Poser Lights?

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

I'd like to add one more point about the lighting. Your render settings make a HUGE difference to the look of the scene.

I don't have Colm's package. But for final renders, I know enough to do things like making sure raytracing is enabled, adjusting pixel samples, and shading rate and all of that. I usually render with a shading rate of 0.10 and pixel samples of at least 6-10 for a final Firefly render... but yes, render settings can make a massive difference in the appearance of the lighting on a scene.

I'm starting to thing there is something buggy in the SR3 release when it comes to morphs. I've been working on a set of scripts to Randomize morphs and then remove unused morphs, and after the update they seem different. I can't really explain it, but it does seem like when I add an remove morphs different things are happening than did before the most recent update. I know you just got P11 so I'm guessing you are only on the most recent update.

Hmm. Yes, I did just get P11, but I was having some trouble with doing the update; it just wasn't downloading yet. My connection can be buggy at times; it will drop and come back up randomly sometimes. So I'm actually not running the SR3 yet... maybe that's what's causing the PMD/morphs issue in the first place?

Should I wait on updating for the next SR to come out?

 

[Gadget Girl]

Hmm. Yes, I did just get P11, but I was having some trouble with doing the update; it just wasn't downloading yet. My connection can be buggy at times; it will drop and come back up randomly sometimes. So I'm actually not running the SR3 yet... maybe that's what's causing the PMD/morphs issue in the first place?

Should I wait on updating for the next SR to come out?

Overall I'd say SR3 is wonderful and works very well, and I should add it especially fixes some Library issues. Are you simply saving the scene file and reopening, or are you saving to the Library? And do the morphs show up, but you can't turn the dials? Or do they not automatically load the way you'd expect?

The issues I'm having may be a little different. They all could be in my head too. It's also possible that I'm mixing up my morph packs since I've been loading and unloading them so much recently.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Overall I'd say SR3 is wonderful and works very well, and I should add it especially fixes some Library issues. Are you simply saving the scene file and reopening, or are you saving to the Library? And do the morphs show up, but you can't turn the dials? Or do they not automatically load the way you'd expect?

I'm saving it as a scene file (.pz3), and then opening it up later in a new session.

The morphs load, and are available on the dials. But when turning them, nothing happens after loading the scene again. I have to delete the figure and reload the figure and morphs again to get them to affect the mesh.

 

[NapalmArsenal]

It sounds to me like you need to save your morphs to load on a specific setting. I don't think you can do that as a saved scene in Poser like you do in Daz. Trying to think what we did to get that to work on the leotard in the dazzling denim set. We wanted the Leo morph to load on a specific setting .042.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Well, when I re-open the .pz3 file, the morphs are in effect as they should be. Example : Nataani looks like Nataani should.

But none of the expression morphs work, even though they're loaded. His eyes won't open and close, his mouth won't smile, the control dials don't work. The shaping morphs don't do anything further on the mesh.

So... Nataani looks like Nataani should - but I can't change his shape or expression, even though the dials are right there. Unloading all the morphs and reloading the morphs into the figure does not fix it. I have to delete the figure entirely and start again.

It's a really strange problem. In all previous versions of Poser that I've used, I could save the scene file (pz3), and re-open it and all of the morphs continued to work just fine on the figure after re-opening the scene file in a new session.

 

[NapalmArsenal]

Hmm.....odd! What version of Poser are you using?

 

[Gadget Girl]

I'm saving it as a scene file (.pz3), and then opening it up later in a new session.

The morphs load, and are available on the dials. But when turning them, nothing happens after loading the scene again. I have to delete the figure and reload the figure and morphs again to get them to affect the mesh.

Hmm, I've been working in a scene myself with lots of morphs that I'd dialed in, so I saved, closed and reopened. I'm at least not having that issue. I can both adjust the shape of my character, and I can also do things like open and close the eyes. If you are on the very first version of P11 updating may be the thing to do. I can't remember if I had any issues like that in the first release, but I certainly don't have that problem at the moment in SR3

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Hmm.....odd! What version of Poser are you using?

Poser 11. (NOT Pro.)

