I see it all the time.....self illuminating objects/props or figures but I have no idea how to create them. Is there a good 3rd grade level tutorial around that is recommended for dunderhead Poser users unable to wrap their heads around complex issues and uses in the app?

P8/Pro2010 can do it, albeit limited.

P9/Pro2012 and P10/Pro2014 give you much more capability.

P11/P11Pro can do it in both Firefly and Superfly.

What version of Poser do you have?

Using the Prop's ambient only works well for things which cover a lot of the camera view, such as skydomes. For relatively small but intense sources, such as a fireplace, lamp, LED, or pixie, the IDL response is not proportional to the perceived brightness of the Prop, so you need to use an unseen emitter. Except in P11 Superfly, which can adjust lightcasting of the prop.

turn ambiance up to at least 1 in the mat room for that object. you can plug the texture map into the ambiance channel so that it glows that color. You can alos make a black and white map and plug that into the ambiance amount node if you need more control of where it glows from.

Another trick is to click on the key shape next to the ambient root and animate the effect and adjust it with parameter dials in the Poser room.

This is fine for those of you who know a node from a wart! The Advanced Material room makes my eyes cross faster than trying to d my long form income taxes with much less success. I did say third grade level instructions...right????

Does this also turn a prop into a light source?

seachnasaigh posted at 6:58PM Sun, 13 March 2016 - #4260706

What version of Poser do you have?

It's important! :)

If you can wait until tomorrow I will send you a screen shot of how to do this ... It is easier than you think and will show you the basics of the advanced mat room ... you do not need to add any nodes.

IsaoShi: I have 2014 Poser Pro and just got Poser 11 but not to comfy with the interface yet. Also, it stalls on me a lot...like when I try to set up a figure with the dials and do a fly around to see how the morphs work from different angles, the app stalls and I have to sit around with my thumb......well.......you know! :().......until it finally decides to let me continue. Sometimes it just never comes back. Someone in the know told me it is very stable but I just don't believe it or like it so I avoid using it.....for a while.

Boni thank you. Appreciate any simple help to get me through this darn learning boondoggle.

Pro2014 will do fine (though P11 can do more).

Is there a specific item you have in mind?

Not understanding question. What item? What i need is what one of those characters needed on the yellow brick road...who was it.....the Tin Man? No the Scare Crow! See what I mean.....?? A Brain. I can always use more brain matter (and with my scruffy long beard I am starting to look like him too! LOL Anyway, what I have left is getting terribly wasted. Scary!

Was just setting up a new render and again and again Poser 11 stalls on me. I can not do anything until it re-awakens. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

By "specific item", I meant do you already have in mind a particular prop which you want to make luminous?

For example, torch? light bulb? laptop monitor?

Here is what I have: 1. Hi res ball 2. StudioBackDrop 3. Alyson casual (all available in PP2014 and PP11) The backdrop is behind the other figures by a short distance. The ball is set up in the mat room as shown. 1 cheat, I did render in Superfly because, well, you have PP11 and the quality is measurably superior.

Please ask questions as needed, I'll be glad to help.

The ball is the ONLY light in the scene. The color can be adjusted in the mat room.

I hope this helps.

I made objects luminous in Poser 10, by setting its ambience to 5 or 10 or some other value well above 1.

Arrrrggg! The damn bots here are worthless. I had to find all the email replies from earlier to get back here. Thanks Boni. I will try this when i get inspired to launch Poser again. I still do NOT like Poser 11. Still going to sleep on me and it is frustrating especially when you are in a hurry to get something posed and rendered. I rarely launch it now I have an old poser 4 book that shows step by atep in the old fashion way of simple materials room how to do this. It is not of course real lighting effects and only addsa a glowing effect to any object but I applied it to eyes for instance, or hands to make them glow and then had to relight each glowing item to make it appear as self illumination source. But will try it in Poser2014 the REAL way....as I said...when ifeel my brain has a semblance of inspiration.

seachnasaigh: Not really. Once I was thinking of a flying horse and then of a sword but mostly wanted to figure out how to do it as needed with whatever. Just wish i could wrap my damaged brain around all this stuff easier. But Boni's VISUAL tutorial I think will help. I will bring up the page on my tablet so I can DO it as I see it without having to bounce back and forth which really messes me up making it difficult to do anything.....well.....MORE difficult anyway! :(

Thanks everyone!

Wow Boni that is awesome I gotta try this!

Is there a way to add fog so that you can see the glow around the object without the backdrop?

acrionx posted at 3:05AM Mon, 28 March 2016 - #4262927

Is there a way to add fog so that you can see the glow around the object without the backdrop?

You could use a mesh which engulfs the luminous part. Two edge_blend nodes daisy-chained together will give it a "fuzzy doughnut" look. HW fantasy gazebo animation

shante posted at 3:25AM Mon, 28 March 2016 - #4261963

seachnasaigh: Not really. Once I was thinking of a flying horse and then of a sword but mostly wanted to figure out how to do it as needed with whatever.

