I Just Wanted to Post an Image Thread

[Miss B]

I guess it's what you get used to. I started in DS 2, so DS 3 Advanced was a major upgrade, and I used it for years, so was very used to it. I haven't used, or upraded, after getting my DS 4.0 Pro since coming back to Poser years ago, but I liked DS 3A a lot. I learned lighting thanks to Dreamlight through the monthly webinars he used to hold for the regular members on his now defunct forum/website.

The one thing I had a problem with lighting in Poser 9 was I couldn't grab the lights and move them where I wanted them, which is something you can't really do in Poser, or at least wasn't something I could do at the time in Poser. Of course, I've gotten better at it, but still haven't learned how to create a set of lights for my own use, which I did often in DS 3A. At least now I can take a light set I bought and adjust/tweak settings, so maybe one day I'll get comfortable enough to create a set from scratch.

I also like postwork, though most of the time it's because I want to lighten/brighten a render that didn't come out quite as I wanted, and of course to add my copyright and rendered in tags. I do remember Dreamlight's discussion(s) about rendering sections of a scene for the lighting, and I have a product that renders a group of different parts of a scene, such as AO and the like, but I don't have my DS 3A runtime moved to the new laptop yet, so don't remember the name of the product, and the render I did with it is not in my gallery at Renderosity, so not sure when, or if, I'll remember what the product for DS I used was.

 

[Ken1171]

DS3 was an awful program to try to work in. DS4 was a whole magnitude of better. At least from where I'm standing.

DS4 was definitely an improvement, except perhaps for the large widgets that [IMHO] take too much space from the interface. This becomes more dramatic when we want to created or edit shader bricks, because everything is too large and quickly fill the screen. If we zoom out to see more, labels become unreadable. I just wish there was an option to make the interface widgets smaller like they were before.

The one thing I had a problem with lighting in Poser 9 was I couldn't grab the lights and move them where I wanted them, which is something you can't really do in Poser, or at least wasn't something I could do at the time in Poser.

When we use the "move" tool in Poser, we can click and move anything on the viewport, to include lights and cameras. Perhaps that may not be as obvious because, for the longest time, Poser didn't have a visible transforms gizmo. However, I like the part of the Poser interface where we can see all the lights from your scene as push-pins on a sphere. It gives me a global idea of where lights are in space, and where they are pointing to. I mostly use directional lights, so this is very useful to me. I miss that whenever I am in DS, where we lack a single place where we can see and manipulate the placement and direction of all lights at once. It's cool how this gizmo shows the effects of each light on a sphere, and allow me to manipulate them without having to go search for them in the scene. This helps keeping the camera on the subject and see the effects in real-time. I believe this is the most intuitive lighting interface I have ever seen in a 3D application.

 

[Miss B]

Yes, I like that view of the lights as well, and I've tried selecting one and moving it, but it always winds up too far from where I want them. In DS, if I was in Perspective view, I could hit a two key combination to take it to a far distance, and then I could see all the lights in the scene. Then I could actually select the desired light, and using the Properties panel, I could move it where I wanted it. I can't do it in Poser that easily.

That said, I don't know if newer versions of DS 4.0 have that same option.

Edited to Add: OK, I just found some older notes I made while working with DS 3A. What I used to do to see and move lights, was to hit Ctrl+P to select Perspective View. Select several lights, cameras and or scene elements in the scene tab by Ctrl clicking on them. Then hitting Ctrl+F will move the Perspective camera so they are all in view.

I also checked some old notes for DS 4.0, and I have it listed there as well, so unless they removed those options from the latest version, it's still available.

 

[Ken1171]

That's true - trying to click and drag a light from the push-pin interface can sometimes be hard to make fine adjustments. That's because Euler rotations work better in angles away from the poles. The closer we get to the poles (0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees), the coordinates start falling into a deadlock zone, which may confuse the interface to what direction you are trying to drag the lights to. At an Euler deadlock position, the dragging direction gets confused and may go to the opposite side you intended.

This is an old math issue that can be resolved by replacing Euler 3D rotations with 4D ones. Both Poser and DS use 4D rotations (dual quaternions) in some parts, but not in others. The push-pin light controls in Poser could definitely benefit from this, making the controls more fluid by removing the dreadful Euler deadlock rotation zones.

 

[Miss B]

Yes, I can't tell you how many times I think I'm moving a light near the top down towards the front, or so I think I'm moving it, and it winds up in the back like a Rim light. ~shakes head~

 

[Stezza]

lights are fun in Carrara

a twist on the beanstalk story

simply titled ~ Greta

 

[luannemarie]

Ken1171, I agree with you totally. I spend much more time on lighting than creating the scene. You can create realism with the right lighting. I have 3 or 4 lighting programs that I use more than others.

