting (such as the EnvSphere), since what I was most trying to address was the surface-to-surface bounced light that was resulting in light amplification in crevices. I'm trying to tone that down since it is clearly wrong.
I did mention two ways to tone it down.
Decrease Diffuse_Value everywhere. This would cause all diffuse reflection (direct light-based, direct emitter based, and indirect bounced) to be drastically reduced. The direct and emitter based lighting would then need to be increased to compensate, leaving us with reduced indirect bounced.
Decrease IDL Intensity. This would leave direct light-based reflection as is, but reduce direct emitter based diffuse (EnvSphere), and indirect bounced shading (skin to skin).
I actually don't know which is better, but there is a certainty that both of these options are going to reduce the contribution from the emitter lighting (EnvSphere or any other glowing props). Since that isn't the goal, per se, then it stands to reason that one would have to increase the emitter lighting - which is precisely what monkeycloud just explained.
There have been two (subjective?) complaints of late, coming from zanzo, mostly.
Environment color (such as sky) is making too much tone change on skin.
Crevices glow.
Both of these are addressed by using technique #2 - reduce IDL intensity.
Since I don't know the actual ratios of real life, I cannot dispute nor concur with "zanzo's complaints" (trademark). However, given that you want to reduce those things, reducing IDL intensity will help.
Whether you then want to tweak up the overall lighting (environment value, sun-light value, spot-light value, etc.) is neither called for nor a cause for objection.
I'm very interested in the results you guys are posting. When I have time, I plan to calibrate my camera to neutral settings, and then go outside and measure reflectance on some common objects in shade and in sun, and I'll then be able to tell you what ratio I actually discover. This will tell us something about the contribution we should configure from the EnvSphere, versus the infinite (sun) light. These are, I suspect, the major factors in outdoor lighting accuracy - sun and sky. But that's not the story indoors.
Indoors, I have found that direct light is around 8 times brighter than indirect (bounced) light, and so I am fairly certain that diffuse reflectivity (aka diffuse value) is closer to the neighborhood of 1/8 than 7/8. [I conducted a really shameful test of this. Basically I configure my camera for total manual mode, no change in exposure from one shot to the next. I point it right at a light bulb and also at a piece of paper lit by that light bulb. The ratio in brightness (after remembering to anti-gamma correct the numbers from my photos) was around 8x.]
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shvrdavid posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 11:23 AM Online Now!
BB, I have a paint meter somewhere, for duplicating colors, that I think can do that as well. I will have to dig it out and read the book called a manual it came with.
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bagginsbill posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 11:24 AM
A photo of a ceiling light fixture that is above my desk right now.
It's a compact flourescent light (CFL), surrounded by a white plastic collar.
Notice the ugly color - I hate CFL.
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bagginsbill posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 11:27 AM
A - direct light source intensity
B - directly lit white plastic (mostly lit by the bulb)
C - indirectly lit white plastic (not lit by the bulb at all - lit by the B area of the collar)
Measure the ratios of these and then take to the power 2.2 to linearize (convert from sRGB gamma corrected values, to straight ordinary values). This tells us the diffuse value, roughly. (Actually the inverse of diffuse value.) Of course, the C area is partly occluded, and the B area is off-center where the bulb throws some less light than is heading to the camera here. But it is ballpark correct.
I get:
A / B = 9.23
B / C = 9.31
Given the occlusion and also the off-center, these ratios are probably closer to 8. Hmmm - fascinating.
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bagginsbill posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 11:30 AM
Quote - BB, I have a paint meter somewhere, for duplicating colors, that I think can do that as well. I will have to dig it out and read the book called a manual it came with.
Please! Awesome to have some help.
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bevans84 posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 2:00 PM
This is using IDL gain set to .1, and the sphere shading disconnected from Alt Diffuse and hooked to Ambient Color with value of 8.
Render gamma 2.2.
I'm liking it, and looking forward to better things to come.
carodan posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 4:11 PM
This is getting confusing.
The reason I posted the Environment Sphere (emitter) only scenario was to suggest that the imbalance with diffuse lighting/shading wasn't only a problem with RT lights.
It occured to me since I've been experimenting with this kind of setup for a while, including the EnvSphere plus 1 RT light scenario. In the EnvSphere only setup we see just as much of an imbalance with diffuse light bounce (that's light that bounces off objects as opposed to that which is cast into the scene by the emitter) as when you're using RT lights, or a combination of the two. At least, that's the way it looks to me. The example I posted on page 1 of this thread illustrates this I think.
