Hello,

I am MrPhoenyxx and I've been messing with Poser for a little over 2 years now. However, I am still very much a newbie. I've read a couple of beginner's guides and some of the tutorials from here. I have not, as of yet, waded through the Newbie Thread in this very forum, but that is currently on my to-do list.

For a long time now I have been trying to produce more realistic renders. To that end, I have tried Reality 3 with Lux Render and I've talked to some people about Octane. But looking at the EZMat thread and a lot of BagginsBill's posts, as well as talking to other artists, I am starting to believe that the answer is not a better rendering engine. Rather, I need to really learn the Materials Room.

I am using Poser Pro 2014 with the latest patches on a Windows 7 machine. What would some of suggest as a starting point to learn Poser's Material Room?

Thank you in advance for any advice you are willing to share!

RuntimeDNA has a Nodes group at their forum where Bagginsbill occassionally posts some examples and solutions.

http://www.castleposer.co.uk/

Is dated but contains invaluble information about each material room node along with examples.

The manual has extensive, comprehensive information about nodes also. I suggest reading that section.

And welcome aboard.

As a starting point? I'd suggest you read the manual. Then experiment to see what each node will do and what happens if you combine them.

A very sound decision. Regardless of application and render engine, having a good grasp on materials/shaders and lighting (you really can't separate the two) is very important to get the results you want.

I can't point you to any other resources or learning materials, I just wanted to give you a bit of encouragement for your decision. Also, keep in mind if you're planning on using unbiased renderers like Lux or Octane in the future, you will need to learn the lighting and materials specific to those products. I find lighting and materials in both Reality3/Lux and Octane to be much easier than Poser, but others find Poser much easier, so it is a bit of not only learning the mats/lighting, but also finding what works well for you.

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My Rendo Gallery ........ My DAZ3D Gallery ........... My DA Gallery ......

Just wanted to say Welcome.

I find Poser lighting trivial. No lights here. So it's not lighting that needs learning.

It's all in the materials.

I mean to say - you can trouble yourself to learn how to use the lights, but really if you can't make a no-lights render like this, then you have a problem with materials first and only.

Once you get good materials, then you can see about getting clever with lights.

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This is probably a stupid question, but which manual are you referring to?

Start here with this thread.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2852694&page=4

When you see this shader, start reading real hard.

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I'm sure you get this a lot Bagginsbill, but I'm honored you would respond to my thread. Thank you!

Now, can you make a new plugin where I just copy your brain? :P

Ok, but seriously, are you saying you did not use any light at all in that example picture? Not one single light of any kind?!!

I guess the Poser Reference Manual, accessible via the Help menu (it's a PDF in the Poser program folder)

As said, lighting, materials and rendering are one, and changing renderer requires a redo of lighting and meterials. As far as Poser / Firefly is concerned, you can find something in

http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?book=poser-rendering

on lighting and rendering. Concering materials, Reality and Octane, I'll send you a site-mail.

- - - - -

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

Quote - I'm sure you get this a lot Bagginsbill, but I'm honored you would respond to my thread. Thank you!

Cool!

Quote - Now, can you make a new plugin where I just copy your brain? :P

Working on it.

Quote - Ok, but seriously, are you saying you did not use any light at all in that example picture? Not one single light of any kind?!!

Yes - the lighting comes from my environment sphere, upon which I have loaded an HDR image of the Doge's palace courtyard, and then I turned on IDL.

You can get that HDRI and others here:

http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Data/HighResProbes/

You can get my EnvSphere from my site (see free stuff link in my sig).

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hborre, Eclark81894, and artbee:

Ok, I thought you might have meant the "built-in" Poser manual which I actually have not read yet . But that's because I have another manual I've been using. I will make a point of reading that manual as well though. Thanks!

Bagginsbill:

I use your environment sphere already, and I've been to your site. :)

On lighting and different renderers:

I do get that you have to relearn materials and lighting for whichever renderer that you are using. In general I have found that I understand Reality 3's lighting and materials interface better. It seems more intuitive to me.

However, I have had nothing but problems trying to do scenes in Reality 3. I have purchased quite a few props, characters, clothing, and sets over the years. Very few of them work properly "right out of the box" in Reality.

This is not surprising to me, but what it does mean from a workflow perspective is that I would be better off loading just the texture files within Poser - with no additional shaders. Then I should do all of my lighting and materials work from within Reality 3. At least, this is how it seems to me from my experience with that software so far.

