Hi, it´s been a while since I played around with Poser and now I need help with transmapped hair in IDL litten scenes. I just can´t make it looking good with shadows on, it looks smudged and dirty.

Examples are with and without shadows on. The hair in this case is "Wild Hair".

I have Poser 8.

 

The material settings

materials settings

and the render settings!

From what I can see, the hair material has ambiant and or transluscense or maybe both. Try going into the advanced material settings and see if the either of those are on, i.e. any value that isn't zero. If they are, make Ambient and Transluscence color Black and the value Zero. Do that for each material of the hair. Try rendering again and see if this doesn't make that hair look better. In Poser 8 and above, using Ambience on a texture makes IDL consider it a source of light, and hair is not meant to be a light bulb.

"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

 

 

Sorry, posted as you were posting. I see that there is no Ambient or Transluscence on the materials.

"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

 

 

My suggestion is to turn off HSV Exponential in your render settings. Someone may suggest a better setting for it, but I never liked how it looked.

"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

 

 

Try unchecking Light Emitter in the hair objects properties panel (IIRC Poser 8 had that).

Laurie

Quote - Try unchecking Light Emitter in the hair objects properties panel (IIRC Poser 8 had that).

Laurie

 

Sorry Laurie, but there´s no such thing in P8.

According to the PoserSurface, you are routing both an Alt Specular and Specular_value thus multiplying that channel much higher than it needs.  Use either one, not both.  If you elect to use the node connected to the Alt_Specular, translate the values from the Specular_value to the node, zero the Specular_value and disconnect the map to it.

Quote - > Quote - Try unchecking Light Emitter in the hair objects properties panel (IIRC Poser 8 had that).

Laurie

 

Sorry Laurie, but there´s no such thing in P8.

Sorry about that...wasn't sure ;).

Quote - According to the PoserSurface, you are routing both an Alt Specular and Specular_value thus multiplying that channel much higher than it needs.  Use either one, not both.  If you elect to use the node connected to the Alt_Specular, translate the values from the Specular_value to the node, zero the Specular_value and disconnect the map to it.

Thank´s for the advice but that didn´t solve it, the hair still looks smudge when rendering with "Casts shadows" on. This problem occurs whenever I try to render a transmapped hair figure/ prop, with Casts shadows on.

Texture Quality, set that to none or crisp on the maps.  

Since you're seeing a bad quality in the indirect light, have you tried turning up the slider named "Indirect Light Quality" in the render settings?

Quote - Texture Quality, set that to none or crisp on the maps.  

Actually, I did that before and it looked worse... :-(

Quote - Since you're seeing a bad quality in the indirect light, have you tried turning up the slider named "Indirect Light Quality" in the render settings?

Yes, i did that also but... no improvement.

Well...I solved the problem by increasing the "Raytrace Bounces". For some reason I once lowered it to 1, probably for saving time with some test renders...now i pulled it up to 4.

That made the trick:-)

Thank you all for the advices, it´s nice to see that you people still like to help!

You´re great!

Cheers/

Mike

I'm not 100% sure... but for scenes lit with IDL & GC shouldn't specular + diffuse strengths not exceed 1....  I was never clear on exactly how this worked but I remember something about it screwing up the light math if the values were too high.. effectively more light bouncing off the surface than what hits it.   Maybe somebody with a keener understanding can explain what I'm getting at...

At any rate I notice your specular value is at 1.3 AND you have an alternate specular... could this be where the problem lies???

Also are you using a GC of 1 for your grayscale maps (Trans, Bump, displacement etc)

Quote - I'm not 100% sure... but for scenes lit with IDL & GC shouldn't specular + diffuse strengths not exceed 1....  I was never clear on exactly how this worked but I remember something about it screwing up the light math if the values were too high.. effectively more light bouncing off the surface than what hits it.   Maybe somebody with a keener understanding can explain what I'm getting at...

At any rate I notice your specular value is at 1.3 AND you have an alternate specular... could this be where the problem lies???

Also are you using a GC of 1 for your grayscale maps (Trans, Bump, displacement etc)

There´s no Gamma Correction in Poser 8.

But thank´s anyway!

I'm sure I read somewhere that IDL needs a minimum of 2 raytrace bounces in order to 'see' transmapped objects correctly - and I see that you've fixed the issue by increasing bounces ...

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poser 8 could fake GC using HSVexpTM 1.66 and gain 1.33 (d3d FFRender script).  svl. yrs ago, bagginsbill showed some curves for hsv/gain combos were almost linear (as in GC).

Quote - I'm sure I read somewhere that IDL needs a minimum of 2 raytrace bounces in order to 'see' transmapped objects correctly - and I see that you've fixed the issue by increasing bounces ...

 

that would make some sense.. one bounce being a direct light and the 2nd and subsequent bounces being the idirect light

Quote - I'm sure I read somewhere that IDL needs a minimum of 2 raytrace bounces in order to 'see' transmapped objects correctly - and I see that you've fixed the issue by increasing bounces ...

Caisson, you´re absolutely right :-)

Cheers