 

[luannemarie]

Title: Oriental Beauty

 

[Ken1171]

Ken1171, I agree with you totally. I spend much more time on lighting than creating the scene. You can create realism with the right lighting. I have 3 or 4 lighting programs that I use more than others.

Oh yes, sometimes I have everything perfect, but I can't get the right lighting, and that can take time. Sometimes I am lucky and it just comes easy, but in most cases I have to spend time on it.

 

[Hornet3d]

All nicely done Hornet. I still have some of my early renders in my gallery at Renderosity, though some of the really bad ones I deleted a few years ago. I sometimes go there and work my way through them, starting with the earliest, to the most recent, just to see how much I've improved. Of course, I also have some Bryce renders, and a good many were done with early versions of DS, so my gallery's got quite a mixture of renders from various 3D software.

Since I started in 3D with Bryce, and was used to doing landscape renders, my earliest portrait renders left a lot to be desired.

That sounds very similar to my start in 3D, I started in late 2000 but I have none of my very early attempts as they could not really be called renders. In most cases the results did not even show what I was trying to attempt so going back to review them had limited value.

I am not sure if I started in Bryce or Daz but I think it was Bryce, I know by 2005 I was playing with both with Carrera and Vue thrown in and I was bad in most of them. Of course the demise of some left me concentrating in Poser which was probably a good think for me as I was probably spreading my brain power a little too thin.

These are my early attempts in Vue.

2005

2008

 

[Hornet3d]

These are my attempts in Carrara in 2005.

A very early character called Tawnee which I am sure must have been purchased rather than created with any sort of dial spinning.

I think I must have had a thing about sailing boats back then.

 

[Hornet3d]

Last but not least, same period 2005/2006 but playing in Bryce.

Yep, sailing ships again

Well I guess it is still a ship.

 

[Hornet3d]

Looking back on these renders something strikes me that I was not aware of at the time, not my severely limited skills, that was no surprise but my approach to this as a hobby. I was already interested in computers, and had been for years, but using them to create pictures was a stunning revelation to me. I was learning what could be done but it was also clear I had no real intention of what I was going to use it for. My interest in the characters was just being ignited as was understanding how I could create pictures I could not create with my camera ( my main hobby for twenty years had been photography) and without shutting myself in a darkened room with dishes of smelly chemicals. Around this time I started using the software to create Christmas cards and calendars for family and friends, my journey into sci-fi and fantasy storytelling was just about to begin.

 

[Miss B]

Ohhh, I was heavy into 2D graphics for well over a decade before I got into Bryce, and other 3D software, so visualization was not an issue, it was just getting it to work in 3D.

 

[Miss B]

Ken1171, I agree with you totally. I spend much more time on lighting than creating the scene. You can create realism with the right lighting. I have 3 or 4 lighting programs that I use more than others.

That's the one thing that always stands out to me with your renders. The lighting is always wonderful.

 

[KageRyu]

I much prefer the lighting system in Lightwave hands down to Poser. Especially the guides on falloff for Pointlights and spots, and the ability to view the scene from the perspective of any light to see just where it's pointing (which poser allegedly has but has never worked properly for me). Lighting is critical.

 

[Carey]

Man was not considered "civilized" until the first cartoon appeared and man has suffered ever since from drawing some female too fat.....lol there for a while I thought I had died and who you all were responding to was my ghost haunting the place...

Wow, I didn't realize all of you had so many more problems getting into 3D then I did...lol. One day they will visit all of us in some museum don't believe me? Well who do you think shapes the world of 3D most? Remember if you are pointing at some one else, you have four fingers pointed back at yourself....

 

[Carey]

I much prefer the lighting system in Lightwave hands down to Poser. Especially the guides on falloff for Pointlights and spots, and the ability to view the scene from the perspective of any light to see just where it's pointing (which poser allegedly has but has never worked properly for me). Lighting is critical.

In the natural world a room lit by just two windows who's bounce patterns would be a life's work for some trig major. In our world all lighting has to be second rate and invented...lol

 

[Miss B]

I much prefer the lighting system in Lightwave hands down to Poser. Especially the guides on falloff for Pointlights and spots, and the ability to view the scene from the perspective of any light to see just where it's pointing (which poser allegedly has but has never worked properly for me). Lighting is critical.

YES! Another thing I was able to do in DS 3A, was to "look through" whatever light I wanted to see where the light was falling.

 

[seachnasaigh]

YES! Another thing I was able to do in DS 3A, was to "look through" whatever light I wanted to see where the light was falling.

Is this a comparison of DS3 to DS4, or a comparison of DS3 to Poser? In Poser, you can view through a light's shadowcam.