That seems like doubling my work to me, since I am at the stage that I would need to learn more about lighting and materials anyway. It really comes down to, "Which application do I learn them for?" Either way I feel I need to know more about Poser materials, at least to understand better what Reality is bringing over and why.

Well if I have to learn more about Poser Materials, then why not just learn that and forget Reality altogether? Especially if I could learn to produce a render like the one Bagginsbill posted above? That's just as good as any Reality render I've ever seen.

That is the decision that I recently made, and what motivated me to finally post here. I feel it would be more advantageous to me to learn Poser materials first and foremost.

Then maybe, one day, I'll try something like Lux or Octane again.

I think it's a decent plan to just use Poser materials until you hit the limits (there are limits) and then see about Lux or other renderers.

If your renders fall short in Poser against other Poser renders (like mine) then it would be good to learn the basics first, and Poser can teach that.

Sure there are tons of goofy nodes in Poser but I don't use them, so why should you?

I use like 8 of them most of the time. (not counting math nodes - need all of those for procedural patterns - but you don't need those for image-based shaders or solid colors or one-node procedurals like Clouds)

You should know Diffuse and Blinn like the back of your hand. Once you understand those, move on to Fresnel_Blend and Reflect. Then maybe a little detour back into diffuse effects like Clay and then on to Scatter, finally Refract. That's the first 7 lighting nodes you should know.

A few visits to Color_Math, Math, and Blender will help with building combinations, but are not strictly necessary for a vast number of shaders.

The really weird stuff is when you try to make procedural patterns, like wood grain, or hexagonal tiles. But that's not basics.

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More fun with the motorcycle.

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Quote - More fun with the motorcycle.

I would respond, but I need to pick my jaw up off the floor first. Just hold on a moment, would you? Ugh, it rolled under the couch again...

That is just an amazing render! I mean, beyond words amazing!!

Could you clarify something for me though please? It's the enviro sphere that's emitting the light, but I thought if you attached an image, even an HDRI one, to a sphere then it was just a picture? Don't you have to add an HDRI light with the same image attached?

Nope you don't. The key thing about IDL is that it does two important effects, pretty much at the same time.

When deciding how much light is arriving at any given point, it takes into account how much light is leaving other surfaces (near or far) that are visible from that point.
In taking into account how much light is leaving other surfaces, it recursively applies a calculation about how much is arriving at those other places and bouncing off.

People imagine that IDL is about bounced light (effect #2) but it's also about effect #1 - how much light is leaving any given surface. Bounced light is light that didn't start there, but there is light that starts there, i.e. a surface can give off light from nowhere. It is the source of the light - i.e. it is glowing.

My EnvSphere glows - it is self lit - it is the source of all the light in the scene. The amount that it glows, at every point, is defined by the HDRI you attach to it.

So - the EnvSphere is set up to not bounce any light at all - while simultaneously emitting exactly how much light is recorded in the HDRI. The result is that it reproduces the lighting of the world around our scene, while not actually participating in it. If you were to load a black image onto it, you would see it as black and no amount of Poser lights (point, spot, or whatever) would influence how much light leaves its surface.

When you build a shader, you are deciding two things:

How much light originates from that surface (self-lit, glowing)
What % of light bounces from that surface.

I have the EnvSphere set up to emit the image, and bounce nothing.

Ordinary objects are set up to emit nothing, and bounce a fraction of the light that arrives. These ordinary objects are still adding bounced light to the equation, but they are not adding light. They only contribute light that arrived from elsewhere.

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I think I actualy understood that...

Here I've got three of my material-demo pawns.

The left one is obviously glowing.

The middle one does what is called "diffuse" reflection. Light arrives from a specific place and bounces in every direction.

The right one does what is called "specular" reflection. Light arrives from a specific place and bounces to a specific place.

Most objects demonstrate a mixture of diffuse and specular reflection (like the floor under the three pawns). Glowing objects can do those two and emit light from nothing (not reflected from elsewhere) as well.

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May I ask how you made the first pawn glow? I am guessing that you did not just turn up the Ambient?

I turned up the ambient.

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Well that's very interesting. You certainly received a lot more glow and a brighter effect than when I try that. But I'm sure that all relates to the lighting, as I am currently using a more "classic" Poser way of lighitng my scenes. Which means there are lots of lights, which I assume would drown out the ambient quite a bit.