@Shante: OK, so a generalized solution. If the object is large and dim, you can get away with just making it ambient. Avoid causing a burnt-out white silhouette. If the object is small (LED, pixie) or bright (fire, light bulb), then you need to use an unseen emitter for Firefly. In Superfly, you can just add LightPath amplification to adjust the amount of light cast while retaining a gentle ambient on the object. I made a freebie partial MT5 just for this; you add to (not replace) this MT5 to your material, and plug your texture into the new bundle on nodes.

The stack of nodes with fractions on the right are just there to give you different light boost options; you'll only use one. You can delete the others. I had that zip posted on a forum which is now defunct. I'll have to find the zip and upload it somewhere.

Anyway, here's your flying horse:

sword (sort of):

I can't post a pic from my Photobucket?!?

@Acrionx: the glow aura: make a mesh which loosely surrounds the object...

...And give the aura a material like this...

Thanks seachnasaigh, I'll give it a try.

@Acrionx: Some tips for glow aurae:

Reduce eccentricity. That is, smooth out sharp bends. For example, if you make an aura for a cube-shaped lamp, the aura needs to be closer to a sphere in shape, with just a hint of the cube shape. Use your modeler's smooth command! Otherwise, the edge_blends will zero in on the sharp bends, making those areas nearly opaque, while the flatter areas disappear.

Higher polygon density improves aura render results. Especially for a long cylinder (neon tube, or lightsabre blade), you'll want to put lots of loops along the length of that tube, otherwise only the ends will show well. Even for relatively round shapes, like that torch flame aura shown above, more polys will even out the opacity. I often subdivide aurae in Poser, sometimes two levels.

Why are not the bots contacting me for these responses. Gives the darn impression I lost interest.

Thanks all for the help. I am going to DL these instructions so i can open them on my ipad and use that as a guide monitor so I can go through it all in Poser. A bit complicated so i hope my head doesn't explode! :(

Also, for simple things like a lamp, you can get away with simply upping the Ambient on the bulb material. Like I did here:

It doesn't actually give off much light (if you need that, put a point light where the bulb is) but it makes it look good ;)

Shante, I have a torch in my freestuff here which is pretty simple both in geometry and materials. It has the visible flame, an unseen IDL emitter, and the faint foggy glow aura as Acrionix referred to. Download the torch and study it.

Here is the shortcoming with simply jacking up the ambient: The amount of light cast is not enough compared to the apparent brightness of the prop. So, your prop looks scorchingly bright, but it is only weakly casting light. If you dial the ambient down to make the prop look right, then it casts hardly any noticeable light at all.

My solution is to make the prop look about right in brightness, and then use an unseen (not visible in camera) IDL emitter prop with hyper-ambience to do the lightcasting. See my diagram of the torch posted above.

TrekkieGrrrl's lamp is an example where I would just dial up the ambient of the bulb itself, and then add a point light. That combination of ambient bulb with point light will give better lighting than either source used alone. But... if I had a scene with 200+ lamps in it, I would give up on the point lights, and use IDL emitters for the lamps - like so:

That's a Poser Pro 2012 render. Too many lights to use point/spot lights, but easily handled using emitter mesh.

Miscellaneous Superfly MT5/MC6 material files, including the ambient boost nodes (see reference in earlier post).

Superfly materials for fiery HiveWire horse and Angelyna wings.

I would encourage learning P11Pro. It's much easier to do glowy stuff in Superfly. I'm setting up TinkerBell's Drive-In Cafe' -and the entire surrounding neighborhood- to be self illuminated, and with Superfly you don't even need emitters. No Poser lights in this render:

thanks. i guess i will have to wrap the dead cells around poser11 now.....drat.....learning for me raises my blood pressure. :(

that last image is very realistic btw...nice lighting effects and scene build up. "sigh"

The torch is made for P9 (or Pro2012) and anything later, and it's pretty simple. You can find several other glowy props for P9 Firefly in my ShareCG album as well as in my R'osity freestuff.

But it is easier to do glowy stuff in P11's Superfly

TrekkieGrrrl posted at 12:29PM Thu, 31 January 2019 - #4270955

Also, for simple things like a lamp, you can get away with simply upping the Ambient on the bulb material. Like I did here:

It doesn't actually give off much light (if you need that, put a point light where the bulb is) but it makes it look good ;)

Yeah! Low tech dear! Love it.... what I have been doing to get around my brain damage interfering with learning the "Right" way of doing things. But it is so damn much more work step-n-fetching it all the time I was hoping for something more...efficient! But thanks. If I can't i the end wrap my head around all the other great suggestions above I will go back to your idea or my own old one!

seachnasaigh posted at 12:32PM Thu, 31 January 2019 - #4270983

The torch is made for P9 (or Pro2012) and anything later, and it's pretty simple. You can find several other glowy props for P9 Firefly in my ShareCG album as well as in my R'osity freestuff.