Hmm, I've been working in a scene myself with lots of morphs that I'd dialed in, so I saved, closed and reopened. I'm at least not having that issue. I can both adjust the shape of my character, and I can also do things like open and close the eyes. If you are on the very first version of P11 updating may be the thing to do. I can't remember if I had any issues like that in the first release, but I certainly don't have that problem at the moment in SR3

Yeah. I'll try to run the update to SR3 tonight when we get back from the store then. Maybe it was something they fixed along the way. I'm not sure what update version I'm currently running... but I'll run the SR3 when I get home tonight. Maybe that will fix it, who knows? LOL

 

[NapalmArsenal]

That's a good suggestion. Hopefully it will fix it for you!

BTW on the lights, to prevent ghosting of reflective materials make sure you have all materials that are transmapped on SOLID black background as anything with a hint of white will show up as a reflective material. Like eyelashes. Unless they have also fixed that in the up dates.

I had to go back and do a 2nd set of materials totally for Superfly on the Regalia set because they kept ghosting with one set of lights, but looked fine in the other.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

I'll find out later tonight.

 

[seachnasaigh]

I'm still adjusting/refining the Superfly lightcaster MAT for the old Dystopia city blocks, and updating my P9 IDL lightcaster set for John Hoagland's Viper MkII.
The window and lamps materials for Dystopia are still, but the LEDs and beacons are automatically animated. All of the Viper lights are animated, including wingtip navigation lights, cockpit dashboard display, cockpit DRADIS monitor, and adjustable engine thrust streams. I'm now working on setting up a proof-of-concept animated scene.
Both the Dystopia add-on and the Viper MkII add-on will be freebies.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Dang Seachnasaigh! That's beautiful.

 

[Miss B]

Sure is!

 

[seachnasaigh]

Thank you, Satira and Miss B. For anyone who has those old models, I have Superfly kits for Dystopia and the Viper MkII uploaded to ShareCG.

I already had the Superfly kit for the gazebo packed, but when I started rendering promo images, I saw weird shadowing within the glow aurae, despite having casts shadows un-ticked. I fixed that, but now I have to clean up the material nodework again -I leave extra nodes laying about while developing- and re-save current versions, then extract and pack again.
Here is a test render... (light strength is easily adjustable)

Material setup for the lamp flames:

Superfly render settings; the overall quality is set by pixel samples (top of left column). You don't need to let it complete that many pixel samples; If you have progressive refinement ticked, then you can stop it whenever it's good enough.
Mesh light samples needs to be high (7 worked well) because you're depending on meshes to light the scene.
Bucket size: make this number a common denominator of your image pixel height and pixel width. For example, at 1200x750 pixels, I would set bucket size to 25 or 30. Either of those numbers will go into *both* dimensions (1200 and 750) evenly. Rendering half-buckets or tenth-buckets takes as long as rendering a full bucket.

The Superfly pixie dust is shiny, too:

Pixie dust Superfly material: The sparkles and streamers fade away further away from the pixie (Posette, by the way).

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Wow. They render up beautifully, but I think my brain just broke looking at all the nodes. LOL!!

 

[seachnasaigh]

Well, you won't need to look at nodes. The pack will have a preloaded gazebo (the materials of the gazebo itself needed work to avoid Superfly error flags), smart-propped lamps to add to an existing gazebo scene, and material files to fix the gazebo for Superfly. There will also be material files for my lamp kit - blue flames, yellow flames, etc.
The material screenshots are mostly for those inclined to adapt the technique to their own projects.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Yes, I understand... but the advanced material room stuff still makes my jaw drop. It's way, way over my head yet in Poser. LOL

I do like the effects though - the sparkles are really pretty. ^_^

 

[skylab]

Seachnasaigh knows his stuff, Seliah...he's a good one to watch and learn Now you know what I meant by Poser had advanced capabilities...like way out there advanced, depending upon how far one wants to go

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Yes, I have no misunderstandings about just how much Poser is capable of doing. It's whether or not my brain will play nice with it that makes the difference.

I learn more by reverse engineering than anything else... I pick apart others' settings turning one thing off then another and another to see what they all do... that and text/picture tuts are how I learn the best.

At the moment, Poser makes my brain hurt. LOL. It's a little easier than it was three months ago when I started trying to get Nataani into it, though. So hopefully I'll get there.

 

[Pendraia]

If you think that's bad Seliah...you should load the uber shader for Iray and look at it in shader mixer!

That one looked fairly straightforward as networks go. I think I could replicate it if I had P11...and I'm not really comfortable with the material room.