Are you rendering with gamma correction (GC) enabled?

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Yep!

I hate to jump in, but I have simple question. Don't you need some sort of specific light source (like the sun or a spot light) to get correct shadows? Even if the source is a light emitter (or several)? Does just the environment sphere create shadows even though the light comes from everywhere? Does the HDRi create shadows from the light parts of the image?

Mike

Quote - I hate to jump in, but I have simple question. Don't you need some sort of specific light source (like the sun or a spot light) to get correct shadows? Even if the source is a light emitter (or several)? Does just the environment sphere create shadows even though the light comes from everywhere? Does the HDRi create shadows from the light parts of the image?

Mike

There was an interesting discussion about this recently. Your question uses the word "need" as if there is no other way. Adding an infinite or a spot light may be a way to get sharp shadows. But if the HDRI is an >>accurate<< recording of the entire scene, including the sun at its proper relative intensity, then you can get sharp shadows anyway. You asked "even though the light comes from everywhere" - but that's just it - if the sun is properly recorded, the sun light doesn't come from "everywhere" - it comes from one tiny spot in the sky - an intense bright tiny spot. That is what makes a sharp shadow - having the majority of the light come from one tiny spot.

Doing that hot spot with a virtual sun or spot "light" is easy. Getting it properly recorded in a photo is not. Some people making HDRI know how to do it. Most don't.

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This is the thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=4131264

It (the thread) is titled "IBL: I don't get it" and it started out being about IBL but morphed into a general discussion of IDL and HDRI.

On page 2 of that thread you'll find I posted this image, which was made without any Poser lights - just the EnvSphere as only source of light.

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Really good question Mike!!

And thanks for the response Bagginsbill! :D

So most of the stuff I've read to this point, including many artists' suggested render settings, do set the gamma correction on at 2.2 in the render settings. Should I not do this, and if so, then why?

You should be using GC at 2.2. I asked only because you claimed that your pictures aren't as bright as mine. It's the first reason things look too dark - not using GC.

So we move on. I should probably just give you a scene so there is no question about what you're using. Then you can slowly work up to figuring out what you're doing differently than me.

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In my File Cabinet ...

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/file-cabinet

You'll find my mat pawn prop as a zip. Get it.

You'll also see the BBLightMeter prop in a zip. Get that too.

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and

I will do that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, check this out. It's an illustration I have wanted to make for a long time.

I shrank my EnvSphere down to Scale 1.2% and then I modified the shader to "burn" a hole in it, so we can see both inside and outside. It took nine nodes to make this effect, including the outside glowing darker than the inside. For those of you that are a bit more advanced, can you figure out how to do this?

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The pawn is the test prop correct?

Should I grab the gamma meter as well, or just the light meter?

OK, makes sense that a proper HDRI has a hot spot or spots that gives an appropriate shadow. It has to be slightly harder to get that light to point in the direction you may want then when using a spot or Infinite light. IE suppose you want the light from the front upper right to create a shadow on the floor at some angle. I guess you have to rotate the HDRI in the sphere to get the light coming in the way you want. That could be a little confusing and difficult to see in the preview. Is there a technique for this?

Can you control the sharpness of the shadow with a HDRI or is that not an issue?

I guess the way you rotated he hole answers the question about the modifing the direction of the light hot spots.

Quote - I guess the way you rotated he hole answers the question about the modifing the direction of the light hot spots.

Yes you rotate the sphere, not the image. The sphere is an actual prop with the actual image on it. You can look right at it.

Since many HDRI are not very H and need help from a light, I usually make a spot light, parent it to the sphere, then switch it to infinite. Then I line up the infinite with the apparent position of the sun on the sphere. (Tricky - you have to set up a camera with the right sight-line through the world origin. Then you line up the infinite light indicator with the picture of the sun.) Once this is done, you can then Y-rotate the sphere and the infinite light will rotate with it.

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Quote - The pawn is the test prop correct?

Should I grab the gamma meter as well, or just the light meter?

MatPawn.zip is the CurvyTestProp, yes.

You don't need the gamma meter.

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Go back to my file cabinet and download the SimpleDoge scene file.

Make sure you also have the doge2.hdr HDRI -- get it here:

http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Data/HighResProbes/

Open the scene, locate your copy of doge2.hdr and resave the scene.