Thank you!

But it is easier to do glowy stuff in P11's Superfly

Boni posted at 12:35PM Thu, 31 January 2019 - #4260970

Here is what I have: 1. Hi res ball 2. StudioBackDrop 3. Alyson casual (all available in PP2014 and PP11) The backdrop is behind the other figures by a short distance. The ball is set up in the mat room as shown. 1 cheat, I did render in Superfly because, well, you have PP11 and the quality is measurably superior.

Please ask questions as needed, I'll be glad to help.

The ball is the ONLY light in the scene. The color can be adjusted in the mat room.

I hope this helps. Because the bot never contacted me for this and having forgotten it completely, I have failed to thank you for the help! SO thanks so much for the work you put into this. :)

Simply raising the object's ambient value doesn't work very well; the object will appear very bright, but only casts light weakly. To get a balance between apparent brightness and light casting, a bit of dirty tricks is needed. For Firefly, using an unseen (not visible in camera) emitter prop works.

In Superfly, no emitter is needed; you can use a LightPath node to increase the object's lightcasting strength. Among the materials in the freebies, there is an MT5 which is not a complete material, but only a cluster of nodes; the idea is that you would add (not replace) that node cluster to your existing material. Zero out the diffuse and specular. Connect your color map into the node cluster, and connect the node cluster's output to the root's ambient socket, with ambient value set to one (or whatever looks good).

I have some lightcasting freebies Some are complete models, some are materials. There also some simple demo props (globes, e.g.) which can be used to kit-bash an existing prop model.

seachnasaigh posted at 3:08PM Fri, 01 February 2019 - #4344900

Excellent job and explanation.

we really need to be able to easily make car headlights.

Parent ambient cone prop to headlight.

sounds good!

Do you mean IES lighting?

a very illuminating comment TheDarkerSideOfArt

estherau posted at 10:31AM Wed, 13 February 2019 - #4345735

we really need to be able to easily make car headlights.

I'd use a long cone for the beam, and save the prop with a Poser spotlight parented.

Rectangular headlight with dual bulbs:

These are Superfly renders. Spare time permitting, I'll try to save these as props with the spotlights parented. :D

that looks great!

Thank you all. You've helped me towards illuminating a SciFi scene with a $$ Vanishing Point 'Maintenance Tube' set that has 'light panels'. Upside, now they sorta work, iteration required. Downside, I was a _tad _exasperated before any test-render looked hopeful-- And ONLY in Superfly !!

Also, you gave me the incentive to poke about in Materials' 'Advanced' parameters...

PP_11.3 Care: If you dial any parameter up to 'silly' in 'Advanced', save scene before you render, okay ?

"First, I couldn't find the light switch. Now, I'm getting a tan !!"

Took another 4~~5 hours before I managed to sorta re-create this render, though the models were right there on screen.

My best guess seems to be for the lights' D/H/A to be pale blue, with reflection to multiply by lights, not object colour. Dial 'Advanced' default ambiance value of one (1) unto 50~~99, then render with Superfly.

One snag is a lot of material menu values seem to mutate when your back is turned. Another, renders are 'noisy', so I had to double the 'pixel' count...

I learned to render 'progressive', to allow me to cancel early if no lights within...

There's probably three better ways to do it !!

On the pausing while working, do you have auto save turned on?

That caused me some problems when I first got P11

Bill

Thank you for your comments !

Problems ? With the auto-save ?? Um, yes, I've a fairly fast AMD system with 8 cores & 32 GB RAM, but saving scenes in PP11 is a lot slower than I'd hoped.

Doesn't help that my twin GPU cards can't multi-task. If I want to do do 'other stuff', I must render using CPU, as that has cores to spare...

Hmm. Will PP render in background using GPUs ? They're both GTX 750 Ti, should be able to support 'people speed' stuff as well as rendering. Unless they don't, but scant clue in the manual. At least, nothing I can FIND....

( US manual, US 'sort the headings' index. But, unless you know the manual so well you don't need the index, you don't know what to hunt... )

OT: Really annoying that Poser manual has so many gaps and 'hand waves'. Perhaps now Renderosity has taken over, more info will be added. And index / search key-words padded out, so a search for eg light emitters or extreme ambient values would actually find something useful, rather than yet-another two-line hand-wave.

And rigging ?? I've recently dug back along my shelves, found several Poser 7 books I'd forgotten about. They actually make sense, unlike PP manual's 'one approach fits all'... ( I did a lot with P4, had bought but not installed P7, when a spate of dire HDD crashes plus unexpected 'family matters' took me out of CAD etc for a decade... )

Sorry for mutterings, I get so exasperated, and my 'must figure this' list keeps growing... Nik

I have a lot of freebie props which feature glowy bits: seach freebies

Nice !!

And, thanks for freebies' link. I'll check them out tomorrow.