It's perfectly viable to light a scene only with ambient light in the form of a (good) HDRi, using modulated fresnel reflections as a substitute for specular highlights which we'd usually get from the RT light. The only problem with this approach besides achieving good specular is that of shadows. If we want a definite, sharp shadow then it's still easier to add in a shadow-casting light.
So then we're faced with the problem of having extra light cast into the scene (as well as extra specular if your materials are set up as such). We have an imbalance - and that's on top of the apparent Poser diffuse imbalance when using IDL.
My assertion is that just dropping the IDL intensity to 0.1 doesn't on its own address this imbalance, depending on how you have your scene set up. In the EnvSphere only scenario you clearly end up with way too little ambient light in the scene, unless you increase the ambient intensity of the emitter, and then your reflections get blown out. In the EnvSphere plus RT light scenario you get the right diffuse bounce from that light, but not enough light from the emitter. So what we're looking for in that instance is to find an acceptable balance between the diffuse shader in the material room, the RT light/Emitter intensity, and the indirect diffuse bounce (IDL intensity).
Does that make any sense?
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carodan posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 4:38 PM
Also, I think the problem of too strong colour bleed/received light from environmental emitters may have been over-exaggerated. In the example of a white object in a green or red room, I'd expect the sphere to be taking on a fair amount of that reflected colour. It might be subject to some of the diffuse imbalance that we're talking about here, but I'd argue not as much as you'd think. If anything I tend to think a lot of Poser renders suffer from a lack of environmentally recieved colour rather than too much.
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Latexluv posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 5:28 PM
"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate
Weapons of choice:
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richardson posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 5:51 PM
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. *
Latexluv posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 6:13 PM
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.
"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate
Weapons of choice:
Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8
carodan posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 6:18 PM
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.
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carodan posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 6:21 PM
Hey Latexluv, that last render does have a nice balance to it.
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shvrdavid posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 8:45 PM Online Now!
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.
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Zanzo posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 8:46 PM
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.
Miss Nancy posted Mon, 10 December 2012 at 11:06 PM
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).
bagginsbill posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 6:28 AM
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.
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bagginsbill posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 7:10 AM
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.
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bagginsbill posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 7:15 AM
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.
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shvrdavid posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 11:43 AM Online Now!
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.
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richardson posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 12:18 PM
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.
richardson posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 12:21 PM
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.
richardson posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 12:26 PM
Not sure where I'm going from here...;)
richardson posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 12:41 PM
richardson posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 1:22 PM
Faye Dunaway in the Thomas Crown affair... Waited a long time for that turkey.
monkeycloud posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 2:03 PM
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...
richardson posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 2:30 PM
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,,
Zanzo posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 6:06 PM
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 ?
richardson posted Tue, 11 December 2012 at 6:48 PM
Yep. Forgot to kill the blue.
Zanzo posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 12:00 AM
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.
bagginsbill posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 12:01 AM
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.
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bagginsbill posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 12:48 AM
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.
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Zanzo posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 12:48 AM
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.
bagginsbill posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 12:49 AM
Which one did I change?
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Zanzo posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 1:02 AM
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.
bagginsbill posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 1:14 AM
Right - there is no visible difference, but the Diffuse_Value was doubled. And the Diffuse_Color was halved. The net change was ... no change.
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Zanzo posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 1:27 AM
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......
anupaum posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 10:00 AM
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.
Latexluv posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 3:01 PM
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anupaum posted Wed, 12 December 2012 at 3:14 PM
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! :)
carodan posted Thu, 13 December 2012 at 11:54 AM
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)
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richardson posted Thu, 13 December 2012 at 12:08 PM
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
carodan posted Thu, 13 December 2012 at 12:21 PM
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.
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monkeycloud posted Thu, 13 December 2012 at 1:07 PM
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...
carodan posted Thu, 13 December 2012 at 1:46 PM
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.
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monkeycloud posted Thu, 13 December 2012 at 2:11 PM
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 ;-)
Zanzo posted Thu, 13 December 2012 at 8:49 PM
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?
monkeycloud posted Fri, 14 December 2012 at 1:50 AM
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 ;-)
WandW posted Fri, 14 December 2012 at 8:21 AM
Quote - How did you achieve that breast action? Is that V4.2?
I want to know what bathroom that is... 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
monkeycloud posted Fri, 14 December 2012 at 9:08 AM
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...