The scene has envsphere, ground, and a round wall. I put the wall there to make renders faster (rendering the doge.hdr slows it down.)

It should look like this.

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Load the MatPawn and the BBLightMeter and render - should look like this.

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Turn off the "Sun" light. Render. (Ignore artifacts - we're set for speed here.)

It's too dark now. The "exposure" is wrong now that the sun is gone.

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Go into the material room (advanced - always advanced).

Click on the sky to select the EnvSphere.

The material is ultra simple - just the image plugged into the root node in two places.

The Diffuse_Value is off (don't bounce any light).

The Ambient_Value is 1. (emit the image light x1).

Change that to 4.

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Render again - this is a no-lights render and the envsphere is set for proper exposure. This is for *this* particular HDRI. Other HDRI will need a different set point. Use the light meter. You want closely spaced white dots, maybe a teeny bit of red.

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All downloaded. I won't have time to try a render until tomorrow though.

Load some crap and render some more.

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I want to go to bed, so I got tired of waiting for this to render. Here it is partially finished. I wanted to show that the scene lighting is all set - now your props need correct materials.

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Rendered while I slept. Obviously I didn't tweak anything because I was asleep. Turned out OK. There is one obvious artifact on the wall, right side. This sort of thing doesn't happen with better renderers, but we have ways to get around this.

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"Turned out OK", and I'm looking for my jaw on the floor again. :P

I do see what you meant about the artifact on the right though.

I did six renders. They all worked as expected.

Pic 1 - Doge set, pawn, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 1, sun on.

Pic 2 - Doge set, pawn, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 1, sun off.

Pic 3- Doge set, pawn, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 4, sun off.

Pic 4 - Doge set, random stuff, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 1, sun on.

Pic 5 - Doge set, random stuff, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 1, sun off.

Pic 6 - Doge set, random stuff, and light meter. Ambient on the Enviro sphere at 4, sun off.

I also included a screen cap of the render settings that I usually use. You can download all of the pics at the following URL:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8xzc3m65dw9rayk/bagginstest.zip

I looked at your render settings and noticed you reduced the IDL bounces to 1. Watch out with that - you'll be missing a ton of bounced light, given that there is a white wall and floor to interreflect with each other. Compare renders with 1 bounce, 2, 4, 6, and 8.

I would post pics but Rendo uploader just died. (again)

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I was wondering about that myself. A friend suggested those settings. In general, compared to what I was using, I would say it slightly improved the look of my renders.

I don't have Poser at work or I'd send you the settings I used to use up until about 2 weeks ago. Nothing surprising or revolionary, I just didn't use the D3D plug-in before and set some pretty standard settings in the regular render settings window.

Something else I noticed, these scenes rendered very quickly compared to some of the stuff I'm working on right now. Is that possibly related to the number of lights in the scene, or just to the number of objects?

By the way Bagginsbill, I was wondering where a person would get the latest copies of your shader sets? I saw your car paint on your free site, but that isn't the latest version correct?

Quote - Something else I noticed, these scenes rendered very quickly compared to some of the stuff I'm working on right now. Is that possibly related to the number of lights in the scene, or just to the number of objects?

Lights will consume memory. The more lights scattered throughout the scene, the longer the render.

Quote - By the way Bagginsbill, I was wondering where a person would get the latest copies of your shader sets? I saw your car paint on your free site, but that isn't the latest version correct?

BB could answer this himself, but the better car paint shaders are associated with Dreamlight's auto series found here in Rendo. But they are not free. The freebie at his site is the most current available. For free, that is.

Thanks hborre,

I have no hesitation in purchasing the product. I meant his latest and greatest. I checked his store, which has some dreamland models (including one car), but I was unsure if that one car has it or just which products have the latest shaders.

It isn't really clear to me what I should purchase if I want particular shaders. Like which, if any, product has his leather shaders?

Do extra lights increase render times more so than objects? I am sort of assuming that they do, since Poser would need to make ray trace and IDL calculations for every light wouldn't it?

Quote - Do extra lights increase render times more so than objects? I am sort of assuming that they do, since Poser would need to make ray trace and IDL calculations for every light wouldn't it?

Lighting is a major contributor if the scene is saturated with them. Other culprits are hires textures, high polycount models, displacement maps, transparency maps, extremely high render values, etc.

