I just recently got Poser 4 and the Pro Pack and decided to progressively teach myself how to use it. So far, I think I have done well going from "cartoonish" figures of myself and friends to an almost "photo realistic" render (with Photoshop 6 touch-ups). Now I am to the point of trying to complete a full scene, and I am running into a little difficulty. For no sane reason, I decided to choose making a render of Lizzy Borden's bedroom (my interpretation of course) for my first scene. The scene, as I have it setup now, is depicted in the attached screenshot. (If you see your props/pose in there, thanks for letting us use them!) I currently have four spotlights set up: 1) Overhead: Simulate the overhead chandelier. 2) Front: Simulate the wall-mounted candles in front. 3) Back: Simulate the wall-mounted candles in back. 4) Fireplace: Simulate the fireplace. (Hidden in front.) As you can see in the screenshot, I have managed to position the spotlights in the respective locations. I overlayed them with white rounded rectangles to make them stand out more. I have also tried fiddling with the individual light properties based upon how I feel the scene would naturally be lit. (Ie, the most light coming down from the chandelier, next brightest would be the fireplace, followed by the wall-mounted candles.) I even fiddled with the light colors and other properties trying to simulate the fire light vs regular white light. The main problem comes from trying to find the perfect lighting setup to simulate four sources of "fire-based" light. It seems that regardless of how I set up the spotlights, unless I have an "infinite" light setup, the scene renders way too dark, almost to the point of not being able to see any detail at all. The system I am running this on is a custom built, and it is getting "old", so I am sure that has a bearing: AMD 800MHz T-Bird, 512MB PC133 DIMM, GeForce2 64MB AGP card with nVidia drivers, 40GB HDD, Windows 98SE, etc. I have noticed that at times, it seriously lags when rendering, to the point that it almost seems like the system is hanging. I have been looking for a reason to "justify" a new system, and I think I found one. :0) If anyone has run into a similar situation or knows of an adequate work-around, I would appreciate it. I do not want to "fudge it", because that will circumvent the learning process and I will still have the same gap if the situation arises again. Thanks in advance.

Bah! Where'd the file go?

try intensity of overhead higher ( 100%) and scale it higher also, then no other light source lower than 50%, the fire settings ( need four lights there) should not be much lower than the overhead settings. poser 4 does not have infinite light abilities. ( try downloading vue desprit 4 trial version and importing the scene into it ) vue has infinit lighting and also has point lights, which are great for the candle lights.

Jaqui, Thank you for your quick response. I have tried altering the intensities, to no avail. I have even tried altering some of the settings for the spots, but none - so far - have "realistically" rendered the lighting. I understand that I will need more spots for the candles, as I only have one per wall to "emulate" the light coming from the walls and not the individual candles. I figure once I get the per wall settings straight, the four candles would be easier. Poser 4, at least with the Pro Pack, only has Infinite or Spot lights: * Infinite emulates sunlight, in that it is parallel light to the scene and lights all charatcters/props the same. * Spots allow you to direct the light from a given point outward. I will most likely try Vue sooner or later, but I would like to see if I can stick with Poser at the moment. My brain only has a limited capability to grasp any number of things at once. ;0) Thanks again! I do appreciate it.

Have you worked with the "Angle Start" and "Angle End" settings on the spots? When a spot is loaded in Poser, it has a fairly narrow light beam, and your picture indicates that this is the case. A wider angle setting might illuminate the scene better.

Cyber, feel free to post something in your gallery so we can see.

Your problem is in the render settings of course ! Go to render>Render options. then you will get a little screen to the right of the disalog box is 4 check boxes. bottom one says something like render shadows or sumtin about shadows. !?! TURN THAT BOX OFF!?! as in no check box. also check the anit-alias for better render picture. problem solved... tell me if its still messed up.

Thanks to everyone for responding. === Kelderek: Yes, I have tried the "Angle End" and "Angle Start" settings. Perhaps they need a little more tweaking? === EicofSD: I will post a few things once I amass a "collection". My eventual plan is to create a few characters then experiment with animating and eventually a mini-movie. In fact, to conserve thread space, I will post a few pix from the current scene. === Shiby561: The point of this "exercise" is to teach me the effects of lighting. I understand that shutting off shadows will result in a lighter picture. However, in real life, all light sources produce shadows depending upon thier various aspects. (Ie, luminosity, intensity, proximity to an object, etc.) Unless this is an inherent "flaw" in Poser that the rendering engine cannot handle low light scenarios, I would prefer to kep the shadows on for effect. I will, however, test out the theory and see what happens. I also did have Anti-Aliasing on when rendering (the image is a screen shot since the rendering came out so dark). My understanding is that Anti-Aliasing smoothes out the jagged edges, giving my overly shadowed render a nice smooth shadow look. :0) === FWIW, it seems like I am going in the right direction. I just re-rendered the scene with and without shadows (so I could post a comparitive fo Shiby) and it seems the main "benefit" of the non-shadowed render is that you get to see more of the peripheral objects. (Look at the mirror in the upper right corner in the comparisons.) Plus, the expected benefit of a quicker render. ;0) The attached is the render with shadows and anti-aliasing on. I will try to get the shadows off with anti-aliasing on put into my gallery.

Try also to play around with the shadow dials on the lights. They are set to 100% by default, but since Poser lacks ray tracing (until Poser 5...) and other fancy rendering features, all shadows will get very dark. Real life shadows are very seldom totally dark, there will always be light reflected from surrounding areas. Judging from the last render, the scene might benefit from a shadow setting of less that 100% in order to brighten up the areas in shadow.