;-)
WandW posted Fri, 14 December 2012 at 9:30 AM
I have that bathroom somewhere but have never tried it. Thanx!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Wisdom of bagginsbill:
"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
Anthanasius posted Sat, 15 December 2012 at 5:12 AM
Believable3D posted Sat, 15 December 2012 at 6:14 AM
______________
Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM
Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3
Believable3D posted Sat, 15 December 2012 at 6:16 AM
BTW, Poser dynamic hair works a lot better now that I have a more robust machine, but I'm still struggling with styling. :)
______________
Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM
Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3
richardson posted Sat, 15 December 2012 at 6:29 AM
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.
Believable3D posted Sat, 15 December 2012 at 7:01 AM
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.
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RedPhantom posted Sat, 15 December 2012 at 8:37 PM Online Now! Site Admin
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monkeycloud posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 4:57 AM
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 ;-)
Latexluv posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 8:59 PM
In my experiments so far I've found that I get the color bleed from the Envsphere when IDL strength is between .35 and .4. This is a shame because I don't want that much color bleed. It would especially look bad for outdoor scenes using a sky image. Everything gets a blue tinge to it where is in reality our eyes white balance most of the blue out. I'm currently rendering at IDL intensity of .25 to .3. Anyone else's thoughts?
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Believable3D posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 9:09 PM
Change the colours/images on the EnvSphere?
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Latexluv posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 9:15 PM
I've been considering taking the image for the Envsphere and doing a greyscale on it or desaturaing it and if its and outdoor scene that shows some sky then I'd use a backdrop. Most of my images are indoor glamour shots but for another project I'll be doing outdoor images against apocalyptic broken buildings.
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bagginsbill posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 10:16 PM
There's a saturation control in my EnvSphere shader - it's the HSV node. You don't need to modify the image outside Poser.
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Zanzo posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 10:26 PM
I GOT A SHADOW SPOT PROBLEM.
Here is an image of a necklace and bikini string around the neck area. There are numerous shadow spots.
I've tried everything to possibly fix this but they won't go away.
Believable3D posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 10:39 PM
Increase the Irradiance Cache and experiment with your shading rate.
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Miss Nancy posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 10:42 PM
the scene may render better with GC checked. then you can optimise various samples and shading rate.
Zanzo posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 10:55 PM
Quote - the scene may render better with GC checked. then you can optimise various samples and shading rate.
I'd rather fix the problem at the source than use a bandaid.
So far by turning off visible in raytracing for bikini top & necklace has solved the issue but I'd rather not resort to that.
Quote - Increase the Irradiance Cache and experiment with your shading rate.
Well the IC is max, so I'll try lowering the shading rate.
Believable3D posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 11:19 PM
I meant the Irradiance Cache under the IDL setting.
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Zanzo posted Sun, 16 December 2012 at 11:31 PM
Quote - I meant the Irradiance Cache under the IDL setting.
Oh I see. Man I'm trying that right now and the render time has skyrocketed. Maybe I can find a sweet spot.
Problem is still there :(
Damn man, seven days of hard work and the last issue seems to be impossible to fix unless I just turn off the raytracing on the conformed figures.
monkeycloud posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 2:47 AM
Just out of interest Zanzo, what does it look like with higher Pixel Samples = 7, Shading Rate=0.4, IDL Bounces=12, IDL Irradiance Cache=20?
Those are my standard settings... oh yeah, with IDL samples=200. I don't tend to find I need to increase IDL IC past 32.
I get pretty fast renders at those settings, in a simpler scene at least, and not too much in the way of blotchies.
My render times tend to go through the roof because of scene complexity I think. Hence I do try to stick to low IDL IC.
But, my lighting will play a part in that too... I suspect that I tend to override the IDL occlusion with ray traced shadows from the low intensity Point lights I use alongside any emitters...
richardson posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 3:34 AM
In my experiments so far I've found that I get the color bleed from the Envsphere when IDL strength is between .35 and .4. This is a shame because I don't want that much color bleed. It would especially look bad for outdoor scenes using a sky image. Everything gets a blue tinge to it where is in reality our eyes white balance most of the blue out. I'm currently rendering at IDL intensity of .25 to .3. Anyone else's thoughts?
I'd have to see an example but "color bleed" is an art that Poser has just adopted with IDL. Impressionists brought it to light when they began to carry all their color pallette throughout the entire canvas. I would say we need more of that. I struggle with hdr quality, though and results are never predictable at first.. As bb said it's easy to desat them or just lower intensity.