Quote - I have no hesitation in purchasing the product. I meant his latest and greatest. I checked his store, which has some dreamland models (including one car), but I was unsure if that one car has it or just which products have the latest shaders.

Any product with BB's name associated will contain his unique shader setups. Purchasing them does not restrict you from using the shaders in other products. Use them as you see fit and necessary. But be warned, some of those shader arrangements will make your eyes cross. They can be very...elaborate.

Quote - Any product with BB's name associated will contain his unique shader setups. Purchasing them does not restrict you from using the shaders in other products. Use them as you see fit and necessary. But be warned, some of those shader arrangements will make your eyes cross. They can be very...elaborate.

I already have an appointment to see if they can uncross my eyes...

Wow, that's an amazing render of the motorcycle, thank you for the info....agh! I've so much to learn!

So I have some questions already. I am reading about the root nodes at the moment, and more specifically the PoserSurface Root Node.

Diffuse Color states that it is the surface color multiplied through any light striking the object. I am not sure I fully understand that statement. My limited understanding of color and light is that it is always reflected light hitting our eye. So something appears Red because it bounces the red parts of the spectrum and absorbs the others.

So what exactly does it mean when it says, "surface color multiplied through any light"? Why multiplied and not added, or some other math function?

Fresnel Blend:

Outer Color is defined as the color of the surfaces facing away from the camera. When I think of outer color and inner color, I think of a sphere with the light (or color) outside of the sphere and the light (or color) that is inside the sphere. This seems to imply the opposite: that outer color is the color of the parts of the sphere that are on the inside or facing away from the camera.

Similarly for Inner Color, it is defined as the color of the surfaces facing towards the camera, which is what I would consider the outside of the sphere.

Can someone explain this a little better?

Quote - Fresnel Blend:

Outer Color is defined as the color of the surfaces facing away from the camera. When I think of outer color and inner color, I think of a sphere with the light (or color) outside of the sphere and the light (or color) that is inside the sphere. This seems to imply the opposite: that outer color is the color of the parts of the sphere that are on the inside or facing away from the camera.

Similarly for Inner Color, it is defined as the color of the surfaces facing towards the camera, which is what I would consider the outside of the sphere.

Can someone explain this a little better?

I believe you are confusing outer and inner with exterior and interior. Outer refers to the edges of a sphere, for example, which are moving away from the camera. Or facing away from the camera. Inner is the surface closest to the camera, or facing the camera.

I'll be back to help soon, but I'm super busy with work at the moment.

Our renderer models light as having only three spectral elements - red, green, and blue.

The multiply is correct for diffuse reflection because the incoming light has some percentage absorbed, and the rest reflected. The diffuse color is 1 - absorption values.

Suppose half red is absorbed.

Incoming light is, say [.8, .8, .8]. The diffuse color (absorbing half red) is [.5, 1, 1].

Multiply them together and you get [.4, .8, .8]. See ? Half the red got absorbed.

Try it with other values. It always works.

Another way to look at diffuse color is this: it specifies what is reflected, given a reference light source [1, 1, 1]. Therefore, if the light is half that bright, [.5, .5, .5] then the diffuse reflection would be half the original diffuse color, or color * [.5, .5, .5].

If the light is pure blue [0, 0, 1] and the surface is pure red reflector [1, 0, 0], the resulting reflection is black i.e. nothing [0, 0, 0].

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Quote - I believe you are confusing outer and inner with exterior and interior. Outer refers to the edges of a sphere, for example, which are moving away from the camera. Or facing away from the camera. Inner is the surface closest to the camera, or facing the camera.

Yes, I think so too. So let's take a balloon as an example. The outer color would be the inside surface of the balloon that faces away from the light, and the inner color would be the outer surface facing the light?

Or the outer color would be the back face of the ballon that's on the far side away from the light source, and the inner color would be the forward face of the balloon that is facing the light source?

Or both? :)

I did send you the stuff to understand it better, it's all in there (at least, I tried). Comments welcome.

Anyway. If the light has color RGB = (80%, 60%, 40%) and the surface has color RGB = ( 70%, 50%, 30%) then the result is RGB = ( 80%x70%, 60%x50%, 40%x30% ) = (56%, 30%, 12% ). It's actually called filtering, like you're looking through a colored semi transparent piece of plastic.

In real life, metals do look red (eg copper) because there is more red light reflected than green and blue light. Flowers do look red because all light is absorbed and then rediffused, and in that process the red light is absorbed least. Objects do "emit" from diffusion, reflection, translution, fluorescense and phosphorescense behaviour (and because or transparancy which lets light shine through from the backside).

Poser only handles surfaces, it hardly deals with volumes. So there is no such thing as an "inside color". But when the camera looks at an object, the edges it sees are outside, and everything between the edges is inside.

have fun.

- - - - -

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

That all makes sense to me Bagginsbill. One clarification though: you are talking about what I said with the color of an object being what light we see bounced off of that object when you say, "diffuse reflection" correct?

Or are you more specifically discussing what is referred to as Diffuse Reflection in the article that you posted in this thread?

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?44077-What-exactly-do-Diffuse-Specular-nodes-do&p=500402

I haven't delved into the stuff you sent me yet aRtBee, but I will! Oh I will! :D

Quote - Poser only handles surfaces, it hardly deals with volumes. So there is no such thing as an "inside color". But when the camera looks at an object, the edges it sees are outside, and everything between the edges is inside.

Oh! Is that what it means?

Lighting nodes: Anisotropic, Phong, Glossy, Blinn, and Specular.

These all appear to do the same thing. So why would you use one over the other?

I unsubscribe. It's in the text I send you. This is very disappointing.

- - - - -

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

As I said yesterday aRtBee, I will not have a chance to read those until this weekend.

Inner and outer have nothing to do with inside / outside surface, and nothing to do with light source direction.

The terms refer to surfaces facing the camera (inner from camera's point of view) versus facing away from the camera (outer edge of object from camera's point of view).

The Fresnel effect is a function of the angle of incidence between the surface normal and the observer (or camera).

When you look at a surface from a shallow angle (when it's not pointing at you) then it reflects more. Way more.

Typical smooth glass, with IOR = 1.5, has an inner (facing you) reflection coefficient of just 4% whereas for surfaces near 90 degrees to the side it is 100% reflection - a perfect mirror. Exactly how the transition goes from inner to outer is a complicated equation called the Fresnel equation. I have been using this equation in my shaders for years, built from 21 math nodes. Now Poser has it in one node - Fresnel_Blend.

Study the annotated render attached.

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Quote - That all makes sense to me Bagginsbill. One clarification though: you are talking about what I said with the color of an object being what light we see bounced off of that object when you say, "diffuse reflection" correct?

Or are you more specifically discussing what is referred to as Diffuse Reflection in the article that you posted in this thread?

Hmm. Diffuse reflection is an effect. I use the word reflection or reflect in regard to the phenomenon of bounced light. Diffuse reflection is a particular and specific bouncing behavior that differs from specular reflection and also differs from subsurface scattering.

Diffuse color is a parameter used in the simulation of that affect in just about every renderer ever written. Color (the word unadorned, no adjective) is a subjective experience and may not match the diffuse color, as it combines ambient light, direct light, viewing angle, specular reflection, contrast with surroundings, diffuse value, and so on. This is not a good definition for color so we'll dismiss it.

Many parts to the rendering equation, of which diffuse color is only one, lead to specific and unambiguous color - a pixel with a specific RGB value in your render, which came out of the shader that decided it. So let's go with that one.

If you're going to want the exact definition of terms, we have to be much more careful than we've been, as we in the community tend to get pretty loose with words.

When I am doing shader-talk, diffuse color in a shader is something very specific:

It is the ratio of reflected light color versus incoming light color, assuming the incoming light angle is uniformly 90 degrees. In a Poser shader root node, the diffuse color (ratio of bounced light color versus incoming light color) is actually the product of two values:

Diffuse_Color * Diffuse_Value

You can say that for light arriving at 90 degree angle of incidence, in a shader that is only doing pure diffuse reflection calculations, and has no specular effect in it, and has no transparency or refraction either, and given incoming light color L, the output color (C) is given by

C = L * Diffuse_Color * Diffuse_Value

Rearrange that to make the ratio C/L and

C/L = Diffuse_Color * Diffuse_Value

C/L is what I call the diffuse color (plain English). When I write, instead, Diffuse_Color, I'm referring to the Poser node parameter of that name, which is NOT in fact the diffuse color, although it affects it.

However, if you agree to force Diffuse_Value = 1, then it drops out of the equation and then, indeed, diffuse color is exactly the same as Diffuse_Color.