The big issue for me here is where to clip the reflection intensity on EZskin. I'm doing it one at a time. I was hoping snarly would have jumped in by now. May have to wait untill after the holiday... IDL intensity,, I love the logic. I'm using it but have not done a proper set of tests yet. My range has been 0.15 to 0.3. This is neither here nor there. This is getting us into a better realm for light,,, no doubt. Great stuff.
Latexluv posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 3:50 AM
My concern with this color bleed has been in regards to creating a character/skin texture set potentially for the marketplace. I need to show the color of the skin texture as I created it. The one I'm working with now is pinkish. But I'm getting some orange in it at .3 to .4 IDL. I don't have many HDR images in my panoramics folder so if you've got some links (yep, looked at BB's links), it would be much appreciated!
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richardson posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 4:04 AM
My concern with this color bleed has been in regards to creating a character/skin texture set potentially for the marketplace.
There's your answer. You need to keep it in a pristine studio eviroment. A white room with direct Poser light or emitters. No envsphere unless its a desaturated fill light.
Like a photographer. I think kobaltkween is working on such an enviroment. Oh and sIBLs might give you more predictable results .
Latexluv posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 4:06 AM
I am trying a .5 desaturation on the HDR I'm using and doing a test render to see what I get. I'd be interested in that project of kobaltkween's.
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carodan posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 5:06 AM
In my observations the environment contributes a lot of colour to surfaces via bleed & ambient & bounce light. IMO it's a mistake to try to eradicate it.
Take skin, for example. It takes on a different appearance on a cloudy day than in bright sunlight with a blue sky, and whether a person is stood in the shade of a tree or next to a red-brick building. So much of these variances in appearance are due to reflected light of one sort or another.
It is difficult to be scientific about the degree to which sources such as HDRi's and the systems we're using to simulate light in 3d are delivering this light (and colour) though. We sometimes look at a render and think it looks all wrong, but we're making assumptions based on the relationships and balances between surfaces that might not be at all well simulated. Sometimes it is because the systems are indeed out of whack, as bb has shown us with the relationship between diffuse and IDL in Poser.
I've been trying to re-examine the appearances of surfaces with regard to diffuse, reflection/specular. I think sometimes it's confusing that we mentally seperate light and surface properties as such. In Poser we think of reflection in terms of mirrors, metal and water. But in a way what we're simulating is all reflected light (that light that eventually reaches our eyes anyway) - that's how I look at it. The difference is the way in which and how much of that light is reflected by a surface. This gets incredibly complex in the case of skin.
My understanding isn't particularly scientific but it is based on obsevation. I'm very aware of the relationships between colours and contrasts in tones. That's why I know it's very easy to be decieved by what you're looking at. Take a colour picker over the surface of a photo in an image editor and you'll see some interesting colours in shadows and directly lit areas. You have to wonder what's influencing some of that colour - local surface colour or environmental light.
In the case of making a diffuse skin texture, I think we need to start deciding what system of simulating surfaces these textures are designed for - simple or complex. We have to be willing to accept that a diffuse map might not work outside the realm of use with SSS and fresnel reflection with environmental lighting. I have some diffuse maps that are virtually pale-grey with a yellowish tint - look like zombie flesh. But used with an SSS colour map and scatter they do a great job.
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richardson posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 5:48 AM
...like zombie flesh
That made me smile for some reason,,, probably because I had just read you post...;)
carodan posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 7:04 AM
Quote - ...like zombie flesh
That made me smile for some reason,,, probably because I had just read you post...;)
i see Zombie flesh most times I look in a mirror. Too much sitting in dark rooms watching renders computing.
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richardson posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 7:25 AM
i see Zombie flesh most times I look in a mirror. Too much sitting in dark rooms watching renders computing.
^lol looking in the mirror... nevermind. I'm sure it was a "funhouse" mirror at some point in its life.
Daniel, Are you using the original 240 shader? I meant to ask that earlier.
carodan posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 7:59 AM
No. I'm tinkering with different ways of blending 2 or more scatter nodes at present, driving them with various other nodes & maps.
For the Lee-Perry Smith render I posted earlier I went back to a setup that really has no place in any concept of a physically based skin (the one I've posted here). It's incomplete as none of the reflection or specular is being modified by spec maps.
The blinn and reflection are derived from the 240 shader (that's the one that bb posted at RDNA ages ago, right?), but I'm using 2x scatter nodes out of a blender driven by...a diffuse node. Basically it gives me a scatter variation based on the diffuse light/shadow - higher scatter scale on the lit side, lower on the shadow side (so I get more scatter where there's less diffuse light). It seems to work quite well in brighter setups with the EnvSphere. Not really tried it in other scenarios. It's a fudge.
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carodan posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 8:14 AM
As note on that shader I just posted, what I like about it is that I can have two seperate maps with different colours and levels of detail that appear more prominently depending on whether there is more or less diffuse light - that's the theory anyway.
It's more an artistic interpretation of the layering of skin rather than a physical simulation - a half-way house perhaps. That render was with IDL intensity at 0.4, with EnvSphere intensity about 2x normal and fresnel reflection reduced to balance.
None of this would be possible without the D3D render script - essential rendering tool.
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hborre posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 8:49 AM
Very interesting interpretation, Dan. This is similar to the way photographs capture all tones and colors that the human eye misinterprets because of selective optical observation. The shock of Nature's absolute truth. It would seem that there is much to learn on how to manipulate Poser into rendering an image with artistic qualities which looks correct to our interpretation rather than delivering a very realistic stark reproduction of true natural lighting.
carodan posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 8:58 AM
Something I've been thinking about in terms of diffuse maps lately is that there's rarely enough variation in colour - another factor that might be affecting how we read resulting renders.
It only takes a slight indication of some blue/green veins to sing out nicely against the warmer flesh tones, perhaps some slight cooling in areas around the eye-sockets, temples and chin etc (subtle, like). Very often diffuse skin maps have just an all-over, averaged colouration with variations in tone - not enough for a convincing impression of skin layers and the underlying bone structure.
Ideally though It'd be nice to see some specialist maps for attempting some of that layering in a more physical way - local colour, SSS colour, veins etc, along with blow-out displacements.
I'm not sure the scatter node itself gives us enough control to play with some of these layering techniques properly; or the custom scatter. What we can do is pretty cool though, even if it does take some playing with.
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carodan posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 9:09 AM
Quote - Very interesting interpretation, Dan. This is similar to the way photographs capture all tones and colors that the human eye misinterprets because of selective optical observation. The shock of Nature's absolute truth. It would seem that there is much to learn on how to manipulate Poser into rendering an image with artistic qualities which looks correct to our interpretation rather than delivering a very realistic stark reproduction of true natural lighting.
I think we need the scientific model of simulation based on RW physics to help us understand what we're doing artistically - I'm just not hard-wired that way to get through all that science & math. Honestly, my renders would be pretty awful without all the contributions of the math & science savvy people.
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richardson posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 12:55 PM
I've been using a black (noir) skin to see the reflection better. On indirect inside lighting, I've hacked it (fresnel) down 85% so far. This is of course an approximation. But the results seem waaay better than before.
I appreciate your explanations.
carodan posted Mon, 17 December 2012 at 1:25 PM
Quote - I've been using a black (noir) skin to see the reflection better. On indirect inside lighting, I've hacked it (fresnel) down 85% so far. This is of course an approximation. But the results seem waaay better than before.
I appreciate your explanations.
Good idea breaking it down like that, seeing the strengths in isolation. I'm using slightly higher reflection values but then the IDL intensity/diffuse lighting balance is more in a mid range also - that's the compromise (risk a little glow in places).
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bagginsbill posted Mon, 07 April 2014 at 11:59 PM
Bump.
This was one of the best threads we've ever had. So it's over a year later. What are you all doing with this?
I am lazy. I just routinely set IDL intensity to .65 and just keep doing what I was always doing with skin. I gave up on reconciling Poser with my photo-measured 1/8 diffuse value.
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Latexluv posted Tue, 08 April 2014 at 1:01 AM
Yes, I miss discussions like this one! Right now I am so frustrated with Poser 2012 that I could scream. It's not been good for me since Serial Update 3. But I've ordered Poser 10 and it should come in the mail in a few days. Then I'll have something new to gripe about, maybe. Until then, I have been rendering with IDL set at .7 and using 4 or 5 bounces. I understand that in Poser 10/PP2014 that IDL strength is still too high when set at 1.0, so I will be trying those numbers when I get Poser 10.
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WandW posted Tue, 08 April 2014 at 4:14 AM
Quote - Bump.
This was one of the best threads we've ever had. So it's over a year later. What are you all doing with this?
I am lazy. I just routinely set IDL intensity to .65 and just keep doing what I was always doing with skin. I gave up on reconciling Poser with my photo-measured 1/8 diffuse value.
I'm lazy too; too lazy even to push the 5, so my IDL intensity is at 0.6.
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richardson posted Thu, 10 April 2014 at 1:41 PM
This was a good thread for me but left me frustrated with all the anomolies still in Poser light. The issue of 1/8th diffuse could use a thread of its own...