C/L = Diffuse_Color * 1 = Diffuse_Color

Many other shader systems (particularly Renderman) often refer to diffuse color as Kd.

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Excellent! Thank you.

Mostly I did not want to make the mistake of assuming you meant something else that made more sense to my currently simplistic understanding. I really appreciate you taking the time to clarify that. :)

Quote - Lighting nodes: Anisotropic, Phong, Glossy, Blinn, and Specular.

These all appear to do the same thing. So why would you use one over the other?

All appear to do the same thing? Literally they appear the same to you? If so, you're observation skills need sharpening. Let's get on that, right now.

I'm going to set up some pawns with each of these effects and we'll see if they appear to do the same thing.

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Specular reflection models differ in sophistication (more sophisticated = more render time). These different implementations solve different problems with varying degrees of performance impact.

However the differences in performance have long ago dropped out of the matter. Modern computers implement sines and cosines just about as fast as add and subtract.

Left to right, anisotropic, phong, glossy, blinn, specular.

Of the five, only blinn is moderately accurate in the backlit case.

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And now, front lit.

Again, the blinn is most accurate. However, the anisotropic is more correct in a certain special case - a surface with repeating or semi-regular parallel groves. Anisotropic is better for nylon, brushed metal, and a few other special cases.

I wish SM would create an anisotropic blinn, and an anisotropic Reflect node. Then we'd have an easier time with brushed metal.

Phong (#2) is mathematically the simplest and the most wrong. It's reason for existence is nothing more than to let you keep using 20 year old shaders that used to matter for performance on 386 and 486 CPUs. Professionals haven't used this model since the 80s. Just forget it.

Glossy (#3) is also a cheat for special cases from the 90s. When all your lights are point sources (having no width or height) then the speculars are never looking like you get from large, close light fixtures. The glossy node fakes it - it can pretend that your infinite or spot or point lights (all of which have no width or height) are actually circles. With the advent of area lights in the 90s, this model became pointless. With the advent of real ray tracing and real-dimensioned lit objects or environment sphere (i.e. now), it is even more pointless.

Specular (#5) is OK, but really why bother. Blinn is the right one.

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If you're doing renders like me with zero lights, absolutely nothing happens with any of these nodes. Nothing at all. They only deal with Poser light objects, not Poser props.

The outer ring of the BBLightMeter is black. That's your clue that the specular nodes don't see anything in this scene.

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All the specular nodes are cheats - they are so last century. I use them when I have to (interiors need lights so I need speculars from those lights).

I always use reflect and fresnel blend for realistic specular reflections of the actual scene.

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Sometimes, when I have a cloudy, sunless environment sphere (like doge2) I add an infinite light for the sun and I can put it wherever I want.

In this case, my shader is doing both reflect and blinn. Getting the two effects to be consistent and harmonious is not obvious, and I believe that in the Poser world, I'm the only one that has worked out the math so that it comes out right in every possible amount of blur.

This is something I'm now building into a whole bunch of new shaders - BBGlossy2, BBMetal, BBCandyPaint, etc. None of these are released yet - I'm still not satisfied with them until they're absolutely perfect and absolutely easy to use. Hopefully soon, though, they'll be available, because EZMat is giving me a whole new way to distribute, configure, and apply these shaders that is much more satisfactory than me giving you a runtime with 3000 materials in it.

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Here's a page from my runtime. There are over 1000 materials in BBGlossy alone. It's ridiculous. I need an easier way to configure the options and let you instantiate whatever variations you want with a few clicks, instead of many clicks of navigation into a huge runtime.

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Have a look at the BBGlossy "Weak Gloss" applied to this tire (and the first pawn).

It looks like rubber because it is doing a soft (blurred) specular reflection of the white sky and the white floor. Without that reflection, it would just be mostly black and would not look real. None of the specular nodes do that - they don't look at props, only lights.

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Quote - All appear to do the same thing? Literally they appear the same to you? If so, you're observation skills need sharpening. Let's get on that, right now. I'm going to set up some pawns with each of these effects and we'll see if they appear to do the same thing.

Ooops! Really poor choice of words there on my part. I was reading about the Material Room in the Poser Manual at work yesterday on my breaks. The definitions for all of those nodes are almost identical, so they sound like they all do exactly the same thing.

My bad! :)

I think I got it now.

Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL

Subject: Hi, I'm new here